PUBG: Black Budget is an upcoming tactical extraction shooter developed by PUBG Studios and published by KRAFTON, Inc. — the studio behind PUBG: Battlegrounds. Squads of up to three drop onto a 2.5 × 2.5 km island called Coli, fight other players and hostile AI for loot, and try to reach an extraction point before a shrinking hazard called the Anomaly closes the map. What you extract, you keep. What you die with, you lose. The game is unreleased and KRAFTON has not announced a release date.
What kind of game is Black Budget?
It is an extraction shooter, not a battle royale. The distinction matters more than it sounds. In a battle royale you win by being the last one alive; there is one survivor and the match ends. In an extraction shooter you win by leaving — you enter with whatever gear you were willing to risk, take what you can carry, and get out. Everyone can succeed in the same raid, or nobody can. The pressure comes from the exit, not the kill count.
Black Budget is also PvPvE, meaning both other players and AI-controlled hostiles occupy the same island at the same time. A firefight with another squad is loud, and on Coli Island noise attracts things that are not players. Designed as an FPP-first experience. Official materials do not promise a third-person mode.
What is the story and setting?
Contractors land on Coli Island, a research site trapped in a time loop by a phenomenon called the Anomaly, to recover top-secret technology tied to a black-budget program named SAPIENS.
You play a Contractor — a hired veteran, not a soldier with a flag. The framing is corporate and deniable: someone is paying for artifacts recovered from a research facility that officially does not exist, and the paperwork ends well before it reaches them. The Anomaly is the reason the island is still there to loot. It has trapped Coli in a time loop, which is also the in-fiction excuse for why the same map can be raided over and over without the world running out of things to find.
The programme at the centre of all this is called SAPIENS. KRAFTON has confirmed it as the narrative hook without explaining what it actually is. We track what has and has not been said about it on the SAPIENS page, and the same for the Anomaly.
How does a raid work?
A raid is a single session on Coli Island lasting up to 30 minutes per raid. Up to 45 players per session, up to 15 teams drop in, organized into squads of up to 3 players. You land, you loot, you deal with whatever finds you, and you leave through an extraction point.
Persistent inventory rules: gear and loot successfully extracted are kept permanently; dying mid-raid loses everything carried into that raid.
That rule is the whole game in one sentence. It makes every decision a wager: the good rifle you brought is now something you can lose, and the artifact in your bag is only worth something once you are standing outside the map with it. Extraction shooters live or die on how well that tension is tuned. Our extraction guide covers what is known about how raids actually end.
What is the Anomaly?
The Anomaly is a predictable, shrinking hazard zone functioning like PUBG's classic Blue Zone — it compresses the playable map as a match progresses to force encounters and prevent passive camping.
Functionally it is PUBG's Blue Zone wearing a science-fiction coat, and that is a compliment — it is a proven mechanic. It stops the failure state of every extraction shooter, which is players sitting in a corner near an exit waiting for the timer. KRAFTON has also said difficulty scales with player level and with time spent inside the loop, so staying longer is a deliberate trade rather than a free option.
What is the map, and how big is it?
One map is confirmed: Coli Island, at 2.5 x 2.5 km open-world island. Official material describes varied biomes, points of interest and underground facilities. That is compact by PUBG standards — Erangel is 8 × 8 km — but extraction shooters run small on purpose. A smaller map with 45 players means contact is frequent and avoiding a fight is a real skill rather than a matter of walking away.
Named locations remain thin on the ground publicly. What has been reported is listed on the locations index, with the map itself on the Coli Island page. Where we have no data, the page says so instead of guessing.
What do you do between raids?
Progression is persistent and sits outside the raid. Three rival factions offer contracts and reputation-based rewards. A personal Base expands with crafting stations, stash upgrades and facilities that generate income. A research station acts as the narrative and progression hub, which is presumably where extracted artifacts become something useful. Characters grow through skills and proficiencies, and weapons and gear support extensive customization, including faction-exclusive items.
The factions have not been named. Three exist and they are rivals — that is the confirmed extent of it, and we are not going to invent names to fill a page. See factions and base and hideout for what is on the record.
When does PUBG: Black Budget release?
No release date has been announced. Unreleased — release date to be announced. The game has run closed alpha tests — two NDA-free rounds in December 2025 and June 2026, plus an invitation-only EU test in April 2026 — and testing is ongoing. Alpha-stage games rarely ship within a year of an alpha, but that is a pattern, not a promise, and anyone giving you a specific date right now is guessing.
We track this on the release date page, which stays deliberately boring: it reports what KRAFTON has said and refuses to build a countdown out of speculation.
What platforms will it be on?
PC only, via Steam, as far as anything official goes. The listing specifies Windows 11. No PlayStation or Xbox version has been announced — not ruled out, simply never mentioned. The minimum specification currently asks for Intel Core i5-8400 / AMD Ryzen 5 2600, 16 GB of RAM and a NVIDIA RTX 2060 8GB / AMD Radeon RX 6600. Full tiers, including how the requirements were revised upward after the reveal, are on platforms and requirements.
Can I play it right now?
Not on demand. Access has only ever come through closed tests, and no test is currently running. When KRAFTON opens the next round, the route is a Request Access button on the Steam page followed by a wait to see whether you are selected — it is not first-come, first-served, and no key seller has legitimate access to it. How to join a playtest walks through the process, and playtest history records every test run so far.
How does it compare to Tarkov and ARC Raiders?
Escape from Tarkov is the closest structural relative: first-person, persistent loot, brutal loss on death. The clearest difference is that Black Budget imposes a hard session limit and a shrinking play area, where Tarkov raids are longer and less directed. ARC Raiders shares the PvPvE extraction skeleton but plays in third person with a very different tone.
Both comparisons are limited by the same problem: Black Budget is unreleased, so anything about balance, economy depth or time-to-kill is unknowable right now. Detail on Black Budget vs Escape from Tarkov and Black Budget vs ARC Raiders.
How much of this is actually confirmed?
Everything on this page comes from official KRAFTON or PUBG Studios material, principally the Steam store listing. Weapon statistics, faction names, map coordinates, monetisation and release timing are not published, and pages covering those topics say “ unpublished” rather than filling the gap with a plausible number.
That is the point of this site. Every claim is tagged by evidence tier, every source is listed with the date it was checked, and corrections are logged publicly rather than edited away. See confirmed information for the full sourced breakdown, sources for the reliability ratings, and about for who maintains it.
This is a fan-made project and is not affiliated with KRAFTON or PUBG Studios.