S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl Global Release Times Confirmed

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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl developer GSC Game World has confirmed the global release times for its hotly anticipated post-apocalyptic shooter.


In a tweet, GSC said the November 20 release date for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl kicks off at 8am PT / 11am ET, and is consistent across both PC and Xbox Series X and S. It also launches straight into Xbox Game Pass as part of Wave 2 of November 2024’s lineup.


GSC has also confirmed S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2’s final PC system requirements. The game provides four graphics presets: low; medium; high; and epic, as well as a target resolution and FPS for each. The high graphics preset is what GSC calls 'recommended,' and provides 60fps gameplay at 1440p. For that high graphics preset you’ll need a Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti / RTX 4070 or AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT GPU and 32GB of RAM. Low and medium require 16GB of RAM and less powerful GPUs. All graphics presets, however, require 160GB of SSD storage, which is a significant footprint worth bearing in mind if you’re planning on playing.

Meanwhile, GSC confirmed S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 features upscaling options for DLSS and FSR. Specifically, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 launches with DLSS 3 and Reflex, which means GeForce RTX 40 Series gamers can activate DLSS 3 with Frame Generation and Super Resolution from day-one, accelerating performance.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl global release times:​

November 20, 2024

• Seattle: 8am PST
• New York: 11am EST
• São Paulo: 1pm BRT
• London: 4pm GMT
• Prague: 5pm CET
• Kyiv: 6pm EET

November 21, 2024

• Beijing: 12am CST
• Tokyo: 1am JST
• Sydney: 3am AEDT
• Auckland: 5am NZDT

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 has suffered a number of understandable delays, most recently in July when the game was due out in September. Ukrainian studio GSC said at the time that the extra two months would give the developers the chance to fix “unexpected anomalies,” aka bugs.

GSC has also been vocal about the challenges the studio has faced getting S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 up to scratch after a mixed reaction to its debut public showing last year. At gamescom 2023, GSC addressed what some had called a “downgrade” sparked by S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2’s then latest gameplay trailer. At the time, GSC told IGN it was still targeting a visual quality and level of polish suggested by S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2’s eye-catching 2021 trailer despite the horrendous conditions suffered by the staff amid the war with Russia.


Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].