I’ve spoken at length about my tentative excitement for CCP’s ambitious shooter, EVE Vanguard. The developer behind the venerable EVE Online wants to do something different with its take on the FPS; it wants to take the shared-world shooter template laid out by the likes of Destiny and Helldivers 2 and apply all the learnings of EVE to it. It wants to make it more meaningful to the average player. It wants to reinvigorate the genre.
A lot of people are dubious about the lofty claims the game is making. You can read more about the game at the first link up above, and you’ll get more information on it as I continue to cover Eve FanFest 2025 over the next few days, too. But words are cheap, right? CCP Games is keen for you to try the damn thing out for yourself, and – as such – it has finally announced the early access release date for EVE Vanguard as part of its keynote presentation at FanFest today.
If you’re keen to get your hands on the game, EVE Vanguard will enter into Early Access via Steam in Summer 2026. Before that, though, there is a public access event taking play much earlier on September 16, meaning that curious shooter fans that are chomping at the bit to see CCP’s sort-of follow-up to Dust 514 can do so way before its general Early Access release. You can find more information, and find out how to get involved, via the game’s Discord.
“As an MMOFPS, EVE Vanguard is being built as a player-driven FPS sandbox featuring a variety of different activities and experiences, all linked by overarching reward and progression systems,” reads a press release about the game. “Players will set their own objectives and define their own victories, making their mark upon the ongoing wars in New Eden. Scavenge, hunt rivals, and complete hazardous contracts as you battle across the surface of worlds littered with opportunity and wracked with turmoil.”
That’s a lot of marketing language, but – basically – it reaffirms what I’ve already seen of the game; fun, solid shooting underpinning a more persistent and involved world. It’s a unique offering, and something I think players bored of the seasonal grind in most modern shooters will actually vibe with quite a lot. But I’ve got embargoes to adhere to before I go into more depth about all that. Stay tuned.
For those that have been keeping count, you may realise that these newly-announced dates don’t line up with what we’ve previously published. In an article I wrote noting that we probably are going to get EVE Vanguard on console (we’ll just need to wait until 2028), I was given this set of dates:
- 2024 – Founder’s access
- 2025 – Early access
- 2027 – Global launch
- 2028 – Console rollout
That Early Access date has clearly been moved up a year, but it’s currently unclear whether or not the rest of the timeline has been affected (this is something I’m going to follow up with CCP Games with over the course of the weekend). For now, though, anyone curious about what Vanguard actually offers versus the likes of Marathon, Arc Raiders and more will soon have the very real opportunity to try it out for themselves.