Jagex spent RuneFest 2026 doing something most live-service studios spend years trying to avoid: adding a whole new game to the pile instead of narrowing focus to one. Alongside a ground-up relaunch of RuneScape 3 and a fresh roadmap for Old School RuneScape, the studio confirmed a fourth mainline RuneScape MMO, currently going by the working title RS4 — the franchise’s first numbered sequel since RuneScape 3 arrived in 2013.

What RS4 actually is

RS4 is built in Unreal Engine and set in Gielinor’s Ashenfall region, picking up years after the events of RuneScape: Dragonwilds and the in-game destruction of the Dragon Queen Kuldra. Jagex says the project began life as a planned expansion for Dragonwilds, the Unreal Engine 5 survival game the studio shipped to players who wanted a more grounded, single-character take on the RuneScape universe. According to Jagex, playtesters kept asking for a more traditional, systems-heavy MMO built on that same foundation, and the expansion eventually outgrew its host game entirely. The studio has been explicit that RS4 is still early: it’s “a few years away” from launch, with its own dedicated development team separate from the teams running RuneScape 3, Old School RuneScape, and Dragonwilds.

The bet underneath the announcement

That last detail is the part worth dwelling on. Jagex isn’t positioning RS4 as a replacement for anything — it’s explicitly calling it a fourth pillar, sitting alongside three other live RuneScape-branded titles the studio intends to keep funding and updating indefinitely. Jagex CEO Jon Bellamy has said the goal is for the combined RuneScape franchise — OSRS, RuneScape 3, and Dragonwilds together — to become the second-biggest MMO franchise in the Western world within five years, with RS4 as the long-term anchor for that ambition.

That’s an unusual shape for a studio to take in 2026. The live-service era has mostly taught publishers the opposite lesson: pick one game, pour the budget into it, and cut anything that splits attention or engineering resources. Jagex is doing the reverse, betting that a 25-year-old brand built around a shared fantasy world can support four simultaneous live titles with different engines, different audiences, and different monetization models, rather than consolidating them into one. It’s a strategy that only really makes sense if each game is pulling in a genuinely distinct player base — OSRS’s famously conservative, update-averse community looks nothing like the audience trying a modern Unreal Engine survival game — and if Jagex can keep all four staffed and funded without one starving the others.

A relaunch to steady the flagship

The same RuneFest reveal bundled in RuneScape Reignited, a relaunch of RuneScape 3 arriving December 2. Reignited characters start with a completely fresh economy and their own high scores, separate from existing “veteran” accounts — no gold or item transfers in either direction, and no paid progression items available on the new characters. Reignited and veteran players will share chat, clans, and the game’s social hubs, but they’ll trade, fight bosses, and run the Grand Exchange in entirely separate instances. Jagex is also opening full Reignited access to non-members for a ten-day window, December 2 through 12, clearly aimed at drawing back players who’ve drifted from RuneScape 3 over the years. Old School RuneScape got its own roadmap news at the same event, including a long-requested Hardcore mode and new Menaphos-region content.

Taken together, the RuneFest slate reads less like a single big reveal and more like a studio trying to prove it can run its entire back catalog and a brand-new flagship at the same time — resetting one game’s economy to win back lapsed players while building an entirely separate one from scratch. Whether that holds up depends on execution Jagex won’t have to show for years, but the scale of the commitment alone makes RS4 one of the more aggressive live-service bets any MMO studio has made this generation.

---

For another studio betting on a “fresh start” relaunch of an aging MMO, see our coverage of World of Warcraft: Forever, Blizzard’s Classic+ project announced at BlizzCon 2026, and for more on how major publishers are reshaping their live-service lineups this year, see Steam’s projected $20 billion 2026 revenue.