Bloober Team has put a date on Cronos: Lazarus. The story expansion for Cronos: The New Dawn launches on December 3, the studio announced alongside a new release date trailer, ending a stretch in which the DLC sat under a loose fall 2026 window and a store listing that read "to be announced". The Steam page for the add-on now carries the December 3 date, and the expansion is lined up for the same four platforms as the base game: PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2.
A December date, just past the fall window
December 3 still sits inside astronomical autumn, so Bloober technically keeps its fall 2026 promise, if only by a few weeks. What matters more for players is that there is now something concrete to plan around. When we last looked at the expansion in September, the gameplay showcase had laid out the new tools in detail, but the listing still had no date, and with the season well underway a firm commitment was the obvious missing piece. That piece is now in place.
The studio has not attached a price to the announcement, and the Steam listing does not show one yet. Lazarus is a DLC rather than a standalone release, so it will require Cronos: The New Dawn, which first launched in September 2025 and is available on PS5, Xbox Series, Switch 2 and PC through Steam and the Epic Games Store.
Playing as the Warden
The premise is what makes Lazarus unusual for a horror add-on. Instead of a fresh survivor, the player takes on the role of the Warden, the imposing figure from the base game, at an earlier point in his life: a once-loyal Pathfinder caught partway through his transformation, isolated inside the Terminal and cut off from the Collective. He is spending every waking moment trying to awaken a lost Essence he will not let go of, and the mission is one the Collective must never find out about.
Bloober's own description is clear that this changes the rhythm of play. The New Dawn rewarded precision and picking fights carefully; Lazarus is pitched as a faster, more aggressive expansion that lets the player feel what it is like to be one of the Collective's elite agents. The Warden is not at full strength, worn down by years in the wasteland, but he can still move quickly and hit hard, and the toolset shown so far reflects that, with a short-range teleport, a decoy that leaves a ghostly copy behind while he turns briefly invisible, and Pathfinder technology the base game kept out of reach.
Something built to stop him
The counterweight to all that power is a new pursuer. Bloober describes a hunter deployed with a single order, to find and eliminate the Warden, and calls it relentless, highly adaptive and capable of matching his strength. The studio says those confrontations grow into large-scale, cinematic encounters, which suggests the expansion's tension comes less from scarce ammunition and more from being chased by something purpose-built for the job.
The story thread running through it all is the Lazarus protocol of the title, a revival effort pursued at any cost. Along the way the player uncovers fragments of the Warden's past and decides how far to go in defying the Collective. For anyone who finished The New Dawn, it is a chance to see a figure the original treated as a fixed, looming presence from the other side.
What to expect on PC
The expansion's Steam listing already carries a minimum specification, : Windows 10 64-bit, an Intel Core i5-8400F or AMD Ryzen 5 3600, 16GB of RAM, and a GeForce GTX 1080, Radeon RX 5700 XT or Intel Arc A770 with DirectX 12 support. The add-on needs 30GB of storage. Development is credited to Bloober Team alongside PixelAnt Games, with Bloober Team publishing.
Why it matters
Cronos: The New Dawn arrived as a new original property from a studio then best known for its Silent Hill 2 remake, and its identity came from restraint: limited resources, punishing enemies and a constant incentive to walk away from a fight. An expansion that turns the player into one of the setting's most feared figures is a bold follow-up to that design, and a December 3 release gives returning players a clear date to come back to the wasteland. With no price announced yet, that is the next detail to watch for as launch approaches.
