League

Early Access Standard league's logo.

A league is a category of game mode within Path of Exile 2 that effectively splits players and economies based on different preferences and difficulties. A character can only belong to one league at any time, and cannot join a party or trade with characters in a different league. Leagues are currently split up based on the following conditions: "Permanent" vs "Temporary", "Softcore" vs "Hardcore", and "Trade" vs "Solo Self Found".

Permanent leagues

Permanent leagues are leagues with an indefinite duration, and are typically the "base" league that corresponding temporary leagues will migrate to when they end. Permanent leagues only provide the default game mechanics and cannot normally access any content exclusive to ongoing challenge leagues.

Standard league

Standard leagues are permanent, default leagues that only include mechanics that are core to the game, have no additional modifiers, and exclude any content from the current challenge league. Standard leagues include: Standard (Softcore/Trade), Standard Hardcore, Standard Solo-Self Found, and Standard Hardcore Solo-Self Found. Items migrated to standard in stash tabs from other leagues are remove-only. Standard leagues are the only way to obtain legacy items, results of items retaining old modifiers after various balance patches. This allows for an economy to exist in standard in parallel to other leagues, with some players building item collections.

Early access standard

Early Access Standard league is similar to Standard, but only contains characters created during the Early Access period (before version 1.0.0). Once the Early Access period ends, all existing characters will be moved to this league before the official release of the game. Characters on Early Access Standard are separate from regular Standard, and new characters will not be able to be created on this league. The economy of Early Access Standard leagues is independent from regular Standard leagues.

Void league

Characters used in certain event leagues are automatically transferred to the Void League at the end of the event's duration or sometimes upon death depending on the event rules. Commonly referred to as "voided", this is a form of "permadeath" resulting in these characters being unable to be played and can only be deleted or kept as a trophy. Their equipment and passive trees are still visible on a player's web profile and can be imported into third-party tools, but they can no longer be accessed within the game itself.

Temporary leagues

Temporary leagues have a duration which can vary from a few hours to several months. Temporary leagues offer special modifiers or game mechanics that are not available in permanent leagues. When a league ends, characters are migrated to their corresponding permanent leagues.

Challenge leagues

Roughly every 3-4 months, a new challenge league is released that provides players with a fresh start. Each challenge league includes the following types of new content:

• League Mechanic: A new league mechanic that players can interact with typically once per zone. These may later become permanent or "core" game mechanics.
• Expansion Content: New leagues are often accompanied by expansions, which add new unique items, skills, bosses, lore, game mechanics, and endgame content.
• League Challenges: A set of optional challenges that can be completed for free exclusive microtransaction cosmetic rewards only available during the challenge league.
• Balance Changes: A number of balance changes to existing content that also often affect permanent leagues.
• Cosmetic Content: Includes new supporter packs, mystery boxes, and standalone microtransactions that support the ongoing development of the game. These do not affect the player's character power directly in any way.

Below is a list of all challenge leagues in Path of Exile 2 in order of release, starting by the most current (times are in UTC):

Challenge League	Release Date	End Date	Total Weeks	Release Version
Fate of the Vaal league	2025-12-12 7:00:00 PM			0.4.0
Rise of the Abyssal league	2025-08-29 7:00:00 PM	2025-12-09 9:00:00 PM	14.5714	0.3.0
Dawn of the Hunt league	2025-04-04 7:00:00 PM	2025-08-26 10:00:00 PM	20.5714	0.2.0

Event leagues

Main article: Event

Events and event leagues are typically shorter temporary leagues with challenging and/or rewarding modifiers, and often are accompanied with special cosmetic or real-life rewards based on player performance. At the end of the event, characters and their stashed items are migrated to the corresponding parent league or Void league, depending on the rules of the event.

Private leagues

Main article: Private league

Private leagues are independent, temporary leagues that can be purchased with microtransaction points. Private leagues are customizable, allowing players to select their name, start time, amount of players, duration, and additional modifiers. When creating a private league, the league owner must choose a league type to base it on. This can be a variation of the current challenge league or a permanent league. By default, every private league has a base cost of 120 Path of Exile store points, a duration of 10 days, and 10 player slots. The maximum number of player slots or the duration of the league can be increased at an additional cost at any time during the league's creation or during its duration. The player that creates the league can either pay for the cost directly or crowdfund it, allowing for other players to contribute Path of Exile store points to fund the league.

Game modes

The default game mode at character creation in both temporary and permanent leagues is commonly referred to as Softcore Trade, allowing the player to participate in the league's economy through trading and respawn an unlimited amount of times upon death.

Players can select from two additional game mode options available during character creation to further customize their experience: Hardcore (HC) and Solo-Self Found (SSF). These game mode options may be enabled in any combination to add rules and restrictions to the game. The character is placed in an experience ladder comprised only of characters that have the same options enabled.

Challenge progression in challenge leagues is shared across all game modes and can be completed on any variation of these game modes, including event leagues that use a challenge league as its parent league.

Hardcore

Abbreviated as "HC", Hardcore is an optional mode where the character's death is permanent. When a character in a hardcore league dies, it is automatically transferred to the default "softcore" equivalent for the same league (permanent or temporary), or otherwise voided in certain event leagues. The automatic migration upon death triggered by the hardcore rules cannot be reversed, and hardcore characters cannot be transferred in any other way other than by dying. Note that only the character and their inventory are transferred; items in the stash and progress in various progression systems remain in the hardcore league if the player creates a new character.

Solo self-found

Abbreviated as "SSF", Solo-Self Found is an optional mode that places restrictions on how players can interact. Players in this mode cannot join parties or trade with other players, and cannot access other trading interfaces such as asynchronous trade, which tends to make progression more difficult and requires more extensive game knowledge for progression. Notably, SSF does not provide any additional in-game rewards or benefits. Players can opt to migrate either a single character, or all of their characters and progression in a league, from a SSF league to the corresponding trade-enabled parent league at any time, but this cannot be reversed once completed.

Version History

Version	Changes
0.2.0h	Private leagues are available.
0.1.1	Enabled migrating from Solo-Self Found Leagues to their corresponding parent leagues (Standard or Hardcore). This can be done from the League Migrations button on the Character Selection screen.
0.1.0	Introduced to the game.