Elden Ring Nightreign DLC Leak Went Viral — And It’s Completely Fake

Heads up: those Elden Ring Nightreign DLC screenshots bouncing around this week? They looked legit, they sparked a ton of chatter, and they were absolutely not real. Here is what actually happened, why it fooled people, and where things really stand with the DLC.

The short version

• On or around October 22, a set of "leaked" Nightreign DLC images hit the r/Nightreign subreddit, supposedly revealing a new region called "Shifting Earth" and a boss named "Nightlord."
• They went viral fast. Then Reddit user u/Samkind99 tore them down, pointing out the images were an AI blend of existing assets, including sky art lifted from Dark Souls 3's Irithyll.
• A self-identified dataminer, u/Administrator, backed that up and said every update gets combed by multiple people; if something this big was hiding in the files, they would have seen it.
• Per that same dataminer, the only concrete additions spotted so far are two upcoming Nightfarers and a few enemy models ported over from Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree DLC.
• Real DLC is in development. FromSoftware has confirmed post-launch content for Nightreign, but as of October 2025 there is no trailer or date. The official Japanese site points to a fiscal-year-end window, which likely means January–March 2026.

How the fake took off

The images promised exactly the kind of thing fans want to see right now: a brand-new area, a headline boss, and some mysterious environmental twists. That is catnip for speculation, and it is why the screenshots traveled so quickly.

The problem is the pictures do not hold up under a closer look. User u/Samkind99 flagged telltale seams and reused art, calling out the sky as a straight pull from Dark Souls 3's Irithyll and the rest as an AI-scrambled collage of familiar bits from concept art repositories and FromSoftware titles. Once people started comparing textures and skylines, the whole thing unraveled.

The dataminer reality check

Another community member, u/Administrator, who says they datamine the game, chimed in with the kind of deep-in-the-weeds detail that usually ends these debates: every time a patch drops, multiple folks scan the new files. Big additions do not slip by unnoticed. Their blunt take: everything in those images and the "info" attached to them is fake. What they have actually seen in the files so far are two new Nightfarers and a small batch of enemies imported from Shadow of the Erdtree. That is it.

"Some of the stuff I have seen looks so real it is scary. Being an AI paranoid person is going to be an actual skill in the future."

Honestly, hard to argue. These were surprisingly convincing at a glance, and this is becoming a pattern across fandoms.

So, what do we actually know about Nightreign DLC?

FromSoftware has said more content is coming to Nightreign: new bosses, more Nightfarers, fresh lore. But there is still no official trailer, no date, nothing concrete as of October 2025.

The best timing clue came from the game’s official Japanese site, which used the term "年度末" — end of the fiscal year. Translate that to a release window and you are looking at early 2026, likely somewhere between January and March. A earlier "Q4" mention led a lot of folks to expect a November–December drop, but that does not appear to be the case anymore. As of now, the DLC is still unannounced and the only real window we have is 2026, and even that is not locked.

Bottom line

Those viral Nightreign images were AI noise dressed up as a scoop. Fun to pick apart, not worth believing. The real DLC is coming, just not in 2025 by the look of it. My guess: we will see the legit reveal when FromSoft is ready to plant a 2026 date — and until then, expect more fake-outs.