Slay the Spire 2’s early access launch is delayed to March 2026, and the devs insist it has nothing to do with that other indie juggernaut that just came out: “On the bright side, everyone can keep busy playing Silksong during the wait”

Slay the Spire 2’s Early Access launch has been delayed from Fall 2025 to an unknown date in March 2026, and developer Mega Crit says its decision had nothing to do with the recent release of the acclaimed Hollow Knight: Silksong.

In the September edition of Mega Crit’s monthly “Neowsletter” update series, the indie studio announces: “After a lot of internal discussion, we’ve made the call to move Slay the Spire 2’s Early Access launch to a secret Thursday in March 2026. The “secret Thursday” thing isn’t a joke, either – apparently, the devs need a little more time to nail down an exact date.

Mega Crit adds, “There’s no single dramatic reason. Some personal life stuff hit the team (everyone’s okay!), we kept saying ‘wouldn’t it be cool if…’ one too many times, and honestly, the game just needs more polish to meet our standards.”

The developer gets ahead of some of its more cynical fans with a Q&A shooting down some possible theories, starting with Hollow Knight: Silksong.

“We got together as a team to determine our new release window before Silksong’s date was announced,” the dev insists. “The timing just worked out like that, but on the bright side, everyone can keep busy playing Silksong during the wait!”

The dev also says the delay had nothing to do with the making of merch, community events, and other stuff unrelated to game development, saying, “our merch is made by 3rd party partners and our community manager is the primary liaison on our team for collabs like that. No game development was harmed in the making of those plushie!”

While it doesn’t carry Silksong’s honor of being Steam’s most wishlisted game before launch, a title now belonging to Subnautica 2, Slay the Spire 2 is no slouch. In fact, at the time of writing, it’s Steam’s eighth most Wishlisted game after being announced in April 2024.

I’d be surprised if the delay was related to Silksong, especially since it means it’ll now release many months closer to GTA 6, which is something I would imagine most game devs desperately want to avoid.

While you wait for Slay the Spire 2, here are some of the best roguelikes you can play right now.

After earning an English degree from ASU, I worked as a corporate copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. I got my big break here in 2019 with a freelance news gig, and I was hired on as GamesRadar’s west coast Staff Writer in 2021. That means I’m responsible for managing the site’s western regional executive branch, AKA my home office, and writing about whatever horror game I’m too afraid to finish.