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Survival game behemoth and the second hottest monster-tamer in the world, Palworld 1.0 is finally coming out next month and is set to be the game’s biggest update yet, but anyone hoping to see Pals evolve will be left sorely disappointed.
Developer Pocketpair is ending the game’s early access tenure on July 10, 2026 when its full release hits PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Game Pass at the same time. We don’t have a comprehensive list of everything that’ll be included with Palworld’s 1.0 update, but the company’s ever-chatty publishing and community lead John ‘Bucky’ Buckley has given us some clues.
“1.0 is bigger in scale than any update we have ever released,” Bucky teases over on the game’s Discord channel, but that doesn’t mean it’ll come with one of the community’s most-requested features, mind you.
Asked about Pokemon-style evolutions that would let Pals permanently grow into bigger and stronger forms, Bucky was pretty definitive about the feature: “Was never planned. Never cancelled. Not on hiatus. We aren’t doing evolutions.” There you have it.
As much as my Pokemon-loving heart would be down for evolutions in any monster-taming game, I imagine it’s a tough feature to retrospectively add when the rest of the experience wasn’t designed or balanced with it in mind.
There’s also the tiny, tiny issue of The Pokemon Company’s lawsuit against Pocketpair, which one legal expert reckons has “zero chance” of leaving Nintendo with anything other than chump change. But, still, better to not poke the hornet’s nest any further, right?
Palworld 1.0 might not have evolutions, but the developer has promised “many many many new Pals” coming to the game, alongside a new region and a more fleshed out narrative.