DayZ Badlands expansion announced with the biggest map yet

Bohemia Interactive have today revealed the DayZ Badlands expansion for their very popular open-world survival game.

The game has BattlEye anti-cheat, which has been enabled for Linux systems for quite a while now. It's listed on our curated anti-cheat compatibility page. With an enormous size of 267 km², DayZ Badlands introduces the largest official map in the game's history. Set west of Chernarus and bordering Takistan’s frontier, the terrain offers a desolate blend of cracked soil, sand-swept plains, and mountainous divides. Here, every inch of land tells a story of failed invasions, abandoned cities, and the silence that followed decades of war.

Check out the teaser below:

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Key features of DayZ Badlands include:

• New Terrain: Explore the fully inland Nasdara province.
• Desert Environment: Endure droughts, manage hydration, and survive a harsh arid spring climate.
• Conflict-Scarred World: Traverse dense towns, abandoned ruins, oil fields, and infrastructure left behind by war.
• Region-Specific Content: Encounter infected variants adapted to the desert and loot new items, cosmetics, and firearms tailored to the region.
• Player-Driven Storytelling: Form factions, uncover forgotten secrets, and decide what rises from the ashes of conflict.

DayZ Badlands is a while away with it launching sometime in 2026.

I've seen scattered reports of it being broken recently on Linux from the v1.28 update, but I couldn't reproduce the problem. On Kubuntu 25.04 playing on official servers the game runs flawlessly with the latest Proton 9.0-4.

Pictured - DayZ on Kubuntu Linux, taken today

The base game is 50% off during the Steam Summer Sale 2025.