Old School RuneScape's First Ever New Skill Has Arrived - Sailing Hits OSRS

Ahoy! The first ever new skill in Old School RuneScape has arrived and it's Sailing! Jagex has been teasing this one a while now and we received the release date in a trailer a few weeks back, but now it is finally here.

Sailing is the efforts of three years of design, discussion, and collaboration with the community of OSRS. You get to own and upgrade your own boat, visit uncharted areas, and is the largest update OSRS has seen yet.

The History of Sailing in RuneScape

Sailing has been a joke skill since before RuneScape 3 came out, being discussed on the old RuneScape forums. Players discussed how it would work, we saw fake concepts and mockups, April Fools references, and it became a bit of a gag that the next update was going to have Sailing in it.

When Old School RuneScape made its return in 2013, yes it's already been 12 years since OSRS launched, the memes from the community immediately returned. Anytime we saw Jagex mention new content for the game, Sailing was always there and ranked highly.

In 2015, we saw development blogs surrounding the idea of actually adding Sailing to the game which would use logs and various ports in the game to build ships to explore new lands. The player base at the time was majority in favor of it, with a 68% Yes vote, but polls required 75% or moire of the community's support in order to actually become a new feature.

Fast forward one eternity later, in January 2023, Jagex released a blog with the results of an in-game poll that showed 80% of the 190,000 people who voted, supported the addition of a new skill in OSRS. Players weren't given options yet for what the new skill would be, just being able to note that they wish to see a new skill in the game. 

A couple of months later in March, Jagex once again brought up the new skill in a Skill Pitch blog where they asked what the community wanted to see in OSRS with the options being Sailing, Taming, and Shamanism.

Jagex showcased Sailing at RuneFest 2025, which was then followed up with a members-only "Open Tech Alpha Test" during the March 2025 Sailing Alpha. This then became a beta test in June 2025 which ran for one week.

How to Get Started With Sailing in OSRS

Membership is required to use the new Sailing skill, so you'll first want to get yourself a membership if you aren't already subscribed to RuneScape.

To get things started with Sailing, you'll first need to complete the Pandemonium quest which introduces you to the skill. The quest takes place on the docks of Port Sarim and will require you do grab a Hammer and Saw.

During the quest you will learn how to sail, dock at a port, and perform other basic Sailing gameplay tasks. Once finished, you can board your very own ship and start training the skill with sea charting and lower-level courier tasks which can be found on the notice boards at most ports.

Once you reach Level 15 of the Sailing skill, you will get the next rank of boat, the skiff, and learn how to shipwreck salvage.

Sailing in 2026 and Beyond

Jagex isn't done with Sailing just because it has been released. More updates are planned in the future for the new skill and we'll get to see them soon!

Early 2026

• The Red Reef (Second Tortugan Quest)
• A new type of Port Task

Summer 2026

• Small-Scale Boss at Sea
• Player-Designed Island

Autumn 2026

•  New Barracuda Trial
• Sequel Quest (existing storyline)

Late 2026

• Sea Expansion

The player-designed island will be chosen from an island design competition which will be announced at a later date after players have had their hands to explore what Sailing has to offer so far.

We can also expect Ship PVP in the future, Jagex has stated that the technical work for it has been done but there are still other things that need to happen and it was never planned for the launch of the skill but down the line. Player feedback will be crucial to understand how they need to prioritize this addition.

We may also get to see Colossal "party-sized" boats in the future. It was a feature that was originally planned for the launch but it was felt that they were too big for fluid navigation and there wasn't a clear gameplay use for it other than social aspects.

Sailing is a massive content update and one that has been in the works for a long time so it's great to see it finally come to fruition. Are you having fun Sailing the high seas?