Stellaris 4.3.6 patch released (checksum 6ccb) Notes (11th May 2026)

• Machine Intelligence empires, Machine Rebellions, Machine Fallen Empire, 7 machine portraits, and more.

• 10 humanoid portraits, the Master Artificers, Pleasure Seekers, and Pompous Purists civics, the Clone Army origin, the humanoid shipset, and more.

• When Arachnophobia Mode is enabled, spider-like portraits are replaced with alternative artwork on your client only, with no effect on other players in multiplayer.
• Arachnophilia Mode does the opposite, replacing non-spiders with spider-like portraits.

Bugfix​

• Leaders can no longer become too old to die.
• Corrected Vipra the Vapor’s greeting audio

Performance​

• Players with systems capable of exceptionally high framerates can now override the default 90 FPS render cycle cap by adding refreshCap=144 (or other values) to their settings.txt. The first time you launch Stellaris after this change, it will add refreshCap=90 if it's not present. The refresh rate will still floor at 30 and cap at your monitor's refresh rate. Note that increasing this value will leave less time for the simulation loop in favor of the rendering loop, and thus may negatively affect overall performance.

Stability​

• Fix to a CS_SPECIES_COUNT, CS_SPECIES_INDEX OOS when playing with nascent species
• Fix to a CS_COUNTRY_RESOURCES OOS

Modding​

• We've simplified how "very old age" is handled in code - the define is now a fixed point that makes you more likely to die if you are over 120% of your species' lifespan. As we've changed this from 100 to 1.2, you'll want to update any mods that changed this value.
• The Portrait Substitutions spinner in Accessibility will load all files in the game\\gfx\\portraits\\portraits\\substitutions folder when the game starts and add them to the spinner options. See the Arachnophobia and Arachnophilia options we have provided for the process to add your own Portrait Substitutions.

Thank you for 10 years of Stellaris!