Path of Exile 2 Forbidden Rites: 98-Day League Length Confirmed by GGG

Grinding Gear Games published a FAQ dedicated to Forbidden Rites on August 31, 2026, at 0:13 UTC on Steam — 2:13 AM in Paris — and on its official forum. Ten questions, ten two-line answers, and one piece of information that flatly contradicts what we wrote three days earlier.

On August 28, we described this event league as a short format, "a checklist of objectives rather than a season to make last." That was a deduction on our part, drawn from the only figure available at the time: the eight challenges announced by GGG. It is wrong, and the FAQ dismantles it in one line.

What the FAQ denies, point by point

On the first point, GGG never wrote "a month" or "short format": it was us who inferred a duration from a challenge counter. The inference was wrong and we retract it. On the last line of the table, however, our reading holds up: the FAQ validates it word for word.

98 days, exactly half of Runes of Aldur

The FAQ never writes an end date. It writes "until the 1.0 full release" twice and dates 1.0 itself, in its first answer: "No, Duelist will be released on December 11th when Path of Exile 2 1.0 fully launches." The chain comes from GGG; only the arithmetic below is ours.

Ninety-eight days, that is exactly half of the current league. This is not a minor add-on event. The FAQ says so plainly: "As all new leagues, Forbidden Rites comes with a fresh economy and a whole set of new challenges with exclusive rewards." An economy starting fresh from zero, with the usual consequences on first-week prices. The 1 PM time is not a reconstruction on our part: the 0.5.0 launch announcement wrote "The servers go live at May 29 1 PM PDT." GGG is reusing the same time slot.

10 PM in Paris: the conversion comes from GGG, not from us

We reported on August 28 that the French translation of the August 27 announcement wrote "September 4 at 3 AM CEST," a nineteen-hour error. It still has not been corrected: checked again on September 1, 2026 on Steam, it still shows 3 AM.

The FAQ provides a better-quality confirmation than our own conversions. On Steam, the text stops at "Forbidden Rites begins at 1PM PDT on September 4th." But on the official forum, the same sentence is completed by a conversion that GGG's own site inserts: "which is Sep 04, 2026 10:00 PM (GMT+2) in your local time." Viewed from France, the page thus renders 10 PM on its own, and this fragment is absent from the Steam copy. The German announcement of August 27, "4. September um 22:00 Uhr," provides the third matching confirmation.

One thing remains unknown: the server downtime. GGG writes "The realm will go down before we begin deploying the patch. We'll post the exact maintenance time later this week," and has published nothing since. There is one precedent, and only one, and it doesn't commit the studio: the 0.5.0 update went down at 10 a.m. PDT and came back up at 1 p.m., i.e. three hours, for an update of roughly 40 GB on Steam.

Runes of Aldur stays open, the Trial of Chaos changes for everyone

Three answers concern players who won't be moving to the new league, and they're the most useful ones. For those with challenges currently in progress: "The current Runes of Aldur League is not going anywhere and will be running until the 1.0 full release, so you can still play in that league if you wish." Nothing forces a switch on September 4th.

For those playing in Standard: "since Runes of Aldur is being added to the core game, once the patch is out, you will be able to access this content in Standard". The switch happens when the update is deployed, not at the release of 1.0. GGG doesn't specify what "this content" covers, and we won't guess on its behalf.

For everyone, finally, on the question of whether the Trial of Chaos changes are reserved for the new league: "No. These changes affect the whole game regardless of the league, meaning you can check them out on your existing character in the Runes of Aldur or Standard Leagues." A player who will never set foot in Forbidden Rites is therefore affected by 0.5.5.

On what this overhaul actually changes, we will write nothing. GGG announced it on August 27th in a single phrase — "a major overhaul of the Trial of Chaos," in its own French version — and has published no text since. As verified on September 1, 2026, the "Early Access Patch Notes" forum on the official site contains nothing more recent than the 0.5.4f patch notes.

What the official screenshot says that the text doesn't

The FAQ is illustrated with only one image, reproduced below, and it says more than several of the answers. It's the league selection screen: three banners are visible — Standard, Runes of Aldur, and Forbidden Rites —, each paired with its two checkboxes for "Solo Self-Found" and "Hardcore".

The Forbidden Rites banner notably carries the only line of context published to date on the league's theme: "Fight back the spreading influence of the King in the Mists." This adversary is not an invention of the league: it already exists in the game's data, and the French client calls it "Le Roi dans les Brumes", according to the client string dump published on poe2db.tw, which also references a "Queen in the Mists." This tagline, for its part, has never been published in French: the screenshot released by GGG is from the English client, and we quote it as is.

One detail is off in this same image: both leagues display the label "The default challenge league.", in bright yellow under Forbidden Rites, in dimmed yellow under Runes of Aldur. They cannot both be the one offered by default, and GGG doesn't state anywhere which one will be preselected on the evening of September 4th. Check the banner before confirming the creation of your character.

What to remember

The FAQ answers ten questions and still says nothing about the actual content of 0.5.5. Two publications are missing: the patch notes, promised "later this week", and information on the item filter — GGG writes "item filter", with no French wording — promised "in a couple of days". As of September 1, 2026, neither has been released.

• Launch on Friday, September 4, 2026 at 10 p.m. Paris time, i.e. 1 p.m. PDT. The French announcement from August 27, which states 3 a.m., remains incorrect.
• 98 days of league, until the release of 1.0 on December 11, 2026. Our article from August 28 mentioned a short format: that deduction was our own, and it was wrong.
• Fresh economy, fresh character, to be created from the character selection screen; no transfer from an existing league is mentioned. Private leagues can be created starting August 31, Pacific time, but cannot be played before September 4.
• Runes of Aldur remains playable until 1.0: your ongoing challenges are not lost, and its content joins the base game as soon as it deploys, accessible in Standard.
• The Trial of Chaos overhaul applies to the whole game, league or not, and no written details exist to date. Server cutoff time still unknown.

A final word for anyone looking to check the source: this FAQ exists only in English. GGG had translated its August 27 announcement; the August 31 post returns the English text regardless of the language selected on Steam, and both the official website and its forum are published only in English. The game itself is indeed localized: the Steam page lists French for interface and subtitles, with English remaining the only voiced language. That's the whole difficulty with this 0.5.5: the game speaks French, its documentation doesn't.