Garena Announces Palworld Online, and Pocketpair Now Has Two Mobile Bets

Garena confirmed on August 3 that it is making Palworld Online, a mobile MMO based on Pocketpair’s survival creature collecting game. It is a separate title with its own story, built for iOS and Android, targeting a 2026 release.

Krafton is also making a Palworld game for phones. Both are licensed. Neither license is exclusive.

What Garena is building

Palworld Online is developed and published by Garena under an official Pocketpair license. It uses a seamless open world with an original narrative setting, plus story elements and side stories written only for this version.

The familiar parts are still there. Players capture and raise Pals, including rare ones. They unlock new regions. They build settlements and put Pals to work on production and defense.

The MMO layer is the difference. Players run into each other in the open world, group up, and share settlements. There is cooperative PvE with world bosses, and there is PvP.

Garena president Terry Zhao said the company wants to “bring the essence of the PC title to mobile” in a way that gets players connecting and exploring together. Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe pointed to Garena’s record in global publishing, localization, and live operations as the reason for the partnership.

The mobile part

Garena says the game ships with a touch friendly interface and optional one tap controls for base planning, construction, and deploying Pals.

Worth paying attention to. Interface is usually where a PC survival game falls apart on a phone, and base building with a virtual joystick is a specific kind of misery.

Garena also knows this audience. It publishes Free Fire, which runs at scale across Southeast Asia and Latin America. Those are markets where a phone is the main gaming device, not the spare one.

Krafton is building one too

Krafton, the South Korean company behind PUBG, signed its own Palworld mobile license with Pocketpair in October 2024. PUBG Studios is developing it, and Krafton described the plan as a faithful reinterpretation of the original for mobile.

Krafton is ahead on timeline. Palworld Mobile got its first hands on showing at G-STAR 2025 in Busan in November 2025, then ran a closed alpha from December 5 to 11, 2025, limited to Japan and South Korea.

There is no confirmed global date for it. Krafton has pointed to 2026, though some coverage now expects late 2026 or early 2027.

Neither licensing deal appears to carry exclusivity. Pocketpair has split its mobile strategy: Krafton on the faithful survival sandbox, Garena on the shared world MMORPG. Palworld passed 40 million total players across all platforms in July 2026, a number Pocketpair announced just before the game left early access. Both mobile projects are aiming at that same pool.

What is still missing

Garena has confirmed the 2026 window, the platforms, and the feature set. MMORPG.com reports that details on monetization and a firmer release window are still to come. No launch date, no pre registration, no pricing.

That last gap is the one that will decide how this lands. The main Palworld game is a one time purchase at $29.99, and Pocketpair kept the price flat through the 1.0 launch on July 10, 2026. Mobile MMOs almost always monetize differently, and free to play live operations is Garena’s home turf.

Pre registration is usually the signal that a release is close. Nothing has opened yet.