Final Fantasy XIV’s next eight-player raid series is a Final Fantasy VII Remake crossover. Square Enix announced “Beyond the Lifestream: Fated Collision” near the end of tonight’s Fan Festival 2026 keynote in Tokyo, on a slide with Cloud’s spiky silhouette behind the schedule, and paired it with a new raid difficulty called Fierce that sits above Savage and arrives one week after it.
The raid series itself was not a secret. The official Evercold site has listed “Beyond the Lifestream” as the expansion’s eight-player raid for months. What the keynote added is the subtitle, the crossover and the timeline, posted by the official Final Fantasy XIV account as it was shown.
Chapter 1 in Patch 8.01, Savage in 8.05, Fierce a week after that
The slide lays out three difficulties on one timeline:
- Normal: Chapter 1 of Fated Collision begins in Patch 8.01, the first patch after Evercold’s February 23, 2027 launch.
- Savage: available from Patch 8.05.
- Fierce: the new difficulty, unlocked one week after Savage launches.
Fierce is the tier Square Enix had previously described only as “a new eight-player difficulty between Normal and Savage.” Tonight’s slide places it after Savage on the calendar and ties it to gear: in the keynote’s gear section, Seasonal Gear, the track for everyday players, gets its item level upgrades “through the new Fierce difficulty,” while Raid Gear comes from Savage. That makes Fierce the bridge for players who want upgraded gear without a Savage static.
Square Enix has not shown the raid’s bosses, its story hook or how the Remake cast fits into the Fourth, the ice-locked reflection Evercold is set in. The slide is the only asset so far, and no trailer was released during the keynote.
The Evangelion alliance raid got a 39-second preview, with a muting notice attached
Evercold’s other crossover is further along. “EVANGELION – Ghosts of Desire,” the 24-player alliance raid series made under the supervision of Studio Khara, got a 39-second preview during the keynote. It cuts between in-production footage of Evangelion units and ships rendered in XIV’s engine, a Warrior of Light in a wide-brimmed hat, and clips lifted from the Rebuild of Evangelion films, with “in production” and “final draft” stamps across several shots.
The film clips come with a catch. Square Enix posted a notice after the keynote that the trailer “contains copyrighted audio that does not belong to Square Enix,” and asked anyone publishing videos or co-stream archives that include it to mute the audio for that segment by the end of June 2027, warning that videos containing it may be subject to YouTube Content ID claims. That is the same licensing reason the studio advised against co-streaming the keynote on YouTube in the first place.
Alliance raids are also changing shape in Evercold. Each run is being split into two halves that become separate duties, which Square Enix pitched as “quick and easy to try,” alongside a new high-difficulty eight-player mode.
35 million adventurers and a full trailer to close the night
Two more notes from the keynote’s close. Square Enix said the number of registered adventurers has passed 35 million, up from the 30 million milestone it celebrated in 2024. And the full Evercold trailer, tagged “In shattered skies, wander not alone,” is now on the expansion site.
The dates, Zephyr, and the rest of the keynote’s systems are in our Evercold keynote post. Pre-orders open November 4, and editions and prices had still not been posted when this was written.
