Project Zomboid version 42.20 has been released to the public Stable branch!  

Overview

• A heavily evolved Knox Country, expanding and overhauling the game’s Kentucky setting with new and reworked areas that feel more lived-in, more natural, and more believable as places that existed long before everything went wrong
• Deeper crafting and building systems, giving players more ways to create, maintain, and improve their long-term survival setup, from short-term fixes to more ambitious attempts at self-sufficiency
• Animals and animal husbandry, adding new layers to wilderness survival, farming, food production, and the fragile dream of building something that lasts
• Improved lighting and atmosphere, making homes, towns, forests, roads, and the dark corners between them feel more grounded, readable, and dangerous
• Expanded lore and environmental storytelling, offering more texture to the world before, during, and after everything went extremely sideways
• Quality-of-life improvements and system updates across inventory, interactions, UI, and more, supporting one of the broadest updates in Project Zomboid’s long development history

For full details on Build 42 – please visit the full features breakdown right here on the Project Zomboid website!

IF YOU WANT TO CONTINUE TO PLAY BUILD 41

If you want to continue playing solo on Build 41, or are a server owner / online player who wants to continue on Build 41, then there is already a beta channel for you (and your players) to utilise.

To do so:

1. Right-click PZ in your Steam library.
2. Select “Properties”.
3. Under “Game Versions & Betas” select “legacy41”.

IF YOU WANT TO CONTINUE AN UNSTABLE 42.19 GAME

Due to additional map content being added, existing saves on Unstable 42.19 will not be compatible with 42.20.

To continue your Unstable game you can opt-in to the new “42.19” beta. 

To do so:

1. Right-click PZ in your Steam library.
2. Select “Properties”.
3. Under “Game Versions & Betas” select “42.19”.

BUG REPORTS

Please report all bugs and glitches you encounter using this reporting guide, on our bug forum here.

SUPPORT ISSUES

Check the Wiki first before making a support ticket: Tech Support – PZwiki

If you cannot find a solution on the Wiki, please make a new support thread on our official Support Forum: PZ Support – The Indie Stone Forums

LOCALISATION ISSUES

Community Localisation work is an ongoing project, with an amazing response from players all over the world, and will continue to be updated.

With the release of Build 42, we would love to hear feedback on localisation from anyone playing Project Zomboid in languages other than English.

Please provide feedback in the #localisation_feedback channel on The Official Project Zomboid Discord Server.

Other localisation items of note:

• Thanks to our amazing community translators we are adding Czech, Indonesian, Spanish (Argentina) and Spanish (Mexico) to our list! More will come in future also.
• Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), and Catalan have font issues we are aware of and are actively working on. They will be addressed in a future update.
• Some available languages still require a lot of work, so please be aware that currently Catalan, Romanian and Spanish (Chile) still feature a lot of English vocabulary.

Gracias, Merci, Danke, Grazie, 谢谢, ありがとう, Obrigado, Спасибо and 감사합니다!

GOING FORWARD

• After any necessary hot fixes are identified and released, we will begin working on a patch consisting of tweaks and adjustments based on player feedback – primarily aimed at the late game.

• Once hot fixing and such is over, we will be releasing both our latest mapping tools (WorldZed, TileZed, etc.) and our in-house animation editor and integration tool, AnimZed.
  
• We will be publishing an extensive modding guide, and further looking into ways of improving the experience of the amazing Project Zomboid mod community. 

• Clearly there is plenty of work ahead on the road to our future major builds, but in addition through the rest of 2026 we will also be working on a Build 42 Support Update that focuses on optimization, additional modding support, and some player-requested features and polish that didn’t quite make the Build 42 Stable cutoff.

• There will also be continued multiplayer and controller improvement throughout the B42 patching and support process.

Many thanks for your support, and happy doomed surviving out there in the Knox Event Exclusion Zone!