Status: Confirmed. Stalker 2: Cost of Hope, the first paid expansion for Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl, unlocks on August 20, 2026 at 9AM ET. It lands on PS5, Xbox Series X / S, and PC, and it arrives at the same moment as the free Update 2.0 for everyone who owns the base game.
Quick answer: The expansion goes live worldwide at the same instant — 13:00 UTC on August 20, 2026 — which is 9AM in New York, 2PM in London, 6:30PM in India, and 11PM in Sydney.
Release time: August 20, 2026 at 9AM ET (13:00 UTC)
Cost of Hope release time by region
This is a simultaneous global unlock rather than a staggered rollout, so the clock is the only thing that changes. Here is when the expansion becomes playable in the major time zones.
| City / region | Local start time |
|---|---|
| Los Angeles (Pacific) | 6:00AM, August 20 |
| Denver (Mountain) | 7:00AM, August 20 |
| Chicago (Central) | 8:00AM, August 20 |
| New York / Toronto (Eastern) | 9:00AM, August 20 |
| São Paulo | 10:00AM, August 20 |
| London | 2:00PM, August 20 |
| Paris / Johannesburg | 3:00PM, August 20 |
| Dubai | 5:00PM, August 20 |
| Pakistan | 6:00PM, August 20 |
| India | 6:30PM, August 20 |
| Bangladesh | 7:00PM, August 20 |
| Bangkok | 8:00PM, August 20 |
| Singapore / Beijing | 9:00PM, August 20 |
| Tokyo / Seoul | 10:00PM, August 20 |
| Sydney | 11:00PM, August 20 |
| Auckland | 1:00AM, August 21 |
Platforms and storefronts
Cost of Hope is available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X / S, Xbox on PC and Cloud, and PC through Steam, the Epic Games Store, GOG, and the Microsoft Store. The base game is required — this is an add-on, not a standalone release. Store pages are collected on the official Stalker 2 site if you need to buy on a specific platform.
Download size and free space
On Steam, the download weighs in at roughly 20GB. Sizes for PlayStation and Xbox have not been confirmed. Because the expansion ships alongside a full engine upgrade, plan for extra headroom — storage guidance for a complete Stalker 2 install plus the expansion runs as high as 160GB, and some players may effectively re-download large chunks of the base game as part of Update 2.0.
Note: An SSD is mandatory. Stalker 2 does not support installation on a mechanical hard drive.
PC system requirements for Cost of Hope
| Spec | Minimum | Recommended |
|---|---|---|
| OS | Windows 10 / 11 x64 | Windows 10 / 11 x64 |
| CPU | Core i7-7700K or Ryzen 5 1600X | Core i7-11700 or Ryzen 7 5800X |
| RAM | 16GB dual channel | 32GB dual channel |
| GPU | GTX 1060 6GB, RX 580 8GB, or Arc A750 | RTX 3070 Ti, RTX 4070, or RX 6800 XT |
| Storage | 20GB SSD | 20GB SSD |
| Target | Low preset, 1080p, 30fps | High preset, 1440p, 60fps |
Both tiers assume upscaling is in play — the figures were measured using TSR and comparable techniques rather than native rendering.
Update 2.0 is free and lands the same day
Everyone who owns Heart of Chornobyl gets Update 2.0 at no cost, whether or not they buy the expansion. The headline change is technical: the game moves from Unreal Engine 5.1 to 5.5.4, which is expected to ease the load on hardware and clean up rendering in specific areas such as glass. Mutant behavior is also being reworked.
The patch adds weapons to the base game as well, including the Fort-230 submachine gun, the Vepr-12 semi-automatic shotgun, the G3 and HK51 battle rifles, the HK433 assault rifle, and the SKS-31 carbine. New attachments arrive too, among them a Picatinny rail adapter for dovetail mounts like the one on the AKM-74/2.
What the expansion adds
You play as Skif again, this time pulled into the standoff between Duty and Freedom. The two factions have been held apart by the D4 Treaty, a pact signed across the Zone before the events of the main campaign, and that arrangement is coming apart. Zulu, the Duty veteran from Call of Pripyat, and Mavka, a Freedom-aligned marksman, are along for the ride.
Two new regions open up. The Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant is finally explorable, and the Iron Forest is an industrial, maze-like area that has been off-limits until now. Each is built as its own territory with a central hub and dozens of smaller locations carrying their own quests. New anomalies, artefacts, arch-anomalies, mutants, gear, and weapons come with them, and the story is nonlinear enough that a single run will not show you every outcome. GSC Game World describes the content as running well over a dozen hours, and closer to dozens for thorough players.
How to start Cost of Hope in-game
You will know it worked when the PDA prompt appears and a new quest line is added to your log. If nothing shows up, check that the expansion is actually installed on the platform you are playing on and that the game has updated to version 2.0 — an unpatched client will not surface the trigger.
If you are preloading or clearing space ahead of launch, the safest approach is to leave room for a full reinstall rather than the 20GB patch alone. The engine jump touches enough of the game that a lean drive is the most likely thing to keep you out of the Zone on release day.
