A new Tarkov patch arrives tomorrow, but likely not the one you are waiting for.

Credit: Battlestate Games / Mike Stubbs

Battlestate Games has announced that a new Escape From Tarkov patch will arrive tomorrow, May 19, but chances are this is not the start of the big Icebreaker event that fans are expecting.

On May 19 at 8:00 AM BST / 3:00 AM EST Escape From Tarkov patch 1.0.4.9 will be installed, with the installation process expected to take anywhere between four and six hours. As is usually the case with a new patch, the Tarkov servers will be down and the game will not be playable during the patch installation.

There is no word on what the 1.0.4.9 patch notes will bring to Tarkov, but for those hoping for a lot of changes, you may end up being disappointed, at least for a while. Many have speculated that this is the patch where the massive new Icebreaker event will arrive in Tarkov, and while the patch could well carry some of the content for that event, it is unlikely to be playable from tomorrow.

There’s a couple of reasons for this. First, in the last roadmap update we got, it specifically listed the 1.0.5.0 patch as the one that will bring a major event with a new boss, and typically major new content drops do tend to arrive with larger numbered patches, rather than the smaller point revisions.

The other reason is that the Tarkov dev team announced last week that the current event, which appears to be a bit of a prologue for the Icebreaker event, will run until May 21. Typically the Tarkov team doesn’t mess around with dates they have officially announced, and have famously been very cautious specifying specific dates until the very last minute in case they need to change. This is likely the reason why we still have no release date for the Icebreaker event, despite it being due this month.

So, while there is an Escape From Tarkov patch arriving tomorrow, I wouldn’t go booking time off work to play the Icebreaker event, as at the earliest I would expect it to go live on Thursday, when the current event ends. This new patch may well include some of the technical changes Icebreaker needs, or even have the content included in it, but I would expect it to be locked and hidden away until Thursday at the earliest.

Given this is either a smaller numbered patch, or a patch featuring a lot of hidden content that will not be unlocked for a few days, I would expect the Escape From Tarkov patch notes to be quite thin when they arrive tomorrow morning. So, be sure to check when they do arrive, but don’t hold out hope for a lot of new content just yet.