Warframe Gets a Second Solar System - TennoCon 2026 Recap

Digital Extremes closed TennoCon 2026 (TennoLive on YouTube) with new content for both of its online action RPGs, Warframe and Soulframe. Warframe's block centered on the Tau expansion, a second solar system arriving later in 2026, while Soulframe used its alpha-stage slot to show a new fable questline, its first dark powers, and the player mounts fans had asked for.

Here's what the show covered:

• Warframe's Tau expansion and a second solar system
• Brysko, a self-aware gunslinger Warframe voiced by Matt Mercer
• Fornax, a new cyberpunk hub city
• The Iceblade of Narin update and the Orokin Vessel
• Deluxe and Prime reworks before Tau
• Excalibur as a Fortnite skin
• Soulframe's Warsongs fable questline
• Ben Starr and Jennifer English joining the cast
• The Vadagar dark pact and the Coiled Dawn snake sword
• Player mounts and Vegan Fishing
• Wider Soulframe Preludes access

TennoCon is Digital Extremes' annual fan event, and the TennoLive show ran long-form demos for both games. Each demo introduced new locations and new antagonists tied to the larger stories the studio is telling across its two live-service titles.

The Tau expansion was the long-form Warframe reveal, and the developers framed it as the largest change they have made to the 13-year-old game. It adds a new galaxy, a new enemy faction, and a new type of Warframe that is self-aware and written in the mode of a hard-boiled detective. The launch is set for later in 2026.

"Tau is certainly the biggest shift for Warframe ever, we're adding a full second solar system to explore and have new stories coming."

— Rebecca Ford

Ford said the team built Tau around a single question.

"When it came to building up Tau, what we basically asked ourselves was, 'How do we keep Warframe going forever?' And the answer to that was to add a second solar system to the game."

— Rebecca Ford

After 13 years, she said, players can build up all over again, planet by planet, moon by moon. The expansion continues the conflict among the Tenno, Albrecht Entradi, and the Man in the Wall, and sends players to the long-teased Tau system, home to the mysterious Sentinels and the megacities they have built.

I read Tau as a soft reset more than a normal expansion, because a second solar system lets Digital Extremes rebuild its content pacing from scratch instead of stacking more onto an aging star chart.

Tau's signature location is Fornax, a gloomy, alien, cyberpunk city and the expansion's new hub zone. It blends open exploration with procedurally generated areas. Digital Extremes stopped short of calling it an open world like the Plains of Eidolon or Fortuna, describing it instead as a mix of Warframe's large-scale zones and its smaller, bite-sized action areas. The hub folds those explorable stretches together with instanced combat, closer to how Warframe already structures its missions than to its two open zones.

The new Warframe is Brysko, voiced by Matt Mercer of Critical Role. Brysko is a Chimera Warframe created inside the Tau system with an individual consciousness, and it narrates much of the exploration and combat through Fornax. In the live demo, Brysko moved through the city's underbelly, played underground slot machines to pull new weapons, took part in a playing-card mini-game, and flew through the cityscape in a sequence the developers compared to Blade Runner. Getting to Fornax, the developers said, showed how different the setting is from anywhere else in Warframe.

In combat, Brysko fights as a gunslinger in fast-paced, character-action sequences and throws damage-dealing playing cards, a move the team likened to X-Men's Gambit. The demo also put players in a mission alongside Lotus, who tore through an Orokin facility to show her power. Digital Extremes tied both beats to its recent focus on character-first storytelling, with Brysko's arc and the future of the Sentient Warframe as the throughline.

The studio also confirmed several updates before Tau ships. The next major one is the Iceblade of Narin, a story quest with a new location and an Ice-elemental Warframe to earn. Players can already acquire and customize an Orokin Vessel that will carry the community to the Tau system, available now as preparation for the launch. Alongside the Iceblade of Narin, a range of frames will get reworks and upgrades through Deluxe and Prime variants, including new Deluxe versions of Qorvex and Banshee, a gameplay rework, and new Nightwave missions in the Amir's Shockwave update. The Amir's Shockwave update carries those Nightwave missions and the gameplay rework into the same window. Separately, the show slipped in a surprise: Warframe's Excalibur frame is now available as a skin in Fortnite. The Fortnite tie-in was a one-line surprise in the middle of the Warframe segment, with no further detail given on the Warframe side.

Taken together, the Warframe slate stages the year: the Iceblade of Narin and the frame reworks land first, the Orokin Vessel is available now to ferry players toward Tau, and the expansion itself closes 2026 as the studio's stated attempt to reset the game's scope.

Soulframe took the second half. Digital Extremes has been shaping Soulframe as a more soulful, story-led companion to Warframe, and this year's material leaned into corruption and its consequences. The high-fantasy game is still in alpha, and the studio used TennoCon to push its Envoys into their darkest material yet, with a new threat and the first chance to adopt corruption powers. Those first dark powers carry the name vespers, and the Vadagar pact is the mechanism that grants them. The studio also widened access to Soulframe Preludes, its early-access build: anyone who signed up on the official site before July 12 at 11:59 ET earns entry, the largest wave of invites so far.

The headline reveal was Warsongs, a narrative fable mission set for release this fall. The questline fills in the player character's origin and the conflict between their mother and Tempest Bayor, giving Bayor more background and motivation. The mother's clash with Bayor is what sets the game's events in motion, per the studio. Two actors joined the cast to carry it: Ben Starr, of Final Fantasy XVI and Expedition 33, plays Tempest Bayor, the red-armed anti-Envoy and recurring antagonist, and Jennifer English, of Baldur's Gate 3 and Expedition 33, plays the Empress of Eldveil, a supporting ally. Both actors share an Expedition 33 credit.

In the Warsongs demo, Tempest Bayor and the Envoy's mother are both briefly playable, and the sequence ends with the Envoy's first taste of the Vadagar pact, which opens the dark side. The pact comes with a new weapon and, according to the developers, the game's darkest storyline so far, letting players build corruption powers if they choose. The corruption path is optional, aimed at players who want to lean into the dark side rather than a required track. The weapon shown was the Coiled Dawn, a snake sword that uses wide sweeping strikes to cut through several enemies at once.

Soulframe's senior community manager told IGN the studio put the game in front of players earlier than planned.

"We probably announced the game much sooner than we should have, but really, what has come out of it is that we're building this game alongside the community."

— Soulframe's senior community manager

He added that the team has taken big swings over the past year and keeps building toward its next steps.

I think that open-alpha approach is doing more for Soulframe than any single reveal, since building with testers is what has let the team take the swings it keeps pointing to.

The update also carries a round of quality-of-life changes for the year. Players will face a new combat encounter against the Mendicant Reinbreaker, a shadowy dark knight who can become an ally once defeated. Digital Extremes framed the fight as part of the lead-up to this year's larger updates. Player mounts, one of the most requested features, arrive with players shown riding large wolves in the demo. A fishing feature the team calls Vegan Fishing lets players catch fish across the Alca to gather intel on local wildlife.

"There are so many games and so many things players can do with their time in this attention economy. So why would someone play Soulframe after work versus another game or the latest thing on Netflix? So it's up to us to honor that gift and do it right."

— Asselin

Asselin framed community support as a gift the team has to earn, pointing to dev streams and Envoy hours, where staff play the build alongside testers to feel how it holds up. He said Soulframe's early stage, compared with Warframe, has given the team more time to build the game up with players.

Digital Extremes gave firm windows for some of this and left others open. Warsongs is set for fall, the Iceblade of Narin and Tau both land in 2026, and the Soulframe quality-of-life work is slated across the year, but no exact dates were attached to Tau or the reworks. The Orokin Vessel and the wider Preludes access are the only two items players can act on right now. That leaves most of the calendar loosely mapped, with the biggest release, Tau, still without a set day.

Read also, Digital Extremes launched Warframe on Nintendo Switch 2 on March 25, 2026, alongside The Shadowgrapher update. The Switch 2 build runs at 1080p and 60 frames per second docked and handheld, with faster load times and better textures than the original Switch port, plus support for the system's mouse mode. The update's headline was Follie's Hunt, a 4v1 asymmetric mode built as Warframe's take on survival horror, with Follie joining as the 64th playable Warframe.