Despite some missteps along the way and performance woes, we maintain Monster Hunter Wilds is a pretty good game. Complaints about difficulty and end-game content were addressed by Capcom in due course, but for anyone still a bit underwhelmed by the final offering, you only need to wait until the summer to see what's next.

Now, as we near the game's first anniversary, we've finally learned when we should expect to hear the first details about the traditional jumbo-sized expansion. Via an official blog post (plus a video you can watch below), producer Ryozo Tsujimoto unveiled what's coming next to the game in time for the birthday celebrations plus the expected announcement window for the "large-scale expansion" that should shake things up:

As teased before the end of 2025, free content updates are ending (for now). Though we believed the December update would mark the end of pre-expansion support for Wilds beyond the promised performance improvements, a new major patch coming on 18th February is adding a bunch of 10-star Arch-tempered monsters to slay in permanent event quests, new weapon and pendant designs from a design contest held a while back, and a Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection collaboration.

Starting 18th February, a month-long anniversary event celebration of Monster Hunter Wilds will bring seasonal festivities, a "special item pack", new event quests, and of course, all-new armour sets and cosmetics. That should be the end of new free content (though rotations of past events could happen) until the expansion is ready. Will it be as substantial as Iceborne or Sunbreak? We sure hope so.

"We look forward to sharing the first reveal of the expansion this summer," the shared video message promises, potentially pointing at one of the big summer showcases we tune into every year. Will that reveal come alongside an official announcement of the rumoured port for Switch 2? That seems like a solid bet, but it's also the kind of thing that could happen in any Nintendo Direct stream, so anything's possible.