Dune: Awakening’s free Blood and Ice expansion swaps sand for snow on 1st December
Funcom will release Blood and Ice, a free expansion for Dune: Awakening, on 1st December for PC, PS5 and Xbox. It takes players from Arrakis’s desert into a frozen region, bringing a new survival challenge and around 35 hours of progression.
The Polar Sink has tundra and ice-cap biomes: players must manage the cold, gather region-specific resources and contend with guarded strongholds. The expansion also adds vehicle modules, augments, specialisation traits and an Events tab. Offline single-player is due this month, with character transfers and full cross-play planned for January 2027; Funcom says more than a million players have joined since the console launch.
In short
- Blood and Ice arrives free on 1st December.
- The Polar Sink adds frozen survival gameplay and around 35 hours of progression.
- Offline play, character transfers and cross-play are also planned.
Explained simply
Dune: Awakening is a survival game set on Arrakis, the harsh desert planet from Frank Herbert’s Dune books and their screen adaptations. Players gather resources, build equipment and vehicles, and try to survive in a world shaped by extreme conditions and competing groups.
Funcom makes the game, and the new region is called the Polar Sink. Its cold weather and scarce resources add different survival demands, while guarded strongholds give players places to explore and contest. The expansion’s new equipment and progression options build on the game’s existing systems.
The game is available on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox. Features such as offline play, character transfers and cross-play affect how people can play alone or with others across platforms.