WARDOGS closed beta: dates, times and how to get in
Fifty-seven hours of servers, one weekend. Here is when your gates open, how you get in, and what we would have ready before the download finishes.
The window
You get one weekend. Login opens on Friday afternoon UTC and the servers stay up until early Monday, which works out to 57 hours and two full nights of prime time on every continent.
Start time where you live
UTC is the only clock the servers care about. Here is what that means for the rest of us.
| City | Servers open | Servers close |
|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles (PDT) | Fri 10:00 | Sun 19:00 |
| New York (EDT) | Fri 13:00 | Sun 22:00 |
| London (BST) | Fri 18:00 | Mon 03:00 |
| Berlin, Paris (CEST) | Fri 19:00 | Mon 04:00 |
| Moscow (MSK) | Fri 20:00 | Mon 05:00 |
| Sydney (AEST) | Sat 03:00 | Mon 12:00 |
Two ways in
- Pre-purchase on Steam. Buying WARDOGS ahead of Early Access carries closed beta access with it. Order, install, play on Friday.
- Played the closed alpha. You keep your access. Nothing to claim, nothing to sign up for, the beta is simply there when the servers come up.
Early Access opens on 10 September 2026, so this weekend is your last look at the game before the doors come off. We expect the servers to be busy on Friday evening in Europe and again on Saturday night in the Americas. For what launch itself costs and carries, read the Early Access launch guide.
What you are dropping into
Up to a hundred players split across three factions, fighting over one Control Zone on a two by two kilometre map. The Control Zone stays put all match. The Hot Zone is a smaller circle inside it that drifts, it counts double toward the score, and it is where most of your money gets made.
Infantry, ground vehicles, helicopters and artillery all share the same match, with building and destruction on top. Your cash is persistent, so what you spend on a life is a real decision.
If any of that is new to you, the Control Zone chapter explains how scoring actually works, and Cash & The Economy covers the wallet you carry between matches.
Get set up before Friday
Your first hour of a playtest weekend disappears into menus. Do the reading now and spend that hour in the zone instead.
- Price a kit in the loadout planner so you know what your first life costs before the vendor tells you.
- Check what your rifle actually does in the damage calculator, then compare it against everything else in the TTK rankings.
- Open the artillery calculator on a second screen and share the relay code with your squad. Fire missions land a lot faster when somebody is already reading azimuth.
- Read the early game meta and pick your first two purchases now, then the money guide for how to pay for them.
Playing with the pack
Squads fill fast on a beta weekend. Our community page has the Discord, where people post relay codes and squad-up threads all weekend. Server news and patch notes land there first, and we will be in there all three days.
Questions people ask
When does the WARDOGS closed beta start?
When does the closed beta end?
How do I get into the WARDOGS closed beta?
When does WARDOGS release?
Wardogs Zone has its own server, and it opens at launch
A hundred slots with our name on the door, open the minute Early Access unlocks. The address and the settings are on its own page now.
WARDOGS unlocks Thursday at 16:00 UTC: the Early Access countdown
16:00 UTC on Thursday. Noon in New York, five in London, two in the morning in Sydney. The clock is on this page.
WARDOGS Early Access: release time, price and what you get
Doors open at 16:00 UTC on the tenth. What $39.99 buys on day one, and who we think should wait a patch.