Foundry VTT v14: what's new, and when your table should upgrade

Your group chat has been asking it for weeks: "so, are we updating Foundry?" Fair question. Version 14 went stable on 1 April 2026, and it's the biggest jump the platform has made in years: multi-level maps without a single mod, windows you can drag to a second monitor, and a complete rethink of how templates work.

Here's what's actually in it, what it changes at your table, and how to make the jump without putting your campaign at risk.

Levels are built in now

That three-floor wizard tower you've been faking with three separate scenes? It's one battlemap now. The flagship feature of v14 is native multi-level scene support: you build the floors into a single scene, each at its own height, and the level you're viewing is marked right in the scene navigation. Tokens on the other floors stay visible too, so the fight on the ground floor doesn't disappear the moment you climb to the roof.

Multi-level maps used to be firmly mod territory, with all the update anxiety that comes with that. With levels in core, map makers, mod authors and game systems are finally building on the same foundation.

The canvas got an inventory

New in the sidebar: a placeables tab that lists every object on the layer you're working in, so you can view, filter and select your tiles, drawings and walls from a tidy list instead of hunting for them on the map pixel by pixel. And the new palette lets you grab a group of selected objects and change their settings in one go. Forty wall segments, one edit. Your prep evening just got shorter.

Pop-out windows, at last

You can now pop Foundry's windows and dialogs out into a separate browser window and drag them wherever you like, second monitor included: notes on one screen, the table on the other. Another one that used to need a mod; now it just ships with the platform.

Measured templates are gone (and that's good news)

v14 does something Foundry has never done before: it removes a core tool outright. Measured templates are gone, and regions take over the job. You still draw your cones and circles; they're just regions now, they can do everything templates could, and they've learned a genuinely great trick: you can attach one to a token. Give a dragon a breath cone and the cone follows the dragon around. If your table runs spell-heavy combat, this is the change you'll feel every single session.

The smaller stuff adds up

Scene changes now come with a transition instead of a hard cut, and you can pick a flashier effect per scene if subtle isn't your style. Fog of war has a shared exploration mode: if one player has seen the corridor, the whole party has. Active effects grew up in version two; they can expire on their own (say, when combat ends) and change the token itself, which opens the door to properly automated torches and buffs. Mods can now register quick-start adventures that appear when you create a world, so a boxed adventure sets itself up instead of walking you through manual imports. And for the tinkerers at your table there's a built-in screen-shake API plus a particle engine to play with.

Under the hood, Foundry's own early testing shows common operations running 3 to 25% faster. And the icon library grew by nearly 800 entries with a clear sci-fi lean; if you run a sci-fi table, you eat well this year.

Should you upgrade yet?

Honest answer: not mid-session, and probably not tonight.

A few things make this jump bigger than usual. v14 is a new generation, so you can't update in place; it's a fresh install. World migration is one-way: once a world has been opened in v14, the only road back to v13 is a backup you made before the jump. And your game only works if your system and your mods made the jump with you.

So the safe route looks like this:

1. Check your game system first. D&D 5e was ready on day one. Pathfinder 2e caught up in May 2026 with its first v14-only release. Smaller systems vary, so check yours before anything else.
2. Preview compatibility from inside Foundry. The update screen can check your installed systems and mods against v14 before you commit to anything.
3. Back up everything. Not optional. The migration only goes one way.
4. Test in a throwaway world. Foundry's own advice: a separate install, a fresh data folder, no mods. Poke at levels and regions there, not in your campaign.

If all of that comes back green: enjoy. v14 is the good kind of update.

Where your world lives decides how scary this is

Here's the quiet truth behind every Foundry upgrade thread: the horror stories are rarely about the new version. They're about the world that lived in one place, on one laptop, with no backup.

That's the part a dedicated server fixes. On a Netlonics Foundry server your worlds, mods and assets live on a server that's online around the clock, your players join in the browser with a link, and backups are one click in the dashboard: made whenever you want, restored whenever you need. You bring your own Foundry licence at checkout and you're set up in about two minutes, from €3,49/month. Mistakes stop costing campaigns; they cost a click.

Completely new to Foundry? Our beginner GM guide takes you from empty world to first combat.