Planet Zoo 2 ("Planet Zoo II" for the search engines) lands on 13 October 2026. Here is the practical stuff people ask about in the first 48 hours: the exact unlock time, when preloading opens, and whether your GPU actually makes the cut.
I maintain pz2tools.wiki, a data reference for the game, and these numbers come from the store listing and the launch payload rather than guesswork.
Release date and unlock time
| Region | Unlock time |
|---|---|
| UK | 15:00 BST, 13 Oct 2026 |
| US East | 10:00 EDT |
| US West | 07:00 PDT |
| Central Europe | 16:00 CEST |
| China | 22:00 CST |
It is a single simultaneous global unlock, not a rolling midnight release, so nobody gets it a day early by changing their region.
Preload
Preloading opens 48 hours before launch, that is 15:00 BST on 11 October 2026, and it is Steam only. If you bought elsewhere, you are downloading on launch day.
Details: pz2tools.wiki/release-date
System requirements
| Minimum | Recommended | |
|---|---|---|
| GPU | RTX 2060 | RTX 3080 |
| RAM | 16 GB | 32 GB |
| Storage | 40 GB SSD | 40 GB SSD |
| OS | Windows 10 64-bit | Windows 11 64-bit |
The line worth repeating: a GTX 1650 does not meet the minimum. That is a big jump over the first game and it caught a lot of people out, because the 1650 was a perfectly fine Planet Zoo 1 card for years. If you are on a 10-series card, plan on upgrading or accept a rough experience with a large zoo.
Full breakdown including CPU and the DirectX level: pz2tools.wiki/system-requirements
How many animals at launch
130 species: 124 in the base game plus 6 Deluxe.
The Deluxe six are the Axolotl, Blue and Gold Fusilier, Golden Eagle, Golden Lion Tamarin, Great Hammerhead, and Longfin Batfish.
By enclosure type:
- HabitatTerrestrial, 54
- Exhibit, 30
- HabitatAquarium, 19
- Aquarium plus Exhibit, 15
- Flying, 12
By conservation status: LeastConcern 63, Endangered 22, Vulnerable 18, CriticallyEndangered 12, NotEvaluated 8, NearThreatened 5, Domesticated 1, DataDeficient 1.
Per-species table with habitat, biome, continent, diet and social needs: pz2tools.wiki/animals
Cohabitation
The single most-asked question in the first week is "what can live with what". I derived a 1,221-pair matrix from the game's own social rules, labelled likely / unverified / not compatible (376 / 106 / 739).
Interactive matrix: pz2tools.wiki/cohabitation
The data, if you want to build on it
Everything above is published as a machine-readable dataset under CC BY 4.0, CSV and JSON, no scraping required:
- github.com/odebo/planet-zoo-2-dataset with animals.csv, animals.json, cohabitation.csv, cohabitation.json
- Kaggle copy
- Zenodo archive, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23263613
If you are writing a zoo planner, a breeding calculator, or a wiki, the join keys are animalCategory and habitatType, the same names as the game's own payload, so the data drops straight in.
This article was prepared with AI assistance. Corrections welcome, the dataset is versioned so fixes propagate.
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