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Fanfest 2025 - Return to Harpa with Legion and Project Awakening
Image: CCP Games · (c) CCP Games (used under CCP fan-content policy)
EVE Fanfest 2025 (1-3 May, Harpa) was the return-to-Harpa edition after a 2024 gap year, with a keynote that revealed the Legion expansion (May 27 launch), the Project Awakening avatar-gameplay roadmap, and the EVE Vanguard 2026 Steam Early Access window.
Fanfest 2025 - Return to Harpa with Legion and Project Awakening
Fanfest 2025 ran 1-3 May 2025 at the Harpa concert hall in Reykjavik. After the 2024 gap year (CCP held no Fanfest in 2024 to reset the calendar from the September-2023 anniversary edition back to a May-at-Harpa cadence), 2025 was the visible return to the modern Fanfest format.
The keynote, delivered by CEO Hilmar Pétursson, was the first in years to share the stage between three distinct CCP products: EVE Online, EVE Vanguard, and EVE Frontier.
For EVE Online, the headline reveal was the Legion expansion, launching 27 May 2025 - map upgrades, freelance jobs, corporation SKINNR palettes, sovereignty upgrades that imported wormhole-like system effects, skyhook capture mechanics, and two new ships (the Triglavian marauder Babaroga and the Angel Cartel dreadnought Sarathiel).
The deeper-roadmap moment was the formal unveiling of Project Awakening, CCP's Unity-engine "extend New Eden beyond the screen" initiative, with a live demo of avatar movement on a planetary station. Hilmar argued that current EVE mechanics were "too static, too defensive" and signalled a multi-year push toward more localised territorial control. A test-server rollout was promised for Q4 2025.
For EVE Vanguard, the announcement was a Steam Early Access launch window in summer 2026 with 24/7 server access. For EVE Frontier, the Frontier Hackathon ran 29 April - 1 May alongside Fanfest, building tools for the EVE-on-blockchain spinoff.
The anchor live event of the year - Nemesis, set for 16 September 2025 - was teased here, alongside community-side announcements (Galaxy Conquest mobile crossing 680,000 installs; the EVE: War For New Eden physical board game with a Fanfest tournament).
The Catalyst expansion that would launch in November 2025 was not announced by name on the Fanfest 2025 stage - CCP teased the broader 2025 roadmap and announced Catalyst formally via press release on 21 October 2025. The Fanfest 2025 keynote did seed the broader mining / sovereignty story-arc that Catalyst slotted into.
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