Europa Universalis V: Across the Pillars is arriving October 28th, 2026.

Shape the future of Iberia and North Africa as Castile, Morocco and Granada compete for dominion across the region. Contest the Straits of Gibraltar, embark on unique Expeditions, navigate the future of the Iberian Union, and lead your nation into a new era of power and exploration.

Features of Europa Universalis V: Across the Pillars include:

• The Battle of the Strait: A new historical situation focused on the conflict between Castile, Marinid Morocco and Granada over the remnants of Muslim rule in Iberia.

  • New decisions, cabinet actions and country interactions themed around this contest

  • New events and special actions related to the struggle over the Straits of Gibraltar

  • The winner of the Battle of the Strait proceeds to the Golden Century situation, allowing the victor to continue to project power beyond the region.

  • More historical flavor

• Unique Expeditions: Special Expedition content available only in Across the Pillars, including unique explorations, gold caravans, and treasure fleets.

• Religious Orders: New unique military orders for Iberian nations.

• Iberian Union: Choose the path of a centralized Iberian monarchy or a federalized Iberian state in a reworked Iberian Wedding scenario. Unite the thrones of the peninsula through new laws and policies.

• Iberian Bureaucracies: 12 new bureaucracy options drawn from Spanish and Portuguese history.

• Maghrebi Bureaucracies: 8 new bureaucracy options drawn from North African history.

• New Iberian Historical Events: Many new historical events for the region, including general Iberian content as well as unique dynamic events for Castile/Spain, Portugal, Aragon, and Navarre.

• New Maghrebi Historical Events: Many new historical events for the region, including general Maghrebi content as well as unique dynamic events for Morocco, Granada and other nations in the region.

• New Technological Advances: Dozens of new advances to research, unique to Iberian or Maghrebi nations.

• New Jewish Flavor including new events.

• New Cosmetic Flavor: New unit and ship models, portrait assets, event illustrations, monuments and Works of Art are available for Iberian and Maghrebi nations.

• New music: 6 new Castilian themed songs, played on baroque instruments and sung in medieval Spanish plus 3 new Moroccan themed songs inspired by 16th century call-and-response songs, played on the guembri and qraqeb.

Wishlist now:

https://pdxint.at/AcrossThePillarsEUV

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Across the pillars isn't alone of course. Update 1.4, Rio Salado will be coming alongside it! Participation will help us identify and fix both bugs and balancing throughout the process finally leading up to the October 28th Release Date.

1.4 Open Beta Checksum: 592b

Reminder, this beta is for update 1.4, it does not add anything included in the upcoming Across the Pillars Chronicle Pack

How to join the 1.4 Open Beta:

1. Open Steam

2. Right Click Europa Universalis V in your library

3. Click Properties > Game Versions and Betas

4. Select EU5 Version 1.4

5. Launch EU5!

New Content & Flavor (Iberia & Maghreb)

315 new Advances go to Iberian and Maghrebi tags and cultures. Both regions got new flavor including: new events, decisions, and unique buildings for Aragon, Castile, Granada, Navarre, Mallorca, Tunis, Tlemcen, and more. New holy sites and monuments have also been added, alongside a full Jewish and Sephardi flavor with their own characters, dynasties, and government reforms.

Expeditions

A new system lets you send a leader and gold on a voyage across the map, from transatlantic exploration to grand diplomatic tours and religious pilgrimages. Some expeditions follow a fixed historical route, others chart their own path, and a few are global races where only the first nation to succeed gets the reward.

Religion

Cardinals are now full characters with their own subpanel and map mode inside the Catholic Church. Crusades and Jihads get a two-phase structure, a preparation period followed by the war itself, along with new leadership roles, a shared war chest, and dozens of new actions and events. Religious Orders also arrive with their own callings and crown actions.

Economy

Tariffs let you tax or subsidize foreign trade to balance revenue against diplomatic standing, and Trade Orders become far more customizable. Canals open new naval passages for a steep gold cost, with full control over who's allowed to use them. A new Default on Creditors action and an area-based Promote Industry system round out the economic toolkit.

Politics & Diplomacy

Inheritance Contracts and Betrothals add new ways to secure a dynasty's future, while a new Political Influence resource reflects how much authority a ruler actually commands. Republics and Theocracies each get their own new crisis events. An Oligarchic Capture disaster for decaying republics and a Crisis of Faith for theocracies in decline.

Military

War leadership is no longer automatically handed to the strongest country, instead it can now be offered or demanded. Estates with the appropriate privilege can field their own private armies, and rulers can press them into royal service at a cost. Cavalry and infantry balance has also been adjusted so that building nothing but cavalry is no longer the META (we think), encouraging more combined-arms play.

Exploration & Colonization Quality of Life

Colonial Charters can now be aimed at forming a new Colonial Nation, expanding an existing one, or integrating territory directly. New migration tools let you deliberately resettle pops after a conquest or into underdeveloped land, and colonization UI gets clearer health indicators and milestone messages throughout the process.

Quality of Life & Tools

The Laws panel, Road Builder, and Peace Treaty screens all got UX passes, alongside new Budget and Building Queue management tools. Save file sizes have been observed to be much smaller. The Mod Manager also receives a round of improvements.

A full feature list can be found here:https://pdxint.at/RioSaladoBeta

Welcome to Tinto Talks, the Happy Wednesdays, where we talk about what is happening with Europa Universalis V.

Here, one more week, your friendly Content Design Lead, Pavía. Today, we will be presenting to you the first sneak peek at the upcoming DLC, Across the Pillars - so let’s start by taking a look at our vision for it.

Across the Pillars is our first Chronicle Pack DLC. What does it mean, and what makes it different from Fate of the Phoenix? The main difference is that the latter was an Immersion Pack, so it was more of a focused experience, mostly revolving around one country, the Byzantine Empire (or however you prefer to call it with our in-game rules!); whereas a Chronicle Pack is more of an immersive experience encompassing a region with multiple countries involved, and roughly double the amount of content in comparison.
Therefore, we have developed content and mechanics for Across the Pillars around two main starring countries, Castile and Morocco, and the struggle they were involved in during the central decades of the 14th century, known by historians as ‘the battle of the Strait \[of Gibraltar]’. An important side actor in this struggle was Granada, a true third party between them, sometimes leaning towards one side (either in a friendly or forced way), sometimes towards the other, most of the time trying to assert its own independence between two behemoths. But not only that, other countries and peoples around them, both Iberian and Maghrebi, were involved in this struggle, usually following their own objectives and goals.

Our focus has been both wider and deeper compared to FotP, in terms of how many countries have gotten content and how deeply that content is connected to other mechanics and features. The time scope has been limited mostly to the first two ages of the game (1337-1537), as it’s where most of the narrative of this struggle and period remains consistent. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t any content based on the post-1500s history - you’ll see a bit about that later down the road in that post, and we have also worked on unique Expeditions based on colonial endeavors, etc. However, we wanted to center the scope of the DLC on the narrative and content of the development of the Iberian and Maghrebi countries in the Late Medieval period.

Let’s now move from this general vision into the two main content features that structure the narrative that I’ve just talked about - two entirely new situations available with Across the Pillars.

Starting in 1337, the situation for Castile, Morocco, and Granada was different, but all of them led to the campaign that historically ended with the Castilian victory at the Battle of Río Salado in 1340, and following it, the siege and conquest of Algeciras in 1344 - this was probably the most defining point in the reign of Alfonso XI of Castile, Abu al-Hasan Ali of Morocco, and Yusuf I of Granada.

We have portrayed this in the DLC with a new situation, called ‘The Battle for the Strait’. It portrays the struggle between these countries, pivoting mostly on control of the Strait and, most importantly, Granada, which is the key strategic point for everybody involved. 

This is done in the situation via two axes. The first is called ‘Influence over Granada’; the tug-of-war between Castile and Morocco over the control of Granada. There are 3 shared actions, and some unique ones (4 for Castile, 6 for Morocco, and 6 for Granada). The Castilian ones mostly revolve around enforcing Parias over Granada (which starts as its Tributary), while Morocco can establish its influence both in peaceful and forceful ways.

The second axis is called ‘Granadan Sovereignty’, which is a unique value that empowers the country against its powerful neighbours. There are several actions that Granada may take towards firmly establishing its Sovereignty, and it will have to play a delicate balance between the Castilian and Moroccan influence to be able to win the situation on its own.

It should be noted here that the AI has been instructed to fight tooth and nail to win the situation. Both sides have a wide variety of options to put their thumb on this scale such as Cabinet Actions, events, country interactions, winning wars, taking territory and more. And speaking of that, to win the situation, each country has its own set of different winning conditions and rewards:

To end up with, you have here some of the actions, both generic and unique, and flavour associated with the situation - which is wide: Beside the situation actions, there are Cabinet Actions, Character and Country Interactions, 2 Decisions, and more than 30 events:

Let’s now move into the second situation of the DLC…

There are actually three different versions of this illustration, one for each of the potential starrings of the situation (Castile, Morocco, and Granada) - this one is the Granadan one.

Whoever wins ‘Battle for the Strait’ will get a second situation, called ‘The Golden Century’ (I promise this time we are committing to doing it well!). It portrays the follow-up narrative of whoever won, would likely become the hegemonic power in Iberia and Northern Africa, and as such, it would lead to both trying to extend its influence abroad, while being contested and countered by other neighbouring countries and powers. Therefore, it’s more of a mid-game challenge for an already-winning country.

What you have is two axes to interact with, ‘Colonial Dominance’ and ‘European Dominance’. Each of these has 4 thresholds, which unlock both passive bonuses for the player and its contenders, plus a unique powerful action for the player.

An interesting aspect of this situation is that there are 2 mirrored versions of it. One for Spain/Castile and the other for Andalusia/Morocco. Both versions offer completely different actions. Many events will also be either exclusive to each version or completely different, both in terms of effects as well as localization. Let’s take a look at some interesting events for the Golden Century from the perspective of a powerful and resurgent Al-Andalus!

A unique new IO, ‘The Grand Alliance’, is created at the start of the situation for countries that resist the rise of Spain/Andalusia/Morocco in and beyond Iberia, and will act as a counter to the rising power. It will also be able to rise in power in turn, as it will get in members and influence / strength based on how strong you are and every 25 years they may come together and attack you / try to undo your dominance values if they reach a too high value.

A new feature that we have added to this situation is Flashpoint Events. These are events that occur when you reach a Flashpoint threshold, and are more meaningful an important than regular events, being either obstacles to overcome or opportunities to grow bigger, with both huge rewards and penalties depending on how they’re handled. In the Golden Century, they’re mostly based about the history of Spain around the 1500 - adapting also that to an alt-historical, but plausible win of either Morocco or Granada. Because, speaking of that, although we’re only showing today the Castilian/Christian version of it, the situation is symmetrical, by having two mirrored versions, that use the same base mechanics, but with an entirely different set of features and associated content.

Finally, there are different outcomes to the situation - another new system that we’re using to flesh out the ending conditions and effects of situations. Here you have the GC ones, and the effects in case you win as Castile:

And that’s all for today! Next week, we will be talking about the machinery that a proper empire needs to work - the ‘mechanical content’ of the DLC: unique Bureaucracies, Expeditions, Iberian Military Religious Orders, the Iberian Union, and much more! But before that, remember that tomorrow, Thursday 1st of October, we’ll start with the 1.4 Open Beta - we hope that you enjoy it! And stay tuned, because we might have some more news coming along with it - cheers!