Krafton on March 24 unveiled its 2026 development roadmap for PUBG: Battlegrounds.

The plan focuses on boosting competitiveness as an intellectual property with a long product life cycle and expanding Battlegrounds into a platform centered on new mode launches and user-generated content (UGC) updates. It named evolving gameplay experiences and upgrading content-based live services as specific tasks.

Next month, the Erangel map will add a terrain destruction system. It expands terrain features into variable tactical elements. It will also add a "Secret Room" area to the Miramar map and proceed with a Rondo map update.

It will apply interactive smoke that sways in the wind and scatters from explosions, add a function to call in the Bluechip Tower item, and improve the equipment system. It will also focus on improving the user interface, boosting convenience and introducing a casual competitive format.

Gunplay will adopt a meta rotation structure in which the dominant weapon group cycles by season. It will roll out major updates on a four-month cycle and run regular patches every two months to adjust item balance. Ranked play will overhaul its reward system so performance is converted into rewards, expand "Contender" to increase freedom in character customization and broaden event passes.

In April, it will introduce "Xenopoint," a looter shooter roguelite mode combining three elements: cooperation, progression and strategy. It also plans to unveil a heist mode, "Payday," developed in collaboration with Swedish game studio Starbreeze.

It will also move to expand UGC. It will increase creation tools and devices and pursue performance optimization. It will create a dedicated UGC space to improve accessibility. It plans to offer IP-linked content in games and animation, as well as vehicles and artist collaboration content. The participatory content "PUBG Fantasy League" will debut at the esports national team competition "PUBG Nations Cup (PNC) 2026."

It will also seek to expand servers to build a stable service environment and maximize quality in the console environment. It will strengthen its anti-cheat solution to improve detection accuracy, enhance procedures for reviewing mistaken sanctions and refine management strategies by region and platform. It plans to treat direct memory access (DMA) bypass cheating as a top priority by upgrading detection functions.