The open-world crafting genre is an ever-popular one. Games like Minecraft, Valheim, Icarus, and Ark: Survival Evolved continue to both challenge and entertain thanks to their rewarding and highly addictive gameplay loops. There's just something about starting from nothing, surviving through potentially hostile biomes and environments, and building a base and crafting a bunch of tools and gear to progress further. On the cozier side, it can be pretty relaxing to just hop into a game like Minecraft and just mindlessly gather resources or work on a build for hours on end. It's a genre that's likely not going to budge for a while.
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2026 already has a couple of good open-world crafting games that both fans of the genre and newcomers should keep an eye out for. Some of them come mixed in with survival elements, too, while others are a bit more laid-back and cozy. Overall, it's looking like a promising year for any crafters, with these biggest open-world crafting titles confirmed to come out some time this year. There are several other upcoming ones worth the hype, like Light No Fire, but since we don't have certainty over their release yet, we're not including them here. Only games with an estimated and/or confirmed 2026 release will be considered
Subnautica 2
Despite A Rocky Development, There Might Be Hope
Subnautica is one of the more unique open-world crafting franchises out there, with the first two games a huge hit, KRAFTON seems set on ensuring that the next in line is just as good. Whether that is the case remains to be seen, because the development of the game has not been without its fair share of bumps and bad news, with the three founding members of Unknown Worlds fired earlier in 2025 and the game now delayed to 2026. It doesn't help KRAFTON is taking a rather positive stance with the use of AI, which is leaving a bad taste in fans' mouths.
Honestly, it's not looking good for Subnautica 2, but I'm still holding out hope given how fantastic and unique the first game was. Plus, we'll hopefully get an Early Access according to Steam to really gauge what the state of the game is. All that aside, Subnautica 2 promises pretty much everything we've seen in the earlier games: exploring an alien ocean world with strange and at times freaky life forms guaranteed to give you thalassophobia for the rest of your life. In order to survive, you'll have to upgrade and craft tools, build up your base, and then explore deeper. What is brand-new though is the co-op mode, which I'm personally so excited about, given how scared I am to play Subnautica on my own.
Permafrost
A Very Cold End Of The World
Permafrost invites you to step into a world where all has frozen over following a rather dramatic event: the shattering of the Moon. With that, it's up to you (and possibly your co-op partners) to start thriving again. The trailers show a pretty intriguing and desolate, frozen world that sort of reminds you of STALKER, the Metro games, or even some of the sceneries from the Fallout series. Impressive cities, snowy forests, abandoned buildings... It's an urban explorer's dream come true. There are survival elements, of course, so it looks to be a more grueling open-world crafting experience than some of the other games cited here, with players fighting the cold temperatures to stay alive.
You'll have to gather resources by scavenging the wreckage of civilization, hunt for food, and even tangle with enemies in the wild that belong to hostile factions. Base building is a part of it, too. In a frozen wasteland, you'll have to endure extreme weather conditions like blizzards, which means every resource counts. That means starting off with a construction that looks on par with a Minecraft dirt house, but made of wood. In true Fallout style, your most trusted companion is a dog. There's no exact release date yet, but the planned release is some time in 2026. You can request to join the playtest on Steam if you're interested in helping the developers polish the game.
Endalor
A Grueling Dark Fantasy Survival Craft
Keeping to darker themes and settings still, Endalor is likely to scratch a certain Soulslike itch for fans of the genre. Visually, it certainly shares some similarities, and gameplay and feature wise it probably takes a page out of Outward or even Enshrouded's book, so if those were all your cup of tea, it's best to keep a close eyes on this. It boasts an enchanting dark fantasy world that's begging to be explored all Elden Ring style, but beware, as there are tough enemies and challenging bosses around every corner.
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Combat is demanding, but you have some options: there's magic, there's melee, and a wide variety of different weapons to experiment with. To do that, you'll have to gear up, craft weapons for yourself, and unlike a lot of Soulslike games, you should actually set up a camp by gathering resources. If you ever wanted a little more fantasy and RPG into your open-world crafting game, and daydreamed about building a rustic farmhouse in Elden Ring in-between fighting the land's mightiest bosses, then Endalor is worth checking out. It's supposed to come out for Early Access soon, with a release date planned for the first quarter of 2026.
Solarpunk
Solar Energy On Floating Islands
If the last two games were a little too dark and bleak for you, then feast your eyes on Solarpunk. The visuals alone are rustic, cozy, and vibrant, and it's a pretty unique gameplay concept, too, for an open-world crafting game. The world consists of several floating islands that you can travel to on an airship, and you can build the base and resource farms of your dreams anywhere you go. It's a step above just a simple, rustic, medieval-style farming game, with some actual solar tech sprinkled in, although yes, it does feature farm animals and planting crops.
By using wind turbines and solar panels, you can actually create these intricate, automated systems—like sprinklers, for instance. I feel like this is going to be the perfect sweet spot between something really heavy like Satisfactory or Factorio, and Stardew Valley. If you've been a bit curious about automation, but feel intimidated by Minecraft redstone, not to mention any management sim game, this could be an awesome stepping stone. There's a free demo available on Steam, and the full release is estimated to be some time in 2026.
StarRupture
If Satisfactory And Factorio Had A Baby
So, maybe you are the type of player who actually loves complicated factory systems like the ones seen in Satisfactory and Factorio, but you're hoping for something a little new, or perhaps a combination of these two in one great marriage? StarRupture just might be the thing, in that case. The good news is, it's coming out very soon as well to Early Access: as soon as the 6th of January 2025. There's a bit of everything here: alien-blasting on a strange planet, building complex bases and factories, resource gathering, crafting, and management, and so on.
Better yet, you can jump in with friends to survive together, and explore everything the planet you're inhabiting has to offer. It appears to strike a balance between action-packed first-person shooter gameplay with a hefty dose of adventuring, as well as the classic open-world crafting experience where you venture out for resources so you can build, expand, and eventually thrive. And thrive you must, because based on the information out, it's not just the alien hordes that you have to worry about, but the planet's extreme weather and temperature conditions as well.
Outbound
Van Life And Crafting In One Neat Package
One of the coziest upcoming open-world crafting games is undoubtedly Outbound. The vibrant colors, the cute, relaxing atmosphere, and the proximity to nature makes this one out to be the next fun and chill open-world crafting option to play either alone or in a group of friends. Basically, you start off with a van, you gather resources as you drive around, and you build a base which you can then move around.
There's tech trees to unlock, since some systems obviously need to be powered up with environmentally friendly power options, pets to tend to, a garden to grow, and the world itself is also said to come with its own little cool spots and secrets to encourage your to actually drive around and explore instead of just sitting still. It's a nice break from the more grueling open-world crafting games that usually come with some type of survival aspect, so I'm really looking forward to giving this one a shot. Right now, the game's planned release date is somewhere in the second quarter of 2026, so it remains to be seen if that holds up well.
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