Hello Games has released The Swarm — update 6.4 for No Man’s Sky. The announcement and rollout happened on May 27, 2026, and the patch is downloading automatically on every supported platform. This time Travellers face a new universe-wide threat — the Hive of Glass — split into three factions, take part in the time-limited Expedition Twenty-Two and fight the biggest space battles in the game’s history.
Three factions and a universe-wide war
The first time Travellers boot up after installing 6.4 they are greeted by a personality test that sorts them into one of three factions. Each squad cooperates, strategises and competes against the others to counter the Hive of Glass. The war effort is coordinated from the Nexus, where defenses are being rapidly constructed and a new bulletin page tracks overall progress.
Every Traveller’s contribution is logged publicly in the Anomaly and the Galactic Atlas. The most effective faction by the end of the event will be memorialised in the Space Anomaly for all time.
The largest space battles in the game’s history
Epic space battles are at the core of science fiction, and The Swarm brings the biggest and most spectacular fights ever seen in No Man’s Sky. The Hive of Glass defends itself by releasing swarms of agile, elite robotic drones, putting hundreds of ships on screen at once.
The Hive itself is a weapon too. Its iris opens to reveal the largest gun ever seen in the game: a laser capable of destroying freighter fleets and perhaps even something as large as a space station. Hello Games promises a significant optimisation pass on these encounters and improved performance during freighter battles.
The Hive of Glass looms over planets
While space is full of huge battles, on planets Travellers are scouting and clearing the traces of the invasion. Drone crash sites now appear on dissonant worlds and are defended by small but deadly planetary swarmers. Those same worlds also feature buried debris from shot-down swarmer ships that can be excavated for valuable scrap.
Gravity Gun and sabotaging the Hive’s network
The Gravity Gun introduced earlier this year returns to centre stage. Shot-down drones have to be salvaged and researched, planetary swarms have to be defeated, and the Hive’s research network has to be sabotaged. Secrets about the Hive’s origins and weaknesses can be uncovered and shared with fellow rebels — the outcome of the war depends on the entire community.
Expedition Twenty-Two and the Direwasp armour
The update also launches Expedition The Swarm (Twenty-Two), a time-limited cooperative campaign in which Travellers join forces against the new menace and work together to prevent its spread.
The headline reward is the six-piece Direwasp heavy combat armour set: chestpiece and plating, boots, gloves, cuisses and a helm. Every element is forged from salvaged swarmer alloys and bears the marks of combat with the Hive. Players also receive a brand-new rifle, a huge new jetpack and additional cosmetics.
What Sean Murray says
Hello Games boss Sean Murray noted that 2026 has been a year of wildly different experiments: players collecting trash with a new gravity gun, battling pets in the Xeno Arena, and now fighting off a high-action threat to the universe in The Swarm.
“The prospect of all existing Travellers converging on a single area of the universe to take the largest space battles to date, against the back-drop of an ominous, mysterious Death Star like construct, with the ability to destroy space station sized objects… is going to make for some exciting weeks ahead for us and for players. We can’t wait to see how this plays out.”
Optimisation and bug fixes
On top of the new content, 6.4 ships with a sizeable technical pass:
- Significant optimisation in freighter battles and scenes with many objects.
- Improved wheeled Exocraft performance on Switch, Xbox One and PS4.
- Optimised memory usage for UI in sub-4K resolutions on PS4 Pro and a fix for a 4K crash on PS4 Pro.
- Fixed a rare softlock where the Connecting banner could display indefinitely on initial frontend screens.
- Fixed a crash related to rendering thumbnails for multiple complex corvette-class starships.
- Ship trail and speedline optimisations, lighting CPU pass, improved object visibility handling in complex scenes.
Platforms and patch notes
The Swarm 6.4 is rolling out on every supported platform: PC (Steam, GOG, Microsoft Store), PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, macOS and VR. The update is free for all existing owners. The full changelog and the expedition page are published on the official No Man’s Sky website.
