Project Ebonhold plans its fresh realm for January 2027

Project Ebonhold, the rogue-lite Wrath of the Lich King server, puts its big overhaul on the live realm on Monday, 16 November 2026, and plans to open a fresh realm in January 2027. The team announced both dates on 6 November.

What the update changes

The team calls it an overhaul of the whole game. Among other things it brings:

• Reworked itemization, a new skill tree and more than 900 new echoes for specific classes and specializations, plus reworked old ones
• Every dungeon encounter reworked so it can be cleared solo, and every raid rebuilt for groups of five with new strategies
• A reworked Torment system in place of the Hardcore mode
• A new Raid Finder, a reworked Dungeon Finder and a new Call Board
• No more reputations. Items that needed them now cost Valor Emblems and gold
• A Warband bank shared by every character on the account, and every class and race combination
• New PvE events in Winterspring, new Argent Tournament activities, new mounts and cosmetics, and druid forms for each race

The realm goes offline from 9:00 CET (08:00 UTC) on 16 November while the team deploys the update, migrates characters and runs tests. Most old bug reports will then be cleared, because the team says the vast majority no longer apply after the update and sorting them would take weeks. Exploit reports and issues the GMs marked as frequent or high priority will still be checked and fixed.

The fresh realm

Before the fresh realm opens, the team wants the update stable and the game translated into German, French and Spanish. According to the roadmap, the current realm stays live, and the fresh realm starts everyone again in the Naxxramas era. Once the fresh realm reaches Ruby Sanctum, the old realm's characters move onto it and the old realm closes. In July the team said account-wide shop items that aren't consumables, transmogs and mounts will carry over to the fresh realm.

Sources: Project Ebonhold's news post on the update's release date and the fresh realm timeline (6 November 2026), its "Development Roadmap" post (16 July 2026) and its roadmap page (7 November 2026).