Paradox Interactive has dated Crusader Kings III: Silk & Silver for November 17, 2026. The next Major Expansion for the medieval grand strategy game shifts its focus away from landed rule and toward trade, letting players run a merchant company or steer a patrician republic instead of relying on titles alone. It is the second expansion in the Chapter V cycle after the religion-focused By God Alone.
Two new government types
The Merchant path places a landless family at the head of a trading company, where cash rather than inheritance is the road upward. Players chase trade routes across more than 40 goods, choose one of three specializations, Caravaneer, Creditor, or Artisan, and can lobby nobles for patronage, lock down markets into monopolies, and improve a company headquarters with gold and prestige.
The Republic path casts the player as a patrician family competing for the office of doge, a role held only while popularity and the Assembly allow it. Republics can write a constitution through laws and assemblies, place relatives in positions of influence, pick an administration that defines the state’s strengths, open trade posts abroad, and join other republics in trade leagues that carry both commercial and military benefits.
Bookmarks and the wider pass
Two new start dates join the game. The 1066 Channels of Commerce bookmark focuses on the merchants of the Middle Ages and the era’s demand for spices, silk, and silver, while 1178’s Guelphs & Ghibellines drops players into the papal-versus-imperial struggle across northern Italy, including civic carnivals and a rivalry that can spill into open war.
Across the three play styles the route to influence now differs sharply: a landed ruler grows through holdings and inheritance, a merchant through cash and trade volume, and a republic through votes, law, and city politics. That spread gives players three distinct progression loops inside one save system, and it is the clearest signal of what the expansion changes about the base game: a run no longer has to begin and end with a landed title.
Silk & Silver ships as part of the Chapter V expansion pass, which also holds the earlier religion-focused By God Alone expansion, and it can be bought on its own as well. Chapter V owners receive it automatically when the expansion unlocks.
Sources
- Reporting source: GamerHeadlines
- Official announcement: Crusader Kings III: Silk & Silver – Available November 17th (Paradox Interactive via Steam)
