RuneScape 4 Announced: New MMO Built in Unreal Engine
Jagex is working on a new RuneScape MMORPG, a project the studio says will take players back to Gielinor while attempting something substantially different from the games that have defined the franchise for more than two decades.
The game, revealed at RuneFest 2026 under the working title RS4, is being developed in Unreal Engine and remains several years from release. Jagex described it as the fourth generation of RuneScape, though the studio cautioned that “RS4” is not necessarily the name the game will carry when it eventually launches.
For a company that has historically kept its biggest projects private until they were further along, the timing of the announcement was unusual. Jagex acknowledged that RS4 is still at the beginning of development, but said it chose to reveal the project now because it wants players involved while fundamental decisions are still being made.
A New RuneScape, Not a Replacement
The announcement immediately raised an obvious question: what does another RuneScape MMORPG mean for the games that already exist?
According to Jagex, the answer is that they are staying.
RS4 is being developed as a separate experience rather than a replacement for RuneScape, Old School RuneScape or RuneScape: Dragonwilds. Jagex said those games will continue to receive their own development resources and long-term support while the new MMO is built alongside them.
That distinction is especially important for the current version of RuneScape, which might otherwise appear to be the natural predecessor to a project informally called RuneScape 4. Jagex is not presenting the new MMO as a mandatory migration or a technological overhaul of the existing game. Instead, it is describing RS4 as another branch of the franchise, with its own world, systems and development process.
The Story Begins in Ashenfall
Although much of RS4 remains undefined, Jagex has already settled on where its story begins.
The game will open in Ashenfall, the region introduced in RuneScape: Dragonwilds, and will take place during Gielinor’s Sixth Age. Its story is set years after the events of Dragonwilds and the destruction of the Dragon Queen Kuldra, allowing Jagex to return to the region after enough time has passed for it to change considerably.
Ashenfall is not intended to contain the entire game. Jagex said RS4 will eventually move beyond the region and into other parts of Gielinor, including places familiar to longtime RuneScape players as well as locations the series has not explored before.
That gives RS4 an unusual position within the franchise. It is not being framed as a reboot detached from RuneScape history, but neither is Jagex promising that it will simply recreate the existing world in a new engine. The studio is starting with a recognizable setting and leaving itself room to build outward from there.
Unreal Engine Marks a Major Technical Shift
RS4 is being built in Unreal Engine, a significant departure from the proprietary technology associated with RuneScape’s mainline games.
Jagex has already gained experience working with Unreal Engine through Dragonwilds, and the studio said lessons from that project will help shape the technical development of RS4. Beyond that, however, it has offered relatively little detail about how the new game will look or play.
There is no confirmed platform list, no final description of the world structure and no indication yet of what kind of hardware the game will target. Jagex has also not shown enough of the project to establish whether its visual direction will resemble Dragonwilds, traditional RuneScape or something entirely different.
For now, the engine choice says more about the scale of the technological break than it does about the finished game.
The Most Important Systems Are Still Undecided
Jagex was considerably more cautious when discussing the systems that will determine whether RS4 actually feels like RuneScape.
The studio has not explained how combat will work, which skills will appear, how characters will advance or whether familiar RuneScape activities such as Mining, Fishing, Woodcutting and Slayer will return in recognizable form. It has also not said whether players will use existing RuneScape accounts or begin with entirely separate characters and progression.
Membership is another open question. Jagex has not announced whether an existing RuneScape subscription would cover RS4, whether the new game would require its own membership or whether it will use a different business model altogether.
Those omissions are not particularly surprising for a project this early in development, but they underscore how much of RS4 remains unsettled. Jagex has announced the framework of the game before announcing many of the mechanics that will live inside it.
Jagex Wants Players Involved Earlier
The early reveal appears to be part of a broader attempt to change how Jagex develops a new RuneScape game.
The company pointed to the relationship it has built with the communities around RuneScape and Old School RuneScape, where player feedback can shape updates long before they arrive. Jagex said it wants to bring that philosophy into RS4 while the project is still malleable rather than waiting until most of the important decisions have already been made.
It also highlighted permanent progression and game integrity as principles that will guide development. Those ideas are central to RuneScape’s identity, where years of character advancement can carry unusual weight, but Jagex has not yet explained how either concept will translate into the new game.
The result is an announcement that is less about showing a finished product than establishing the terms under which Jagex intends to build one.
RuneScape 4 Is Still Years Away
Anyone expecting to play RS4 soon will have a long wait.
Jagex said the project is still several years from release and has not announced a launch window. There are also no confirmed details yet about testing, platforms or when players might first get their hands on the game.
The studio does, however, plan to talk more about RS4 next year. Future updates are expected to cover the world, the development team and the ways players will be able to participate as the project takes shape.
For now, the significance of the announcement lies less in what Jagex showed than in what it committed to building: a new RuneScape MMORPG, developed on modern technology, set within Gielinor and intended to stand beside the franchise’s existing games rather than replace them.
After more than 25 years of RuneScape, Jagex is effectively beginning again. What remains unclear is how much of the game players already know will survive that transition, and how much the studio is prepared to reinvent.
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