Battlefield 2042 open beta goes live in September with early access for pre-orders

A Battlefield 2042 open beta will be launching in September, EA has announced.

Yesterday during EA's E3 2021 presentation called EA Play, a slate of new information surrounding Battlefield 2042 was unveiled. Within the new showcase itself was the announcement that a Battlefield 2042 open beta would be taking place in September, although specific dates for the event itself weren't revealed.

However, there are already methods of getting access to the open beta ahead of anyone else. If you're either an active EA Play subscriber on PC, Xbox, or PlayStation platforms, or if you pre-order any version of Battlefield 2042, you'll get early access to the beta, although EA hasn't specified how far in advance those users will get access to the beta.

Elsewhere at the Battlefield 2042 segment of EA Play was the unveiling of Battlefield Portal. This is a brand new in-game mode where users can take assets like weapons, vehicles, gadgets, and more from all across the storied Battlefield series, and mix them up together in their own player-created modes. In the reveal trailer for the mode yesterday, we saw soldiers from the Second World War heading into battle with highly advanced futuristic soldiers, for example.

This mode has a lot of potential for the player base of Battlefield 2042. While developer DICE will upload their own creative modes to the Portal for players to test out, there'll also be a constantly rotating selection of player-created modes for the audience to try out, which will feature maps from Battlefield 3, Battlefield Bad Company 2, and Battlefield 1942. This sure might be our best look at what could've been with a Battlefield Bad Company 3.

Battlefield 2042 launches later this year on October 22, for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S. Elsewhere yesterday, EA revealed that those who pre-order the Gold Edition of Battlefield 2042 for $99.99 or the Ultimate Edition of the game for $119.99 will receive access to the final game a full week early on October 15.

For a complete list of all the games launching over the remainder of the year along the new Battlefield, head over to our new games 2021 guide for more.