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Hawthorn is still in development with no announced release date. Pages state which build they describe · Fact base last reviewed September 13, 2026.
Game status
Every official statement about when Hawthorn is coming, in one place — including the parts the studio has not said.
Last reviewed September 13, 2026
Short answer
When does Hawthorn release?
It has not been announced. The Steam store page lists the release date as “To be announced” and NEARstudios has not published a date, a season or a year. Any site showing you a specific Hawthorn release date is guessing.
What the studio has said is that its playtest process exists to prepare Hawthorn for Early Access — but no Early Access window has been given.
NEARstudios publishes development updates rather than a roadmap, so timing has to be read out of process announcements. Two statements carry real signal:
Read plainly: Early Access is the stated destination, and the playtest cadence is how they intend to get there. Neither statement includes a date.
The August 2026 playtest was the first time anyone outside NEARstudios had hands on the post-Proof-of-Concept build — the studio noted it had been “over a year” since they branched away from the original demo. That branch happened late in 2025, and the following winter and summer updates delivered the foundational systems the full game needs: map, dialogue, quests, storyteller, jobs, villager stats and private co-op sessions.
That is a normal pre-Early-Access shape — foundations first, content second — but it is also a reason not to expect a near-term launch. The studio is still building the map.
See the development log for the dated sequence.
Six fields stay empty until they are announced. Each has a single place we check:
Three official routes, in order of how early you will hear:
This wiki also maintains a dated log and a news feed summary, but official channels will always be first.