Victoria 3 — patch notes and updates
Stored observation / content update:
Dated developer announcements recorded from Steam. Open the source for the complete update.
| Update | Date | Excerpt / source |
|---|---|---|
| Hotfix 1.13.3 is now LIVE! - Not for Problem Reports! | 2026-04-30 | Victorians,We have a small hotfix with a major improvement to troop transportation and another to balancing the infamy cost for Threatening Naval Hostilities.As always, please report any bugs on our bug reporting forums! We have also updated the Known Issues post for 1.13 with any fixed issues.Moving on, you can check out the full patch notes below. 1.13.3’s checksum is `654a`.The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.13.2:ImprovementsOrdering a fleet with insufficient capacity to transport an army will now have it make multiple trips to get the entire army to its destination. Moving any queued formations will result in t |
| Hotfix 1.13.2 is now LIVE! - Not for Problem Reports! | 2026-04-30 | Victorians,We just released a hotfix targeting some more key issues experienced by players, including some troop transportation improvements, some AI improvements, UX improvements, bugfixes and more.Moving forward, for the upcoming hotfixes, we will have a particular focus on improving the AI ability to interact with systems, not just for ones introduced in this Update but also overall. We will go over those plans more, as well as our post-release plans in general, in the dev diary next week (rest assured that more hotfixes are definitely coming).As always, please report any bugs on our bug reporting forums! We have also updated the Known Iss |
| Hotfix 1.13.1 is now LIVE! - Not for Problem Reports! | 2026-04-29 | Good day Victorians. We have a focused hotfix today addressing critical AI issues, performance, bugfixes and balance changes. We are also working on more hotfixes with more issues being addressed. This hotfix should improve how the AI interacts with the new systems, a building employment issue and performance should be improved compared to 1.13.0, though we are still investigating improvements in performance and AI. Note from Martin:We have also seen an uptick in comments blaming QA for the issues in 1.13. There is a very common misconception that if a release has bugs, it’s QA’s fault for not catching them, but this is almost always just tha |
| Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #182 - The Great Wave & Update 1.13 Now LIVE! | 2026-04-28 | Hoist sails Victorians! The Great Wave and Update 1.13, ‘Matcha’, are now live! With checksum: 3c23. Command the waves in a time of ambition and upheaval. Design mighty warships, guard the world’s straits, and employ gunboat diplomacy to bend lesser powers to your will.Use the power of your navy in order to dominate local rivals and keep foreign threats at bay.Guide Japan through the last days of the Shogunate, navigating turmoil at home and pressure from abroad as you forge a modern power ready to challenge the greatest empires of the day.You can pick up The Great Wave right now, on Steam, on the Paradox Store or as part of Volume 3.Enjoy th |
| Update 1.13 and The Great Wave Feature Breakdown Videos! | 2026-04-27 | Ahoy there Victorians! Tomorrow we release The Great Wave and Update 1.13, to prepare you for the new changes coming we have prepared a number of videos for you today! Update 1.13The Great Wave Mechanics Breakdown with JavaThe Great Wave Narrative Breakdown with JavaWe hope you enjoyed and we will catch you tomorrow when we release Update 1.13 and The Great Wave! |
| Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #181 - The Great Wave & Update 1.13 Changelog | 2026-04-23 | Ahoy there Victorians! Fortunate and Fairwinds Thursday!Commodore Pelly here, to take you through the changelog before the release next week Tuesday (28th) of The Great Wave and Update 1.13 ‘Matcha’. As always, this is the preliminary changelog and may have some additions or slight changes for the actual patchnotes when we do release. Reminder, we will have a stream tomorrow featuring the intrepid High Naval Commissioner Martin and Cabin Boy Tunay giving you a pre-release look at Update 1.13 and The Great Wave, starting at 14:00 CEST. But, that is not all for streams, we will also have a release stream on Tuesday with Martin and Lino starting |
| Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #180 - The Art & Music of The Great Wave | 2026-04-16 | Happy Thursday, and welcome to the Art & Music dev diary. I am Karl, Nautical Aesthetics Officer, and the less I write, the better. Let’s get started.As The Great Wave and accompanying free update have a massive amount of art between them I will say upfront that for practical reasons, not everything can and will be shown here, but I will do my best to guide you through the general concepts of things. We divide the content then into two main chunks: Japan content, and Navy content. First off is Japan, and in Japan there is architecture.The buildings of JapanAs with many releases, we have made an overhaul of the architecture - in this case Japa |
| Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #179 - Narrative Content of The Great Wave | 2026-04-09 | Greetings, fellow gaijin. I am Rear Admiral Lufthansi, narrative designer on Victoria 3, and today we will look at some of the upcoming narrative additions coming with 1.13.Despite Japan now featuring some flashy new narrative content, we've been conscious of the fact that Japan long has been seen as a beginner-friendly 'starter nation', and we've tried our best to retain some of this, especially when you're on the 'historical track'. This is not to say a Japan-run will be without challenges, which is especially true should you attempt to break with history and instead try to reform and preserve Tokugawa rule over Japan, but we also wanted to |
| Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #178 - Naval Combat & Gunboat Diplomacy | 2026-04-02 | Ahoy, moin, and a happy Thursday Victorians!It’s First Lord of the Admiralty Cabin Boy Tunay here to introduce you to the ins and outs of naval combat today. Additionally, we will also talk about Gunboat Diplomacy, a paid feature of The Great Wave, further down below.As always, all values, images, icons, texts and other things shown are work in progress and subject to change!Fleet MissionsBefore one can engage in combat at sea, one must first set sail. The way this has been handled before was that you would pick a fleet of your choice, set its admirals to the naval orders that you’d like them to execute, and then send them off to a node somew |
| Victoria 3 – Dev Diary #177 – Ship Designer & More | 2026-03-26 | Greetings Victorians,And a delightful Thursday to you!It’s Admiral Lino, speaking to you from the dockyards. Today I will go over the central mechanical feature of The Great Wave, the Ship Designer. Also we’ll talk about Flagships, a smaller feature, but cool nonetheless. And last but not least, I’ll walk you through Ship Purchase Treaties.To be clear, all of which I describe today is part of The Great Wave expansion, which is releasing alongside Update 1.13 on April 28.Let’s jump right into the water.Ship DesignerI’ve mentioned this previously, but will repeat here that our ambition for the Navy and the Ship Designer in particular was always |
| Victoria 3 – Dev Diary #176 - Martin’s Character Collection | 2026-03-23 | Happy Monday everyone, and welcome to a bonus dev diary for Victoria 3! In our last dev diary, Lino made a valiant effort on covering the entirety of free Update 1.13, but with so much to cover, he found that to do so would be simply going overboard. Well, any port in a storm, so in today’s bonus dev diary we will be covering some additional changes and additions, mostly character-related, that will also be launching with 1.13.Part 1: The National Cast and other character changes Characters have always been a bit of an underutilized feature in Victoria 3, and I’ve never felt that we’ve managed to settle on a single cohesive vision for the fea |
| Victoria 3 – Dev Diary #175 – Free Update 1.13 Overview | 2026-03-19 | Greetings Victorians,And a rapturous Thursday to you! Today it is I, Admiral Lino, speaking to you, and I am going to try and walk you through everything that’s changing as part of the free Update 1.13 which releases alongside our expansion The Great Wave on April 28.The MissionMost of the reworks, additions and changes discussed today deal with all aspects of the Navy. That’s because, when we started work on this expansion, our goal was to deepen the gameplay for Navies across the board. Navies were a tremendously important part of the 19th century, with many major developments taking place. Previously, our game did not represent these well |
| Victoria 3 Ultimate Bundle Updated! | 2026-03-12 | Good Day Victorians!The Victoria 3 Ultimate Bundle gathers the base game and many expansions in a most welcome package, with a generous bundle discount. A splendid way to broaden your ambitions. |
| Victoria 3 – Dev Diary #174 – The Great Wave & Volume 3 | 2026-03-12 | Exultant Thursday! It is I, High Naval Commissioner Martin, bringing you the latest tidings from the admirals under my command. We’re about to embark on a year-long journey of updates and content that we have dubbed ‘Volume 3’ (or ‘Expansion Pass 3’ as some of the more uncouth captains would have called it back in less civilized times). As you have no doubt inferred from the opening paragraph (and the many, many loud foghorns preceding it), Volume 3’s flagship is the Navy, accompanied by its sister ship Global Imperialism. In this development diary we take a ‘big-picture’ look at the content on offer in Volume 3, along with some of the notes |
| Expansion Pass 2 Last Chance Bundle - now on sale until 12 March | 2026-03-06 | Happy Friday Victorians!Expansion Pass 2 will take its leave on March 12, but not before offering a double discount: save on the pass and all included content.A great time to grow your empire. |
| Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #173 - Free Updates Overview for Volume 3 | 2026-01-29 | Exuberant Thursday! It is once again time for a Dev Diary, and once again time to revisit the ‘What’s next?’ plans, which we last did in Dev Diary #152. This time, however, we’re going to do a slightly different spin on the concept, as foreshadowed by the name of this diary. In the last dev diary before the winter break I talked about how the second half of 2025 was the ‘Autumn and Winter of Side Quests’, and as a result the things we did get done were mostly not points from the ‘What’s next?’ plans.While this means we don’t have much to show in terms of ‘Done’, what it does do is present a golden opportunity to restructure these dev diaries |
| Hotfix 1.12.4 is now LIVE! - Not for Problem Reports! | 2026-01-29 | Hello Victorians.We have a small hotfix today addressing a few issues, including a crash which could cause save game corruption and some infamy related issues. We have also reverted one improvement from 1.12.2, where Iberia would inherit the Old Empire Journal Entry upon creation as it wasn't working correctly in its current state and needs more extensive work to function properly. We will address it in 1.13 instead.As previously mentioned in 1.12.3, we will have a dev diary at the end of January, which happens to be today, so look out for that in a couple of hours time! Otherwise, check out the full patchnotes below. Checksum is `19ff`.As al |
| Hotfix 1.12.3 is now LIVE! - Not for Problem Reports! | 2026-01-20 | Happy New Year Victorians! Welcome to 2026! We have a hotfix fresh out of the developer forge today, featuring the contents of 1.12.3’s Opt in Beta and a variety of other fixes, improvements and other balance changes. Also, as we said in the last dev diary of 2025, we will have our first dev diary of 2026 at the end of this month, written by Martin - the subject will be revealed with the diary itself. This is our final planned hotfix for 1.12 as we shift over to future content, which we will share with you in Q1 of this year. Check out the full patchnotes below. Checksum is `8825`. As always, please report any bugs on our bug reporting forums |
| Victoria 3 – Dev Diary #172 – Seasons greetings & Hotfix 1.12.2 | 2025-12-18 | Seasons greetings Victorians! (And Happy Thursday for those that celebrate)As we head into the winter period, with ice and snow sprinkling across the Swedish shores, we’ll take a moment after the release of Iberian Twilight to do a small look through the response to the immersion pack, a look through what we’ve dubbed ‘the autumn and winter of side quests’, hotfix 1.12.2 itself and plans for post release support for 1.12!Following on from our short contents list, let us begin with a sunny contrast to this cold weather, and take a stroll through Iberian Twilight!As I write this, and looking through the many comments about the negotiations, fla |
| Hotfix 1.12.1 is now LIVE! - Not for Problem Reports! | 2025-12-12 | Good Day Victorians!We have a small hotfix today addressing key issues, including the one mentioned in known issues regarding hiring. Check out the full patchnotes below. Checksum is `9124`. As always please report any bugs on our bug reporting forums! We have also updated the Known Issues post for 1.12 with any fixed issues!The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.12.1:BugfixesFixed a bug where buildings that do not use slaves would always be hiring regardless of whether they were losing moneyFixed a bug where having a high level of welfare would cause building owners to wage dump to extreme levels and let the governmen |