Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has been out for just over a month now, and some players have already spent countless hours in-game and are hungry for DLC.
Turns out, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is pretty successful, sitting as the highest rated game of 2023 on OpenCritic (including our own 5/5 review), so it's only natural that players want more from Nintendo. While DLC is a relatively new thing for Nintendo, The Legend of Zelda was one of the first tentpole series from Nintendo to implement it.
Zelda: Breath of the Wild had an expansion pass which added two DLC packs to the game, titled The Master Trials and The Champions' Ballad. The Master Trials – which includes a new Master Mode difficulty and the Trial of the Sword challenge which could power up the Master Sword – came first. The Champions' Ballad was released later on in the year and features a new dungeon, new story content, and a motorcycle for Link.
Will there be Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom DLC?
While Nintendo hasn't announced anything about the DLC yet, it's safe to assume that a Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom expansion pass is on the way for .
The most concrete info we have on any DLC right now can be found on the Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom website (through the use of the Wayback Machine) in which the notes at the bottom of the page have a line that reads, "full version of game required to use DLC. Sold separately". This message was taken from the page after the fact, but that doesn't mean that a Tears of the Kingdom DLC won't happen; it's more likely that the message was posted too early.
In Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Master Trials launched in June 2017 – three months after the launch of the game – while The Champions' Ballad was released in December.
The Zelda: Breath of the Wild DLC release schedule could give us an idea as to what the potential Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom DLC release may look like. However, considering Nintendo announced the Zelda: Breath of the Wild DLC before the game had launched, things may be different this time around.
Regardless, I would expect to hear about any Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom sometime over the summer. Over the last few years Nintendo has typically done a Nintendo Direct in Feburary, June, and September. However in 2020 and 2022 it skipped June. No June direct could be the case this year as it's typically around the time of E3 / Summer Game Fest. So we may not hear anything until Nintendo's next direct – which will probably be in September (although Nintendo is so unpredictable, it could announce it out of the blue on Twitter or a random Thursday morning).
It's worth noting that Nintendo will be present at Gamescom for the first time in years this year, and considering The Champions' Ballad release date was revealed at Geoff Keighley's The Game Awards in 2017, maybe Nintendo will team up with Keighley again at Gamescom Opening Night Live.
