Arrakis is famous for one thing above all: it's hot. So naturally, Dune: Awakening's next big update sends you somewhere you'll have to worry about freezing.
Funcom has announced Blood and Ice, a free expansion launching on December 1 for all players on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox. The studio posted the details on Steam, alongside a roadmap that runs into 2027.
Welcome to the Polar Sink
Funcom calls Blood and Ice "a free expansion that takes you to the frozen north of Arrakis." The centrepiece is a new survival map, the Polar Sink, where the usual Dune problem flips: instead of keeping cool, you'll need to stay warm, using new gear, upgrades and resources.
The map is split into two biomes, according to Funcom:
- The tundra, where wealthy water-shipper families have built lavish strongholds and won't welcome anyone interfering with their operations.
- The ice cap, the families' most valuable territory, which is heavily guarded. Getting inside is one of the expansion's main objectives.
Reach the ice cap and you can harvest ice, which Funcom says you can use to cool your base equipment and speed up production. That's a neat loop: the cold is the threat out there and the useful resource back home.
Funcom puts the new progression at about 35 hours, with new vehicle modules, augments and specialisation traits. The studio says the focus is on traversal, temperature management and combat, and that you'll be able to return to the Polar Sink for resources, with future updates adding more reasons to go back.
GamingOnLinux, which reported the announcement, also notes the new base equipment arriving with the expansion, and quotes Funcom CEO Scott Junior: "We're far from done."
The rest of the roadmap
Blood and Ice isn't the only thing on the way. Funcom's post lays out the next few months:
- Offline single-player arrives in November.
- A cosmetics store opens with optional outfits, vehicle variants and base customisation. Funcom says the initial selection includes looks from the Dune films, tied to Dune: Part Three in December, and that the full catalogue is planned to become permanently available. GamingOnLinux reports that the store is meant to help fund more free updates.
- Events will come more often, with a new Events tab in the main menu. The next one, Water Crisis, follows shortly after Blood and Ice.
- Character copying arrives in January 2027. You'll be able to copy a character from multiplayer servers to single-player, and from single-player to select private servers or self-hosted servers on PC, as long as the server allows copied characters.
- Full cross-play is also set for January 2027.
Beyond that, Funcom says 2027 will bring major free updates with new locations, mechanics and content, more in-game events and regular quality-of-life improvements, with full details still to come.
Riley's take: Dune: Awakening has been about surviving the desert since it launched in June 2025, so a map where the deadly thing is the cold is exactly the kind of twist I love: it makes you relearn the rules of a place you thought you knew. Turning ice into something that cools your base is the clever bit. Making it free keeps the whole player base on the same map, and offline single-player landing ahead of the expansion may matter just as much to anyone who never wanted a server. Keep an eye on the cosmetics store, though. If optional cosmetics really do keep the big maps free, that's a fair trade.
Reporting notes