Skywind release date in 2026, and how Skyblivion compares

Skywind is a free fan remake of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, the game Bethesda Softworks released on April 29, 2002. The volunteers of the TES Renewal Project are rebuilding it inside Skyrim's engine, and Bethesda has approved the project. It has no release date. Fourteen years after the work began, the May 2026 update shows most of Vvardenfell built and nearly every NPC recorded.

How a Morrowind port became a full rebuild

The mod began in 2012, when forum members of the TES Renewal Project finished with Skyrim and its add-ons and started on Morrowind. They took the idea from Morroblivion, an earlier port of Morrowind into Oblivion's engine, and the first plan was a straight port by about eight modders.

That plan lasted until September 2012. The organizers proposed replacing Morrowind's assets with new ones instead of carrying them over. By January 2014 the team had 70 volunteers. More than 1,000 people have contributed since.

An alpha went out in the summer of 2014. The team took it down after forum questions about unfinished content piled up. The project still runs on unpaid help: the volunteer page says the biggest need in the coding department is quest implementation. The same page states that Skywind is not affiliated with The Elder Scrolls.

The voice cast is larger than Skyrim's

Bethesda said in 2011 that Skyrim used more than 70 actors and more than 60,000 lines of dialogue. Skywind has nearly 300 voice actors and about 185,000 lines, spread over roughly 3,000 NPCs. That is about four times the actors and three times the lines of the game it runs on. The cast was already over 100 voice actors by September 2015.

The 2026 update says 92% of those NPCs are recorded and the rest are cast. About 22,000 lines are mixed and mastered, roughly 12% of the total. To me that 12% is the progress bar worth watching.

Skywind "is still being made entirely by human contributors and we use no generative AI," the team says. The voiced dialogue will be English only, while text translation runs in 13 separate teams.

Skywind release date: no year, but most of Vvardenfell is built

The team put out its first full developer update since 2024 in May 2026, a video called "The Road Continued". PCGamesN's Ken Allsop wrote after it that "there's still no end date yet." The narrator, Joy Hayward, gave the reason the project keeps going: "Skywind exists today for the same reason it began: a shared love of The Elder Scrolls 3."

The update counts 86% of the exterior world and 79% of 1,256 interior cells as done, and ten of 13 regions are at least 90% complete. The other three are Zafirbel Bay at 80%, the West Ashlands at 60% and Red Mountain at 40%. Red Mountain, the volcano at the center of the map, is likely the last region to wrap up. Of the 30 level kits, 28 are finished, and the two left are the Dunmer stronghold interiors and exteriors.

Base game writing is complete. Quest implementation is 87% done. Of 484 quests, 320 have been through at least one QA pass. Clothing is the biggest remaining asset category. The team's key bottlenecks are 3D artists, asset implementers, dialogue editors, programmers for systems like NPC behavior, and QA testers.

The soundtrack now has more than 130 new tracks. Licensing rules out the complete original soundtrack. Many of the songs come from Skyrim's Dragonborn DLC. The Tribunal and Bloodmoon expansions will only get attention after the base game ships.

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Skywind cannot be played yet, and it will need Skyrim Special Edition

There is no public build to download today. When it lands, Skywind will need Skyrim Special Edition, and players will likely also need Morrowind's Game of the Year Edition, which is on Steam. The mod itself is free. The official site is where the download will be once there is one.

Because the environments are built in Skyrim's vanilla engine, the team expects lighting and weather mods to work with it. The engine underneath is 15 years old, and the team has published no system requirements of its own.

Skyblivion is the sister project, and it has a 2026 target

Skywind's progress led other Renewal Project modders to start Skyblivion, which rebuilds Oblivion in the same engine with a separate volunteer team. It had over 40 members by November 2021. Skyblivion announced a 2025 release in January 2023 and postponed it to 2026 in December 2025. Its own FAQ says the team is aiming for a release in 2026 with no quarter named.

The two mods share the ground rules. Skyblivion is entirely free and takes no donations, and it needs one copy each of Skyrim Special Edition and Oblivion GOTY Deluxe, from Steam or GOG. Bethesda's own Oblivion Remastered came out in April 2025, and Bethesda gave the whole Skyblivion team free keys to it. The FAQ adds that the mod will use none of the remaster's voice lines or assets, because of legal restraints. Skywind has given no target year.

Questions people ask

Is Morrowind remade in Skyrim?

Yes. Skywind recreates Morrowind with new art and new voice acting in Skyrim Special Edition's engine. It is a total conversion made by volunteers and has not been released.

What is the meaning of Skywind?

The name joins Skyrim, the engine, with Morrowind, the game being rebuilt. The mod recreates Morrowind with Skyrim's Creation Engine.

Is Skywind ever coming out?

The team is still working on it, but it has no date. Red Mountain, the least finished region at 40%, is expected to come last.

Is Skywind playable?

Not now. The 2014 alpha was taken down, and the team has not opened a new public build. The quests are largely playable inside the team's own testing.

Is Skyblivion out yet?

The team is aiming for 2026 after a delay from 2025, and it will be free.