Gearbox finally wakes up with the first big Borderlands 4 update of the year and a roadmap, yet I'm still worried for its future

I love Borderlands 4, and was reminded of that when I returned to it earlier this month, so seeing Gearbox drop its first major update of 2026 along with an overhauled roadmap for the coming months is good news. There’s a boost to dedicated loot drops as you crank up UVHM ranks, a long-deserved rework for my favorite action skill in the game, and even a photo mode. Yet as we look ahead to the Pearlescent update and the game’s first Story Pack DLC, I’m still struck with a worried feeling that the FPS game is being left out in the cold.

I’m a generally optimistic sort, so let’s start with the good stuff. Harlowe’s Zero-Point ult has long been the most fun action skill to use in the whole of Borderlands 4, yet it’s consistently outperformed by other options. In order to make it “more satisfying and better balanced relative to Harlowe’s other trees,” Gearbox has wrapped the Inertia augment (which causes the bubble to chain to new targets when one dies) into the base skill. The add-on will now increase her slam damage, status effect damage (and chance), and create mini projectiles each time she smacks a hostage into something.

After recently boosting boss-related dedicated drops, this new Borderlands 4 update now further increases them proportionally to your tier of Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode. That’s a very welcome change that encourages players to crank the difficulty up. A new setting allows you to finally turn off mouse smoothing, and there many more balance tweaks and bug fixes in here, too, which are always welcome. There’s also a photo mode, which seems to work serviceably from my initial tests; it’s better than nothing at all, but the lack of options to change your Vault Hunter’s pose and expressions makes it feel a bit half-baked.

I’m very pleased with the Harlowe upgrade, and perhaps more so to hear that Gearbox is thinking long-term about other possible adjustments across the cast. “We want to ensure that each Vault Hunter has plenty of build diversity, with each action skill having its own pros and cons,” the developer writes. “If and when we see one falling behind, we’ll continue to explore changes like today’s.”

Then we have the updated Borderlands 4 roadmap. As we previously knew, we’re getting a free update some time in the first quarter of 2026 introducing the series’ ultra-rare, extra-special Pearlescent gear to the fray. That could well be a big deal if Gearbox has been saving some tricks up its sleeve – genuinely unique and creative designs that you can craft a build around would generate plenty of buzz.

Also in the same quarter is the second Bounty Pack, which I’d expect to be slightly beefier than the Mercenary Day drop, given that Gearbox handed that one out for free because it ended up feeling smaller than originally planned. Then we have the first proper story DLC, Mad Ellie and the Vault of the Damned.

I’m genuinely very excited about this; Gearbox has a great track record when it comes to expansions, with the likes of BL1’s General Knoxx and BL2’s Assault on Dragon Keep providing some of the best questlines, dialogue, and action in the series. Plus it’s bringing back Ellie, a long-time fan favorite, and I’m always up for any delving into eldritch weirdness and unknowable threats.

Beyond that, however, details are pretty light. There’s a second raid boss and a takedown, and then a slow drip-feed of three more Bounty Packs before we get to the next story DLC in the third quarter of 2026. And then… that’s it, for now. The developer does say it’s trying to improve “performance and stability,” and Capcom’s recent Monster Hunter Wilds improvements have me hoping Gearbox can pull off some similar wizardry here. There are also vague promises of limited-time events, but the Halloween offering was such a shallow addition I found it hard to muster up the enthusiasm to chase after it.

I don’t consider Borderlands 4 a live-service game the way that some might, and I’m ok with going off and playing other games in the interim between major expansions. But looking at the current lineup, I see a game that knows it has to have a regular-drip feed of new things, but doesn’t really want to. I hope Gearbox is able to figure out what actually works best, and that the end of this year doesn’t spell a quiet finale for a game that has the potential to keep growing into something truly special.