Dune Awakening Roadmap: Meatier Season Pass DLCs, Third Faction, and free Chapter updates

Leading up to the release of its first free Chapter update, we now have a full Dune Awakening roadmap. The plan is basically free content updates coupled with Season Pass-covered DLCs every three months or so, and bugfixes plus improvements in between.

Even before they put up the roadmap, though, there was some broader information we about what's comin in thus-far successful survival MMO for the next twelve months or so.

In this article, we'll go over all known and confirmed content and updates for Dune Awakening. Other than the official roadmap, the information here is compiled from the known Season Pass rough timeline, statements and answers made by official correspondents on the Dune Awakening official Discord, and a Reddit AMA conducted on June 19, 2025.

What to expect from Dune Awakening in 2025 and beyond

Dune Awakening's Season Pass is not everything on the roadmap (Image via Funcom)

Free updates (Chapters)

Every three months or so (at least according to the current roadmap), Dune Awakening will get free Chapter updates. Each of these will take the story forward with new main missions and sidequests, plus also a lot of free content to keep the game fresh.

Chapter 2 (September 10)

In Chapter 2, a free update coming September 10 alongside Lost Harvest DLC, we are getting the ability to re-customize existing characters (although it's unknown if we'll get to change the gender morph). Other than this, there will also be new campaign missions, new contracts in the hubs, and 5 new Exotic armor sets.

Season Pass timeline (2025 - June 2026)

To start with, we have all the Dune Awakening content coming for Season Pass DLC owners:

Lost Harvest, expected sometime before December 2025: "A stranded harvester. A desperate crew. A secret that has been buried for over ten thousand years." Coming September 10.
Raiders of the Broken Lands, expected Q1 2026: "The broken lands are shattered plains of broken rock, known for their fearsome raiders."
Water Wars, expected Q2 2026: "Water is life. The Water Shipper families are at war, fighting for control of the Polar Caps of Arrakis."

The starter "Season Pass" content was Wildlife of Arrakis, which is just three decorative statues you can pop down on your base. While they are pretty large ones and, thus, easy to flex on your base, it's a meager bundle for a Season Pass purchase.

However, as confirmed by Funcom, Wildlife of Arrakis is a token offering that the developers had to include because of Steam's day-one Season Pass content policy. The three other planned Season Pass content injections will be "meatier"; thus, they might involve more than just cosmetics.

Big QoL update in July (Update: addressed in August patch)

Dune Awakening has undergone almost daily hotfixes and maintenance periods in its first two weeks, but few balance changes have been introduced. Recently, they eliminated a PvP exploit of landing your thopter on top of opponents, and changed the PvP zone respawn timers in patch 1.1.0.15, but according to Funcom, this is nothing compared to the QoL update coming roughly a month after release:

"We have an update in testing that contains a lot of QoL updates, which we are aiming to release in early July. When we get closer to it being publicly testable we will release the full patch notes. It contains too many changes for me to list here, but you'll be seeing it soon!"

As confirmed by a Q&A session on Discord, the following are some of the features of this July update:

The ability to upgrade base-building material instead of having to remove the original block.
Storage container stacking. (Update: This didn't make the cut in the actual patch).
PvP balancing changes.

With regards to the PvP changes, Deep Desert is going to continue to be a free-for-all, and the combat encounters are supposed to be long rather than low-TTK. However, the current PvP state is also not adherent to the developers' vision:

"The current balance between vehicles and on-foot is not tuned to our liking and there are multiple changes in the pipeline to address this (above and beyond bugs we will fix)."

Update: The patch was released in August, and only addressed some of these features (technically, the Test Client was in July).

Read More: Can you get through Dune Awakening endgame solo?

Known upcoming features in Dune Awakening (Updated August 2025)

Although not all of the following are confirmed for the July update, the developers have acknowledged that they're working on it:

New vehicle modules.
Lost Harvest is now confirmed to have a new one-wheeler bike, and it's shareable with fellow co-op players even if they don't own the DLC.
Characteer rec-customization, coming as a free update in September.
The developers "might consider" adding exclusive PvP zones focusing on Faction vs Faction Warfare.
A third faction besides Atreides and Harkonnen is now confirmed to be in the works.
The ability to name containers and vehicles.
"Deposit All" and "Extract All" options to water facilities (Purifiers and cisterns).
Player Duelling.
More PvE (Hagga Basin-like) open world maps and/or regions.

In addition to all of these, here are some confirmed features "coming quickly" as confirmed in the new Dune Awakening roadmap:

Improved Player Logging – One of the key frustrations we see is the lack of information and clarity around why certain items/objects/vehicles are gone. We will increase the information in your logs so that you have a better idea of what is going on. For example, listing the names of people who take things from chests in your base.
Vehicle Salvaging System – We’re working on a vehicle salvaging system that will allow you to recover lost vehicles.
Cobalt Paste/Vehicle Inventory – We’re adjusting the volume of the infamous cobalt paste and adding more slots to the Assault Ornithopter vehicle inventory. We will be adding a cargo container that can be carried by the Carrier Ornithopter.
Instanced Deep Desert Loot – The constant camping and queuing of the Deep Desert Testing Stations leads to a frustrating experience where people arrive at an empty Testing Station. We’re going to change these to be more in line with the rest of the game.
Offline Notifications about important events – We understand that not everybody can or wants to log in to check power/taxes constantly in the game. We would like to create a notification service that sends you the status of your base via email.

Funcom has also said on record that there will be free story content updates for all players, regardless of Season Pass ownership. On that note, an Expansion (i.e. a new paid major DLC not covered by the Season Pass) is also on the cards for a 2026 release.

As mentioned, an official Dune Awakening roadmap will certainly be updated throughout the year, so stay tuned for further details. Until then, check out our other guides on the game:

About the author

Sambit Pal is an esports Journalist on Gaming and MMO at Sportskeeda. He has Master's degree in English Literature. In his spare time, he is an amateur sleuth trying to trace the Riven Mafia in Warframe, and a recovering Bethesda modding addict. He also secretly enjoys action Roguelites, a severe lack of gitting gud notwithstanding.

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Edited by Sambit Pal