How Many Seasons In A Year?

Gabriel_H · January 8

As the title says, how many seasons will be released in a calendar year?

Looking at the 2026 roadmap:

What do those months represent? Are they the start or end dates?

"Season Zero: Dawn and Dusk will be the first of its kind and officially launch on April 2, 2026, and runs until July 8, 2026."

Would seem to indicate the dates given for Seasons 1 & 2 are the end dates.

Season 1 running July 8th to September 8th (guessing)
Season 2 running September 8th to November 8th

Does that mean Season 3 will drop in November? Or will there be a break between seasons?

Just to clarify: If those are start dates, and we know Season 0 end on July 8th - that means there is a two month gap, over summer (primetime) with no new content. Now I'm worried.

Edit: Apologies, uploaded the wrong slide.

SummersetCitizen · January 8

They said 3 months each if I recall correctly. At least the initial seasons.

My guess is that the seasons may get shorter or longer depending on how much content they can manage to put out.

LunaFlora · January 8

July-September would only be 2 full months.
seasons are 3 months long so season 1 and 2 should be July-October and October-January.

April-July is 3 full months.

edited to add picture from the eso website's Seasons post

https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/69137
Unless ZOS changes Seasons length which is possible I guess

MincMincMinc · January 8

Youd think there would still be a season between the winter and next spring. Granted they probably are not going to announce next year's plans now. Seems like 4 seasons per year.

I would view it as if we are in season -1 for now until season 0. Not sure why they are indexing it starting at 0, but hey why not add another confusing factor for the average joe

Gabriel_H · January 8

SummersetCitizen wrote: »

They said 3 months each if I recall correctly. At least the initial seasons.

My guess is that the seasons may get shorter or longer depending on how much content they can manage to put out.

That's where my confusion is coming from. At present Season 0 ends at the start of July.

If that September is the start date of the season it would mean a gap of 2 months.
If that September is the end date of the season it would mean no gap, but also indicate season 3 would drop in November

tomofhyrule · January 8

They still said quarterly patches (and they have to, since each patch brings the data for one Crown Crate season, and there's no way they're gonna stop selling those).

That means the patches will release in March, June, September, and the last usually pops a bit early in November.

Note that the seasons can switch over after the patches drop, as U49 is dropping on March 9, but "Season Zero" launches April 2.

I'd expect "seasons" will run on 3-month cycles to keep them all the same-ish length.

Gabriel_H · January 8

LunaFlora wrote: »

July-September would only be 2 full months.
seasons are 3 months long so season 1 and 2 should be July-October and October-January.

April-July is 3 full months.

edited to add picture from the eso website's Seasons post

https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/69137
Unless ZOS changes Seasons length which is possible I guess

That's what I am trying to figure out. So if the September for Season 1 is the start date, that is a 2 month gap between seasons.

Seraphayel · January 8

This year has only three seasons because they cannot launch this type of content now as it needs testing and all that. Next year most likely will have four seasons as planned.

whitecrow · January 8

Glad to see a female werewolf is coming.

Gabriel_H · January 8

Seraphayel wrote: »

This year has only three seasons because they cannot launch this type of content now as it needs testing and all that. Next year most likely will have four seasons as planned.

Yes, but that also means that there is (what looks lik) a 2 month break between seasons, so why start it that early and not have new content dropping over the summer period.

Hamish999 · January 8

As far as I know the graphic in the OP has no correlation to the season start and end dates. It is merely showing when the game improvements/refreshes are going to drop and what season they correspond to.
Of course I could be wrong, but the only season we have a start date for is Season Zero, no other dates for seasons have been released yet.

Melivar · January 8

Projected timelines sounded like they would be similar to the past and quarterly, but without the strict focus of dungeon, chapter, dungeon, quest zone

2026 seems to only have 3 seasons with an extended season 0 while they transition and with no new dungeons but work on some dungeons for solo etc.

They did also say they wanted flexibility so could be 2 season one year and 5 the next, hopefully season pricing would be modified based on timeframe but one never knows.

zenonuk · January 8

Gabriel_H wrote: »

SummersetCitizen wrote: »

They said 3 months each if I recall correctly. At least the initial seasons.

My guess is that the seasons may get shorter or longer depending on how much content they can manage to put out.

That's where my confusion is coming from. At present Season 0 ends at the start of July.

If that September is the start date of the season it would mean a gap of 2 months.
If that September is the end date of the season it would mean no gap, but also indicate season 3 would drop in November

My gut is that these are "approximate" management roadmap style dates - akin to Q2, Q3, Q4 etc.

So my read of this is that Season 0, being the first spans Q2 - Season 1 is Q3 and Season 2 is Q4 - possibly with a +/- 1 or 2 month shift depending on how things pan out. So it could be that Season 2 starts in Q4 and finished in Q1/2027 ... I don't think we should hold them to specific dates at this stage.