EVE Vanguard operations and updates

EVE Vanguard operations chart how this New Eden extraction shooter grew from a closed test into a public alpha you can install today. Fenris Creations, the studio known as CCP Games until May 2026, unveiled the game at EVE Fanfest 2023 during EVE Online's 20th-anniversary celebration, presenting it as a first-person module for the same universe. Built in Unreal Engine 5 by CCP's London studio, EVE Vanguard shared that stage with the Havoc expansion and carried a long ambition: put boots on the ground of New Eden's planets while the capsuleer war kept raging in orbit above.

The First Strike playtests turned that pitch into something people could play. Gated behind an EVE Online Omega subscription under the Warclone Omega Founders' Access, the sessions ran in December 2023, again from 25 to 29 January 2024, and once more from 21 to 25 March 2024. These builds were closed, rough, and deliberately small, letting Fenris Creations stress the core deploy-fight-extract loop with committed EVE players before opening anything wider. Everything the later operations expanded traces back to what these early Founders learned in the field.

Momentum built at Fanfest 2025 in early May, where CCP put an Early Access window on the calendar for Summer 2026 and named the event that would follow. Operation Nemesis arrived on 16 September 2025 and ran through 2 October, the first playtest free and open to everyone, launched from the EVE Launcher. It shipped the 9v9 Sulphur Basin insurgency map, where squads fought to seize Upwell cannons, and it carried the first cross-game link back to EVE Online. Player interest showed up in the numbers: EVE Vanguard passed 100,000 Steam wishlists by 3 October 2025.

Two changes reshaped the project in 2026. On 6 May, CCP Games went independent and rebranded to Fenris Creations, with EVE Vanguard now credited to the new studio and published under the CCP Games name. Days later, at Fanfest 2026 in Reykjavik from 14 to 16 May, Fenris Creations revealed the operation you can play right now and outlined the road running past it toward launch.

That live build is Operation Avalon, the first timed alpha playtest, free on Steam and the EVE Launcher from 7 to 20 July 2026. Avalon rebuilt combat from the ground up and introduced the Lost Convoy map, an Upwell salvage site of poisoned swamps and warship wreckage. You find and activate a Harmonic Bridge to extract your loot, racing an escalating Mordu's Legion threat and orbital bombardment that knocks out bridges one by one until a single exit remains. The shape of a run stayed compact: you deploy as an immortal Warclone in a squad of up to three, raid dig sites and Upwell tech, then pull out before the planet turns on you. Between deployments the Warbarge serves as your loadout hub, where you craft gear and set up weapons. Avalon widened that arsenal to an SMG, a Shrapnel Cannon, a Laser DMR, a Beam Rifle, and a Slug Launcher, plus a hand-forged Nova Blade for close work, and it let you swap fire mode and damage type through modular Chipsets mid-fight. Above all of it circle the Nemesis Drones, colossal flying war machines that hunt anyone who lingers and drop extractable tech once you bring them down. Avalon also debuted the first two-way tie to EVE Online: capsuleers earn Vanguard Tokens by hunting roaming convoys, then spend them in their empire's space to influence where the settlement of Avalon takes root.

Where EVE Vanguard heads next is spelled out plainly. After Avalon closes on 20 July, Fenris Creations plans to move the game to a persistent 24/7 alpha in November 2026, playable through the EVE Launcher on PC, ahead of a wider Steam Early Access phase. Each step has added more of a full game than it invented, so the persistent build should read less as a fresh start and more as the operations so far running without a stop clock. The dated log below records each operation, milestone, and update in order, from the 2023 reveal to what is running today.