Wardogs Season 2 release time: the new season goes live Oct. 15 after maintenance ends around 5:30 a.m. ET

Wardogs Season 2 goes live on Thursday, Oct. 15, right after a morning maintenance window. Bulkhead takes the servers down from 8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. UTC, which is 4 a.m. to 5:30 a.m. ET, and expects about 90 minutes of downtime before the new season starts. The update brings four new guns, four new vehicles, the Molotov and rain with thunder you can hide your footsteps under.

What time does Wardogs Season 2 come out?

Bulkhead’s maintenance notice gives a window, not a single minute. The servers go offline at 4 a.m. ET and the window closes at 5:30 a.m. ET, which is 1 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. PT. Bulkhead estimates roughly 90 minutes of downtime before the season goes live, so in the US, plan on playing from around 5:30 a.m. ET.

In Europe, the window runs from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. BST in London and from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. CEST in Berlin. Further east, it’s 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. in Tokyo and 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. AEDT in Sydney. Steam downloads the Season 2 update before you can play again.

What’s new in Wardogs Season 2. The arsenal grows by four. The TCX-SPR is a 7.62x39mm assault rifle, the PP-19 Bizon a 9x19mm SMG, the Evo-3 Ultra an LMG in .308 Win and the M14 a marksman rifle in the same caliber, with new optics, muzzle devices, magazines and bipods around them. At the vendor, the Bizon costs $1,000, the TCX-SPR $3,200, the Evo-3 Ultra $7,250 and the M14 $7,400.

Assault players also get the Molotov, a thrown incendiary that splashes fire on impact and keeps burning anyone standing in it. It can burn destructible foliage, and the rain dampens it.

The garage gets bigger, too. The Wolf-110 is a fast, light wheeled transport for $2,200, and a version with a ring-mounted M2 Browning costs $7,800. The T-72B3 is a main battle tank, slower than the L2A6 but cheaper and slightly more fuel-efficient, at $16,000, and the Flakpanzer Gepard brings anti-air firepower for $14,000. Builders can now put down an MG Nest with a manned M2 Browning, a Large Shelter to cover key assets and, as Bulkhead puts it, a wooden step made of wood.

The biggest change to the feel of a match is the weather. A new rain preset soaks surfaces, vehicles and soldiers, sounds different under cover, indoors or inside a vehicle, and pours through roofs you blow open. In heavy rain, thunder rolls in, and every player on the server hears the same strike at the same moment from the same direction. It’s loud enough to mask footsteps, and rain also cuts spotting range.

Later in the season, Bulkhead adds the Wager Vendor, which lets you bet your own cash on your own performance. “Win big or lose it all,” is how Bulkhead sums it up. It isn’t available at launch, and Bulkhead says it may come and go during a season. The Gold Market also gets eight new weapon and vehicle skins in four camo families, including a Season 2 exclusive Black & Gold Little Bird.

Balance changes and the Lonestar experiment. Season 2 also reshuffles the sandbox. High-caliber rounds like .308 and 7.62x54mmR now hit less hard in assault rifles, DMRs and LMGs, which Bulkhead says were far stronger than everything else in their classes. Sniper rifles keep their big single-shot damage. The Little Bird AH-6M with miniguns now unlocks at level 8 instead of 4 and costs $125,000 to unlock instead of $50,000, and its vendor price rises from $7,000 to $12,000.

Progress is quicker in other places. Bulkhead says reaching role level 20 now takes less than half the playtime it did in Season 1, with the XP needed falling from 250,000 to 111,500.

Matches get new rules against team hopping. Once a team is more than 10 points ahead, you can’t switch teams again for 15 minutes after joining one, and a switched or late-joining player’s map stays hidden until they reach the control zone. Team kills now go to the victim, who chooses to Forgive or Punish, and punishments build up into kicks and escalating bans.

Then there’s the faction experiment. Bulkhead says one of the three teams has had a notoriously lower win rate than the other two, and Season 2 tries to fix the Lonestar side’s image. For Season 2 only, Lonestar gets a cash and XP win bonus and multipliers for teamplay actions, its uniforms are more desaturated, and all three team spawns on Bakurani have moved. Any team that falls at least 40 points behind second place now gets 20% off at the vendor.

Wardogs is a tactical all-out warfare shooter from Bulkhead, published by Team17. Up to 100 players split into three teams and fight for randomized 2x2 km control zones, and the first team to 100 points wins. Everyone starts with $10,000, buys a loadout every life and earns cash for teamplay, and that cash carries over from match to match.

It has been in Early Access on Steam for PC since Sept. 10, 2026, at $39.99. Bulkhead said it passed 2 million copies sold five days later, and by its Season 2 preview, more than 3 million. For other big multiplayer updates this week, see our page on the next Fortnite season.

This page is updated as soon as Bulkhead confirms Season 2 is live, opens the Wager Vendor or announces the date of Season 3.