Stellaris v4.4 Patch Notes
Patch 4.4 “Pegasus” is the current version as of this writing, released alongside the Nomads expansion. Its headline feature is the Arkship — a fully mobile capital that lets an empire build its whole civilization around movement rather than a fixed homeworld, a meaningfully different playstyle from anything in the base game before it.
What we’re still verifying
This site’s guides and build ratings were largely written and reviewed before this patch’s AI and economy-plan changes were fully understood. If you’re reading a strategy claim on this site and it references older mechanics without a “last verified” date on or after June 2026, treat the specific numbers with caution until we’ve done a follow-up pass — the overall strategic logic likely still holds, but exact values may have shifted.
A general note on this site’s version tracking
Earlier versions of several pages on this site referenced a placeholder “v4.0” that didn’t correspond to any real patch. That’s been corrected — guides and builds are now tagged against real patch numbers (4.2 through 4.4), and this patch-notes section reflects actual Stellaris release history rather than a fictional timeline. If you spot something that still looks off, we’d rather know about it than leave it wrong.
New Content
- Codenamed 'Pegasus' — released alongside the Nomads expansion
- Introduces the Arkship: a massive mobile capital that replaces homeworlds entirely, serving as colony, shipyard, and warship simultaneously
- Arkships come in three specialization classes (Military, Scientific, Civilian), upgradeable through three tiers
Balance Changes
- Reworked AI colonization logic (habitability thresholds, weighting for empires with few planets)
- Adjusted several economic-plan and building-swap mechanics under the hood
Fixes
- Several stability and tooltip fixes rolled out across hotfixes 4.4.2–4.4.4 through late June 2026