Return of the Ancients: What PoE 2 Patch 0.5 Has in Store

Path of Exile 2 patch 0.5 has a name: Return of the Ancients. GGG locked in the reveal for May 7 and the release for May 29, 2026. In between, weeks of waiting, a cryptic teaser, hints dropped on Twitter by Kelly Ggg, and a community going full speculation mode. Creator DarthMicrotransaction TV took the time to break it all down: new class, endgame overhaul, timeline, road to 1.0. Here is the full breakdown, structured and ready to read.

Return of the Ancients: the teaser that kicked the speculation machine back into gear

It’s DarthMicrotransaction TV who took a deep dive into everything happening around Path of Exile 2 patch 0.5. And the starting point is a teaser for a teaser. GGG dropped a short video to announce the announcement, with a reveal date set for May 7 and a release scheduled for May 29, 2026. The patch is called Return of the Ancients. That’s all we officially know. The rest is tea leaf reading.

The speculation started with a tweet. Kelly, a new GGG employee, replied to someone welcoming her to X with a simple « Are you not entertained? » The Gladiator movie reference is obvious. Result: the community immediately went wild over an incoming Gladiator class. Except the reality is a bit more nuanced. Kelly was replying to someone who asked her to « keep them informed and entertained. » The « Are you not entertained? » was probably just a play on the word « entertained, » nothing more.

What holds up better is the distinction between class and ascendancy. The creator points out that an internal GGG Discord message mentioned Duelist as the class name, not Gladiator. The latter would be an ascendancy. And if you go to pathofexile2.com, the character select page does show « the Gladiator » when hovering over the missing slot, but GGG confirmed those names are not up to date. The placeholders haven’t been touched in a while. So the class is most likely called Duelist, with Gladiator as one of its ascendancies.

The most convincing argument for a new class in this patch isn’t Kelly’s tweet. It’s the nature of the patch itself. GGG is pitching Return of the Ancients as one of their biggest updates ever. The endgame overhaul was already expected, and a league mechanic too. Add those two together and they still don’t justify the delay and the hype around a « historic » patch. Something else is coming. And a new class is exactly the type of content that turns a big patch into an exceptional one.

A historically long release schedule: GGG under pressure

The date says it all. The initial teaser dropped 37 days before the May 7 reveal. Then three weeks separate that reveal from the actual May 29 launch. That’s the longest gap ever seen between an announcement and a league launch in Path of Exile 2. GGG trained their community to expect short cadences. That’s not the case here.

Reactions are split. On forums and social media, some players are talking about « broken promises. » GGG had been clear though: content would be held back, not dates. The promise was a four-month cadence. We’re now at six. The video creator is straight about it: he reminds viewers that GGG knows exactly how important consistent cadences are, and that it has always been a priority for them. This slip is not trivial, even if there’s no real reason to panic.

His analysis is pragmatic. Development simply takes longer than planned. That’s nothing new. The Druid got delayed. The endgame overhaul planned for patch 0.4 wasn’t there. League 0.3 arrived without its own mechanic. This patch 0.5 Return of the Ancients fits that same pattern. The concrete result: a six-month league. For a lot of players used to coming back every four months, that’s a long time. But if the scope of the patch matches this stretched timeline, it could end up being the most content-heavy release in the history of the franchise.

Infinite Atlas and endgame overhaul: what the teaser actually shows

The Return of the Ancients teaser shows one central image: a structure that looks like the Infinite Atlas, with several visible walls stacked in successive layers. The creator is categorical on this point. It’s not a regular zone map. The endgame is being teased here, and GGG announced it clearly in the thumbnail under the name « Ancients Rise. »

Two interpretations are floating around. The first: the atlas would be split into sectors separated by those walls. The player would progress from one sector to the next, breaking through each wall after clearing the zone. A way to keep the Infinite Atlas concept without throwing it all at once. The layers of walls visible in the teaser support this reading. The second interpretation is more anecdotal but interesting. Jonathan Rogers mentioned in an old interview, with Ziggy D if memory serves, that towers shouldn’t be hunted on the map. He preferred them to burst out of the ground after clearing a map, like a surprise rather than an obligation. In the teaser, the structures literally rise from the ground. Coincidence or intentional direction, hard to say.

On the league mechanic side, speculation circles around Legion and Breach. A few additional hints, including some people are calling leaks, point toward a Breach update in this patch. Legion still sounds plausible according to the creator too. But whatever mechanic gets picked: the teaser confirms that the endgame overhaul is the core of Return of the Ancients. The Infinite Atlas is there, the ancients are rising from the ground, and GGG clearly wanted to send a strong signal before the May 7 reveal.

Road to version 1.0: ExileCon, December and two back-to-back leagues

ExileCon is coming in November 2026, five months after the patch 0.5 launch. Everyone expects GGG to announce the 1.0 release there, targeting December. The logic is simple: leaving Early Access requires a complete campaign, and a complete campaign is the number one marketing argument to pull in players who haven’t jumped in yet. December remains the ideal month for that kind of launch. It also avoids a direct clash with GTA 6, expected in November. Few studios would want to go head-to-head with that beast, and GGG would be no exception. One month of buffer after the GTA 6 buzz, then PoE 2 1.0 drops: the window makes sense.

The problem is that this setup creates a six-month league running from May to December. GGG has always stressed the importance of a regular cadence, three to four months between each league, to keep players engaged. Moving to six months is a break from that philosophy. The question then becomes: will they slot in an intermediate league between 0.5 and 1.0? On paper, two three-month leagues in that window seems doable. But given the development difficulties already seen, that option looks unlikely. The dominant speculation points to a different read: 0.5 is actually the first of two « major » releases, and 1.0 will be the second. Six months and six months. Two massive patches back to back.

This context changes the expectations for Return of the Ancients content. If GGG knows there won’t be another league before 1.0, the pressure to deliver a huge patch goes up. Six months of gameplay without a major update is a long time. The Duelist seems like a lock. But with such an extended gap and a patch presented as one of the most ambitious in franchise history, some people are speculating about two classes instead of one. That might be optimistic. But the signals point that way: a significant delay, a promise of monumental content, and a window that leaves no room for improvisation.

Wrap-up and what’s next on the channel: Diablo 4 and new build guides

DarthMicrotransaction announces a return to Diablo 4 after a long break. He hasn’t touched the game since season 2, roughly a dozen seasons behind. The Lord of Hatred expansion intrigued him enough to give it a shot. His stance is clearly detached: no particular expectations, neither hype nor hostility. That’s precisely the mindset he finds useful for evaluating the game objectively. If the expansion turns out solid, he’ll say so. If it disappoints, he’ll say that too.

On top of that, two concrete changes are planned for the channel. The viewer build showcase videos have been a strong hit. That format continues this season. But the real novelty comes from elsewhere: the creator is starting to produce his own build guides, a format he had deliberately avoided until now, preferring to encourage players to craft their own setups. Demand finally won out. A lot of viewers request guides through the dedicated chat command, and DarthMicrotransaction wants to build a reference library of builds he has personally played throughout the history of the game.

For PoE 2, he confirms high expectations heading into the May 7 reveal. The announced scale of Return of the Ancients leaves, in his view, a realistic opening for one or even two new classes, even if he readily admits that second class hypothesis leans a bit into copium territory. The answer comes in a few days.