RuneFest 2026 Final Preview

RuneFest is almost upon us.... it's TOMORROW!

RuneFest is the most exciting time of the year for any RuneScape fan, as we come together as a community of players and developers to celebrate the magic that these games bring to our lives, while also finding out what the future has in store for us. It being the 25th anniversary of RuneScape, this RuneFest will naturally be one of the most exciting and jam-packed RuneScape weekends imaginable!

We wanted to use this Final Preview blog to give you a quick rundown of what you can expect, both from the Summit and the event in general.

If you're joining us for the event at the NEC in Birmingham, your event brochure should have all the information you need. For anyone tuning in via our Twitch Channel while second-screening RuneScape from at home, you can check out the RuneFest Schedule to stay up to date. Here is the quick rundown of that:

RuneScape Summit

The most important thing happening at RuneFest will be the RuneScape Summit, which you will not want to miss! Summits are our opportunity to lay out exactly what you can expect in the time ahead.

• The Summit will take place live on Saturday, October 3rd from 7pm BST to 7:45pm BST (6pm UTC / 2pm ET / 11am PT).
• You can tune into this live on the Official Twitch Channel - and we're setting up a few in-game broadcast reminders just to make sure you don't miss it while being overly absorbed bankstanding!

What to Expect of the Summit

You can look forward not just to the reveal of the 2027 Roadmap, but we'll also be touching on how we'll be rounding out 2026 seeing as we've already delivered on almost everything we promised in the 2026 Roadmap even though it's only October!

There is one important note to make to help guide your expectations.

We believe RuneScape today is vastly better compared to where we were a year ago, and it is even more changed from the RuneScape that brought you RuneFest 2025. In one year from now - even in a few months from now - it will again have moved even closer to our vision of restoring it and putting the heart back into the game. We stand on the threshold of what's next as we look to the RuneFest 2026 Summit.

The above is important to mention because we have changed direction significantly since RuneFest 2025 and its announcements. We are now on a path to returning to our roots, restoring the game and really making it feel like RuneScape again. The year so far has been testament to that and it continues to be a key focus for us - to pour our time and energy into creating content for and updating the game in all the ways that we should really have already been doing for some years now.

At RuneFest 2025 we announced that Vampyrium and Skill 30 were coming. They are still in our future plans, but you won't hear about them at this year's RuneFest Summit.

When we announced these updates, the future for RuneScape looked different to what it does today. We hadn't even run our series of 2025 Experiments yet, which would ultimately lead us to honing in on the vision of RuneScape's future and the complete removal of Treasure Hunter.

Thanks to the data our experiments provided and the reimagining of a RuneScape with integrity and without Treasure Hunter, we were able to give ourselves a completely clean slate not just to think about our 2027 Roadmap but also the long term vision for the game and the steps we would want to take as part of getting there. Part of that is also thinking about how at this stage the themes, narrative arcs and "big ideas" that we're focusing on don't just deliver something great for our existing players but are also interesting and accessible to new or returning players.

We're already having a great year of focusing on Havenhythe and we are keen to continue the story in future, but we also believe that diversifying our content across different characters, locations and lore in a focused way will keep things more interesting for everyone involved.

We want to make sure a single storyline doesn't outstay its welcome and want instead to create opportunities for future stories to be told, perhaps also leaving just enough unsaid to allow us to branch into new narratives at a later time.

We have this year also seen the value of focusing on what we already have in the game and how important it is to solidify its foundations before we introduce something as game altering as a new skill. Skill 30 especially, being such a historical milestone, is something that needs to be done at the right moment and that we want to take the time to get right.

Vampyrium and Skill 30 are still coming to RuneScape, and we look forward to giving them their justified moment in the sun when the time is right.

None of this is to say that closing out 2026 and the roadmap for 2027 will not be ambitious - they will indeed include some of the biggest moments in RuneScape history and deliver more of the most player requests for content and updates than in any other year before. It will be a year like no other.

Part of solidifying those foundations mentioned above is also thinking about how we can bring more players back to RuneScape at this most exciting turning point in history. We have during the past months spoken to this (as part of our Month Ahead videos for example), and we laid out that we want to explore the best ways to put RuneScape back on the map. To make gamers who haven't been paying attention or perhaps have never even tried RuneScape before more interested in leaning forward and giving it a go. This is about really tapping into what would genuinely make those players return to (or start with) RuneScape, all while respecting the existing playerbase.

All will be revealed at the RuneFest Summit, and we can't wait to show you what we have in store.

RuneFest Coverage

RuneFest is a two day long event, and the summit above is right in the middle of that.

• The RuneFest Event Livestream will begin on Saturday, October 3rd at 2pm BST / 1pm UTC / 9am ET / 6am PT.
• You can tune into this live on our Official Twitch Channel

This Livestream will be hosted by the ever-enigmatic Josh Strife Hayes, who will be joined by various JMods and personalities from the world of RuneScape, Old School RuneScape and Dragonwilds to help guide you through the day's events. They'll be covering everything from RuneFest showfloor events like the Golden Gnome Awards and the OSRS PVP Invitational through to the summits for each of the games.

Importantly, we'll be running a number of giveaways throughout the weekend AND you can score a swanky little shrimp badge on Twitch when tuning in for an hour to official and eligible channels covering RuneFest. Those include:

• Official RuneScape Channel
• Official Old School RuneScape Channel
• Official RuneScape Dragonwilds Channel
• Official Jagex Channel

That's it for now. See you at RuneFest!