Elden Ring Tarnished Edition for Nintendo Switch 2 has had its release date delayed until 2026.

Originally planned for a 2025 launch, the Switch 2 version of FromSoftware’s 2022 Game of the Year-winning fantasy RPG, Elden Ring, will now arrive next year to “allow time for performance adjustments.”

This new package of the base game plus its Shadow of the Erdtree DLC was due to land on Nintendo’s new console sometime this year, but the studio has now pushed it to presumably focus on the technical concerns that have been raised by those who have played it in its pre-launch state.

This is something IGN has first-hand experience of, having called Elden Ring on Switch 2 “a disaster in handheld mode” after checking it out at gamescom a couple of months ago. Performance was said to suffer in particular when exploring the world.

We noted that “frame rate drops were significant when turning the camera whilst exploring outside of the tutorial area, and this, combined with a confusing button layout on Switch 2, made combat confusing and exploration fairly dispiriting.”

FromSoftware has apologized to fans looking forward to playing Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R. R. Martin’s epic on a handheld console, but thanked them for their “patience and support.”

We don’t yet know when in 2026 Elden Ring Tarnished Edition will arrive, with a firm date still being kept close, but let’s hope it’s in a much better state when we get to see it next.

Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.