Crusader Kings III — patch notes and updates
Stored observation / content update:
Dated developer announcements recorded from Steam. Open the source for the complete update.
| Update | Date | Excerpt / source |
|---|---|---|
| "Silk & Silver" Dev Diary #8 - Trade in Practice | 2026-10-27 | Greetings! @chaddling here.Back in May we wrote about our vision for Trade in Silk & Silver: Markets, Goods, Categories, Routes, Monopolies, as well as Merchants and their path to become renowned as the Cheesemonger of Europe. We promised that a more technical dev diary would follow closer to release where we dig into the system a bit more.This is that diary. The previous dev diary was about what we wanted Trade to be, but this one gets to be about how it actually works now that it’s been realized.Today we’ll pop the hood and show you all the various machinery that forms the engine of our new CK3 economy. As always, all screenshots are work-i |
| Update 1.20.1.2 | 2026-10-21 | Hello everyone! We're pushing a small hotfix today to resolve some outstanding issues with By God Alone and the Crozier Update. This hotfix should be fully compatible with existing 1.20x saves and mods.Please check the changelog below for more information!Update 1.20.1.2 ChangelogBugfixesFixed a bug for resizing text in College of Cardinals that could appear in languages other than EnglishFixed a bug where the revoke interaction could break the UI in languages other than EnglishFixed a bug where Russian rites and faith names would use cut-off adjectivesFixed a number of crashes that could occur when rendering portraitsFixed a bug where monast |
| "Silk & Silver" Dev Diary #7 - Guelphs & Ghibellines | 2026-10-20 | Greetings and welcome! Today we will be talking about a couple of different things in relation to our Silk & Silver DLC; namely the Guelphs & Ghibellines situation, showing off the new Italian traditions and also outline the Republican Trade Leagues. What is a trade DLC without Venice? What is Venice without Italians? What are Italians without sniping patricians and bickering nobles? What are, indeed, sniping patricians without the Guelphs and the Ghibellines? And what are even Guelphs and Ghibellines? \ In short, the Guelphs & the Ghibellines is a historical situation that arose from conflicts between Kaiser Heinrich of the Holy Roman Empire |
| Crusader Kings III: Silk & Silver - Available November 17th | 2026-10-19 | Steer a powerful merchant company through the medieval era in Silk & Silver, the next Major Expansion for Crusader Kings III, when it releases on November 17th!Master the trade system by striking profitable deals that will bring prosperity to your house and to realms across the world. Win over local authorities as you expand your business interests, or seize power in a Republic by defeating your rivals as you turn your trading monopolies into political power. Crusader Kings III: Silk & Silver includesNew Government Type: Merchant Lead a landless merchant family at the head of a trading company, rising from obscurity to greatness and using you |
| Update 1.20.1 | 2026-10-13 | Hello everybody! We're releasing Update 1.20.1 today to tackle issues and balance concerns reported by players since the release of By God Alone and the 1.20 "Crozier" Update. We'll continue addressing your feedback and bug reports, but given the relatively short time until the release of Silk & Silver, we will be targeting its accompanying 1.21 Update release for any changes going forward.Check the changelog below for more information!Update 1.20.1 ChangelogGame ContentAdded historical sainthood and burial sites for Clotilde, Sigismund, Guntram, Sigebert III, and William of Gellone.The Monk trait is now selectable in the Ruler Designer.Custo |
| Update 1.20.0.4 | 2026-10-06 | Hello everyone! Our 1.20.1 update is still in active development, and many of the issues you’ve reported will be fixed or improved in that release. In the meantime, we’re rolling out a small hotfix today to address a high priority issue that was preventing players from educating their children.Check out the changelog below for more details!Update 1.20.0.4 ChangelogFixed a bug where the secondary recipient of an interaction would become unavailable after using an artifact interaction, preventing interactions such as educating your children.As always, if you encounter any issues after today's update, please ensure you have disabled all mods and |
| Update 1.20.0.3 | 2026-10-01 | Hello everyone! We're pushing a small hotfix today ahead of the weekend to tackle some high priority issues reported to us since the release of By God Alone. We're continuing to work on additional issues that have been reported, and those fixes will be deployed at a later date.Check the changelog below for more information!Update 1.20.0.3 ChangelogFixed a bug where all candidates to an elective title were prevented from being granted a title. Now only the candidate that is currently winning is blocked from being granted a title directlyFixed a crash that can occur in the Frankokratia fourth crusade storyChalcedonians are now properly counted |
| Now Available: By God Alone & 1.20.0 "Crozier" Update | 2026-09-30 | Hello everyone! By God Alone, our latest Core Expansion for Crusader Kings III, is now available alongside the free 1.20.0 "Crozier" Update.In By God Alone, being a good ruler and being a good believer aren't always the same thing. Your characters will wrestle with sin as they try to live up to their faith's ideals, while navigating the rich and evolving political landscape of the Christian Church. Stir up religious debates (or bring them to an end), decide where the authority of the crown ends and the cross begins, and weigh your ambitions against the fate of your soul.By God Alone is available as part of Crusader Kings III: Chapter V, or as |
| "By God Alone" Dev Diary #8 - (Truly) Everything Else | 2026-09-29 | Hello! In case you didn’t know, our latest Core Expansion, By God Alone, launches on 30 September, which is tomorrow. Aside from trying to explain why September doesn’t have a 31st, we’ll walk you through several topics we normally cover right before release: Art, Music, Modding, and Achievements - all in one Diary! We also have some new faces to introduce: a dedicated UGC Experience (UGCx) team has been working hard to improve moddability, and in recent months they've added many features modders have been requesting for years. We'll hear from them later in this Diary. Let's dive in.Hello! Anton Holmqvist here, Art Lead on By God Alone, which |
| "By God Alone" Dev Diary #7 - (Almost) Everything Else | 2026-09-22 | Hello everyone! I’m Jacob, Community Manager for Paradox Studio Black. As we get closer to the release of By God Alone, there are still a number of mechanics and features that we haven’t covered in detail. Several of these developed into systems substantial enough to warrant a closer look than we could fit into our earlier diaries. So today, we’ll be taking a closer look at a selection of those systems. Namely: Saints, Monastic Orders, the Great Schism, and Antipopes.We’ll also be spending some time on the Orthodox Church and how it is represented in By God Alone. While Catholicism remains a major focus of the expansion, Christianity more bro |
| "Silk & Silver" Dev Diary #6 - Merchants, Republics, & the Silk Road | 2026-09-15 | Hello everyone, It is time for us to give another update on all things that are happening on Silk & Silver. As Joachim mentioned during the last Dev Diary, we are currently deep in the Iteration phase of the project. Lots of progress has been made so far, and we want to share some of the recent developments when it comes to our two new Government types for the expansion: Merchants and Republics.\ In the third Silk & Silver Dev Diary, Profit Above All: Merchants Vision, we covered the Merchant player experience in a broader sense: who they are, what matters to them, as well as the tools and connections they have access to in order to achieve t |
| "By God Alone" Dev Diary #6 - Performance | 2026-09-08 | When the All Under Heaven update released we shared an update on our performance work here: (Dev Diary #187 - Performance & Optimization). In that update we also included some hopes and dreams for Crusader Kings III going forward and this is the Dev Diary where we add up the status as we reach the By God Alone update. Hello again, I am Carl-Henrik, Principal Programmer on the Crusader Kings III team. Around the release of All under Heaven I discussed speeding up the load screen and improving various other systems soon. That is what this Dev Diary is about, along with where the day by day performance is heading, and how much memory the game is |
| "Silk & Silver" Dev Diary #5 - Iteration | 2026-09-01 | Hello there, and welcome back to the first Silk & Silver dev diary after summer!Like always, for those who don’t know me, I am Joachim, the Deputy Game Director in charge of Silk & Silver. Today, we are going to talk a little bit about iteration. To give a quick crash course on how we work at Crusader Kings 3, we usually split our development into some core phases:Concepting - 1 Month - The core idea of the DLC is createdPre-Production - 1-2 Months - We craft a proper game design document, do experiments, test ideas, and prepare the DLC for productionProduction - Variable time period - All the core systems are created and hooked inIteration - |
| "By God Alone" Dev Diary #5 - Investiture Controversy | 2026-08-25 | Hello everyone! In today’s dev diary, we’ll explain how a historical conflict between the church and monarchs, known as the Investiture Controversy, is translated into Crusader Kings III, and also serves as one of the seven chapters in the new Christian Church situation of By God Alone.Your feedback from earlier dev diaries regarding this subject has been especially helpful, and we thank you all for your valuable contributions and suggestions. Now, let's move on to what has been in the works.A significant update is the new Conditional clerical appointment doctrine, adopted by Christian faiths at game start. Under Conditional appointment, neit |
| PDX ModCon: July 24-26 | 2026-07-24 | Rulers! Great tidings to all from PDX ModCon!We are a fan-organised three-day showcase and celebration event for Paradox mods; specifically those of Crusader Kings III, Victoria 3, and this year, Europa Universalis V. We will be presenting no less than 60 mods over the coming weekend. Besides trailers and presentations, we will have the developers of some of the biggest mods - including After the End and MEIOU and Taxes - answering your questions! But not Morgenröte, they will be asking the questions instead as all viewers compete in a live quiz.Throughout the event we will be raising money for the Video Game History Foundation, a group that |
| Faith, Power, and the Medieval Church - A Crusader Kings III Documentary | 2026-07-07 | In the latest episode of our ongoing documentary series, medieval historian Eleanor Janega explores the real history at the heart of our upcoming Core Expansion for Crusader Kings III: By God Alone.Filmed inside one of London’s oldest medieval churches, this video enters a world where the Church did more than shape belief: it helped decide who held power, who could be challenged, and what counted as a rightful claim. For medieval rulers in Christendom, faith and politics were two sides of the same coin. |
| Crusader Kings III × Dogecore: A Collection for the Chronically Medieval | 2026-06-26 | Rule kingdoms. Wear the trauma.The medieval era wasn't pretty, and neither are you. Crusader Kings III has teamed up with Dogecore to bring you a collection that captures every glorious, cursed corner of the game you know and love.From hoodies and tees to tote bags and posters, this drop is for the player who's lost an heir to smallpox, tortured a vassal into submission, and somehow still calls it a good Tuesday.The collection features four original apparel designs:Sorry, Princess — I Only Date War Machines. Because love is a siege engine.Maslow's Hierarchy (CK3 Edition). Self-actualization is the Pope liking you. Physiological needs? Gold su |
| By God Alone Dev Diary #4 - Christian Church Situation | 2026-06-23 | Greetings! You may remember me from the days of Khans of the Steppe, but today I am here to welcome you to another By God Alone dev diary.When we set out to rework how Christianity feels in Crusader Kings III, we kept returning to the same question: how do you make a thousand years of Church history feel alive in a sandbox, without turning every playthrough into the same timeline? Our answer is The Christian Church; a new Situation that tracks the spiritual health of Christendom across seven different Chapters.Today we will walk you through how the Situation works: who participates, how Chapters change, what Catalysts push the Church forward, |
| Crusader Kings III: By God Alone - Available September 30th | 2026-06-17 | Navigate through a medieval era with a rich religious life in Crusader Kings III: By God Alone, our latest Core Expansion releasing on September 30th! Wrestle with sin as your rulers try to live up to the tenets of their faith and tangle with church authorities who have power on earth, as well as heaven. Instigate or settle religious debates, negotiate the limits of crown and Papal authority, and ponder the afterlife.Coming to Crusader Kings III in By God Alone:Playable TheocraciesTake control of landed realms headed by an archbishop or even the Pope himself. As the Papacy, new resources of power and wealth will be at your disposal.The Christ |
| Dev Diary #203 - Adventurer Changes | 2026-06-16 | Greetings! Alexander Oltner here, Game Director for Crusader Kings III. Today's diary is a little different from our recent ones, in that it's not about a new mechanic we're building for an expansion, but about something we've already made. So, let's talk about Landless Adventurers! When we first designed Landless Adventurers, we envisioned them as a transition state, something you'd hop into for a bit and then hop back out of. A deposed ruler licking their wounds, a dynasty member off making their name before claiming a title, a brief interlude between two different, landed lives. We included them as a tertiary feature in Roads to Power with |
| Makeship | Genius & Lunatic Pin Pack - Last Chance | 2026-06-15 | A Genius would have claimed this weeks ago. A Lunatic would have forgotten entirely. Either way, your last chance is here.We partnered with Makeship to bring two of CK3's most iconic traits to life as a dual pin set. Whether you're the calculated ruler who schemes three wars ahead, or the unpredictable wildcard your council fears, there's a pin for you.The Genius & Lunatic Pin Pack limited campaign closes on Thursday. No extensions. No second claims.Secure your legacy: https://pdxint.at/43iXafz |
| Silk & Silver Dev Diary #4 - Republics Vision | 2026-06-09 | Hello there!Today, we are going to take a look at republics. We talked a little bit about them in both the announcement video and the original Silk & Silver vision dev diary, but today we will go a bit more into the weeds. Without further ado, let’s get started. \To start us off, what are republics? Republics in Silk & Silver are effectively small city-states, with all the “relevant” people who live there. That means whoever is the current ruler, and all patricians of the city. The patricians are landless nobility and burghers who are part of the assembly of the city, who can vote on matters, and who are (possibly) aiming to become the next h |
| "Silk & Silver" Dev Diary #3 - Merchants Vision | 2026-05-26 | Hi all! I’m PinkAxelotl. Today, we’re taking a look at our vision for Merchants in Silk and Silver. Who are they, what is the experience they provide, which are the relationships that matters to them the most, and what specific systems are used to support their gameplay?For the purposes of this Development Diary, the term “Merchant” only includes the new landless Merchant government. We won’t delve into details about their administrative-focused counterparts, i.e. Patricians or Republics. That’s a topic for another time.Let’s get an important disclaimer out of the way: We’re right in the thick of development and all of this is subject to chan |
| Update 1.19.0.6 | 2026-05-25 | Hello everyone! We have a small update today to address some issues reported to us by the community. Check the changelog below for more information.Update 1.19.0.6 ChangelogBug FixesFixed an issue preventing players from manually inviting agents to schemesFixed an issue causing epidemics and natural disasters to be less lethal than intended |
| By God Alone Dev Diary #3 - Ecclesiastical Power & Rites | 2026-05-19 | Happy Tuesday! Mikael here with another By God Alone update. Last time we walked through Ecclesiastical Titles and Rites and while we shone a light on clerical gameplay and faith mechanics, we did not really touch on how a secular character - who you as the player, most often control - can harness said clerical mechanics.So let's go there! The year is 1075. You are the King of West Francia, and one of your grouchiest dukes - the one you've stubbornly refused a council seat for decades - has become too big for his britches. He has virtually stopped pretending he isn't preparing a revolt, and you would like him stripped of his vassal oaths befo |
| Silk & Silver Dev Diary #2 - Trade Vision | 2026-05-12 | Greetings!I’ll be following up on the overall vision dev diary with a deeper dive into our design for the Trade System. We’re starting our feature-specific dev diaries with Trade because, as you’ll see, it is connected to nearly every other feature we’re developing for Silk & Silver. But before we get into it, remember that all screenshots are work-in-progress and we are in the middle of development. Everything is subject to change.Trade is a new layer that not only provides a new mechanic primarily used by Mercantile Governments, but more importantly, makes economic play more strategic for all characters and connects buildings on the map to |
| Update 1.19.0.5 | 2026-05-07 | Hello everyone! We’re releasing a small bugfix update today to address some outstanding issues since the release of 1.19 “Scribe.” Check the changelog below for more information!Update 1.19.0.5 ChangelogBugfixesFixed an issue where the Legendary Hunt Story Cycle would not start despite starting a legendary hunt.The Iberian Dominance ending can no longer be repeated infinitely for unlimited renown.purchase_land_interaction now only allows duchy targets when the seller completely controls that duchy.Custom title names are no longer reset to default in Title History after a ruler’s death.AI characters can now upgrade their knight accolades.Rites |
| By God Alone Dev Diary #2 - Ecclesiastical Power & Rites | 2026-05-05 | Happy Tuesday! Mikael here again with another update on the development of By God Alone. Last week we talked a lot about Rites, and this week we're going to talk about their finer details - how they start, how they spread, how they go wrong, where the line is between local devotion and outright heresy. We're going to keep that promise, but we're also going to come at it sideways, because Rites in CK3 are not free-floating ideas. They are things specific characters do in specific places, and the places matter as much as the theology.To illustrate this, let's see how the mission of Cyril and Methodius plays out in the expansion, since many of y |
| By God Alone Dev Diary #1 - Tenets & Spiritual Fulfillment | 2026-04-28 | Happy Tuesday, and welcome to our first official dev diary for our upcoming expansion By God Alone! In our sneak preview, we gave you the grand tour from the mountaintop. This week, we're going to zoom in on one particular slice of the new expansion features, where your character starts having an actual relationship with their faith. This is the foundation upon which many of the features we'll discuss in later dev diaries are built.We will look over our revisions to Tenets, Spiritual Fulfillment, Personal Tenets, and the new Study Faith scheme. Along the way, I'll walk you through the reworked Faith UI, which is where most of this comes toget |
| Update 1.19.0.4 | 2026-04-23 | Hello everyone! We're pushing a small hotfix update today to tackle some outstanding issues with the 1.19 "Scribe" Update that was released on Monday. Check the changelog below for more information. Update 1.19.0.4 Changelog Fixed an issue causing out-of-sync errors in cross-platform multiplayer. Fixed an issue causing certain trait-related events (such as Lunatic and Depressed) to fire too frequently. Resolved an issue with some High Medieval Attire clothing not displaying correctly when using the color picker. Fixed a typo in the Sword of Japan Steam achievement description. Fixed an issue where UI elements could go out of bounds in the Sto |