By 
During the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival 2026 US keynote, Director and Producer Naoki Yoshida shared concept art of characters, towns, and locations we’ll see in the FFXIV Evercold expansion. All of them involved concept art of in-development areas. No finished content was shown, as Yoshida explained there could be spoilers for the 7.5 part 1 and 2 patches that will start to touch on new additions in the MMORPG main scenario quests (MSQ) for subscribers and Dawntrail players.
As established in the first trailer for FFXIV Evercold, we’ll be heading to the Fourth Reflection of Hydaelyn. This is one that “fell into ruin.” Ice spread everywhere, and gigantic arcane entities roam. Yoshida explained there are many of those behemoths, but didn’t elaborate as to what they are and if they are allies hostile or perhaps peaceful. The first round of slides during the keynote focused on general art for different locations and one of those arcane giants. This also allowed us to see some general architectural design and Aetheryte crystals.
Here is the first batch of places showing different locations in The Fourth Reflection in FFXIV Evercold.
After that, Naoki Yoshida focused on showing off some of the towns. These offered closer looks at different places and how the environment shaped them.
You can see how those first FFXIV Evercold towns look here:
Finally, that portion of the keynote closed with a look at concept art for a new race of FFXIV Evercold NPC characters. These will be cat-like residents of a certain town. Art of both one of them and their village appeared on two slides.
You can see the full day 1 stream for FFXIV Fan Festival 2026 below.
Final Fantasy XIV is available for the PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC, and the new expansion FFXIV Evercold debuts in January 2027.
We may earn a commission if you purchase from certain links. Learn more here.
