Type IX: Distant Coasts is out now - Update 2026.1 launches alongside!

Dear captains,

The day has finally come. Type IX: Distant Coasts and the free Update 2026.1 are live. After months of extra work, testing and polish, we're proud to finally hand you the keys to the Kriegsmarine's most ambitious ocean-going U-Boats and send you to theaters of war you've never been able to reach before in UBOAT.

Thank you for your patience with the delay from January — the extra weeks paid off. The update is more stable, more compatible with existing campaigns, and noticeably richer than what we could have shipped at the start of the year.

The Type IX family was purpose-built for oceanic warfare: larger, longer-ranged, and better armed than any U-Boat currently in the game. From today you can take them into the South Atlantic, around the Cape of Good Hope, and deep into the Indian Ocean — where the war looked very different from the North Atlantic convoys most captains know by heart.

• Type IXA — the earliest vessel of this class, available from the opening days of the war in 1939. Three periscopes and extended capacity make it an ideal long-range patroller right from the start.

• Type IXC — a significantly improved version with expanded fuel capacity for extended patrols in distant waters. Supports three different conning tower configurations.

• Type IXC/40 — the pinnacle of the IX series. The longest operational range in the game, with a quick-diving forecastle and an armored conning tower as standard for increased survivability.

All three share six torpedo tubes and a capacity of 22 torpedoes, making them the most heavily armed U-Boats UBOAT has ever had. They also feature external water-tight torpedo canisters — a feature the community has been asking for for years, and one we're very happy to finally deliver.

The Type IX opens up the parts of the world the Atlantic boats could only dream of reaching:

• Penang, Malaysia — your base of operations in the Indo-Pacific, held by the Empire of Japan and home to the "Monsun Gruppe".

• The journey to Penang is an operation in its own right: across the Atlantic, around the Cape of Good Hope and Madagascar, and into the Indian Ocean — a voyage of thousands of nautical miles through enemy-controlled waters.

• New enemy ports and naval bases — Mombasa, Colombo, Mumbai, Aden and more. We've also overhauled how ports in general are defended: coastal forts, regular patrols and searchlights now make coming close to an enemy harbor a far riskier proposition than it used to be.

Distant Coasts adds new scripted operations inspired by real Kriegsmarine history:

• Operation Kiebitz — a daring rescue mission off the coast of North America to bring escaped Kriegsmarine officers out of a POW camp.

• The Laconia fallout — pick up survivors in the aftermath of one of the most morally fraught incidents of the U-Boat war.

• Monsun Gruppe patrols — transport Japanese officials and critical cargo through hostile waters, all the way to the Indian Ocean.

• South Atlantic Wolfpacks — take part in group patrols inspired by Cape Town, Eisbär and Seehund, departing with a surface tanker and several other U-Boats on a single long-range operation.

Make your Type IX your own: custom conning tower emblems let you personalize your boat with iconic symbols — the clover, the crocodile and the tiger.

Alongside the DLC we're shipping a major free update that every captain benefits from, Type IX owner or not. New ships have been, by a long way, the single most common request we get from the community — so we'll start there.

• HMS Royal Oak and the Revenge-class battleships — Royal Oak has been at the top of the community wishlist for years, and she's finally here. The Revenge-class dreadnoughts are now fully modelled in the game, from their distinctive silhouette on the horizon to their role in convoys, anchorages and port defenses. Yes — Scapa Flow captains, you know what this means.

• HDML (Harbour Defence Motor Launch) — small, nimble, and armed patrol boats used by the Royal Navy to protect ports and anchorages. Expect to meet them any time you try to sneak into an enemy harbour, and treat them with respect: they're exactly the kind of escort that turns a quiet infiltration into a very bad night.

This is the first batch — there's more in the pipeline, and new ships will continue to be a focus in upcoming updates.

Each port now has its own flotilla headquarters where you can interact with its staff. The command structure is now represented more faithfully, with every flotilla featuring a Flotilla Commander, a Chief of Operations, an Adjutant and a Quartermaster. A briefing room and a staffed communications room round out the flotilla HQ so it feels lived-in and authentic.

You can now accept new assignments over the radio while still at sea, without having to return to port. Especially useful for the long-range Type IX, but seasoned captains will appreciate it across every boat type. You can also inform command by radio that you can't pursue an optional side-mission for operational reasons, so its objectives won't clutter your mission summary.

Radio bulletins are now transmitted at set times each day. Your radioman will be able to receive and decode them into plain text, and the forecast will also appear as a dedicated forward-looking element on the map — so you can plan storm avoidance and surface transits with real information for once, instead of guesswork.

• Fog simulation — fog is now simulated faithfully depending on the date and location. Summer months in the Arctic have plenty of foggy days; fog is far less common in the warmer seas. You'll also encounter the entire spectrum of visibility conditions now, instead of just "fog" and "no fog" with a short transition between them.

• Sea waves — after years of glancing at the spectrum code, we finally found the missing line that prevented waves from dissipating into negative energy. The result: no more waves that shouldn't exist, and a noticeably more convincing sea.

• Sea shader and clouds — the sea now uses more modern shading formulas, and clouds interact correctly with atmospheric scattering. Overall the sky and horizon look much more alive.

• Stars — and celestial navigation — stars are now much more clearly visible, and we've fixed a number of bugs related to their display. Technically speaking, it should now be possible to navigate by the stars. We'll be honest: we haven't tested every possible edge case here, but we're at the point where we can commit to it and fix anything that slips through. If you want to try it, please do — and let us know how it goes.

• Time zones — the game now models time zones. Until now the clock always showed German time, no matter where in the world you were — so sunrise in the Indian Ocean could happen at a very strange hour on your watch. From 2026.1 the on-board clock follows local time, matching what the sun is actually doing outside. Radio communications are still time-stamped in German time, as they were historically — so BdU transmissions remain consistent across every theater.

• Terrain generation is now roughly 3× faster, which means shorter waits when entering a new area and a smoother experience when moving across large distances on the map.

• Tanker boardings — it's now possible to stop tankers and send crew over to them, just like with other merchant ships.

• Type IX engine animation — the diesels are now animated far more closely to how real engines work, with the correct firing sequence for each cylinder.

• Character faces — 11 new face types, 3 new complexions, and the option to choose eye colour, for crews that don't all look like they came from the same village.

• Modding tools — we've added tools that let you unpack any in-game prefab into a modding project and use it as the starting point for your own mod. That should make it significantly easier to build on top of existing content instead of having to recreate it from scratch. Note: the updated modding tools will arrive with a slight delay of 1–2 weeks after 2026.1 goes live.

Distant Coasts is by far the most ambitious expansion we've ever built, and 2026.1 is one of the densest free updates we've ever shipped. Getting here took longer than we planned, and we're grateful for your patience, your bug reports and your feedback through every development blog along the way. Fire up the game, pick a flotilla, and take a Type IX south. The Indian Ocean is waiting. Fair winds and following seas — and good hunting.

Yours,

DWS