# RuneScape Player Avatar Refresh has arrived! - Product: RuneScape (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/runescape) - Vendor: Jagex Ltd - Date: 2026-06-08 - Original notes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1343400/view/719032843360011344 - Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/runescape/releases/2026-06-08-player-avatar-refresh-has-arrived What's New is an index, not a publisher: every entry below links to the vendor's own release notes, which are the authoritative source. Entries are labelled where they are hand-curated sample data, pre-releases, or drawn from a secondary source such as a developer blog. Reuse: the summaries, labels and curation here are © What's New. Quote freely with attribution and a link back; wholesale republication of the corpus is not permitted — terms: https://whatsnew.fyi/terms. The vendors' own release notes remain their publishers'. --- - **added** — New modernized base avatar with updated torso, arms, hands, legs, feet, and face - **added** — Updated chathead model for higher definition conversations - **added** — 46 updated female hairstyles and 37 updated male hairstyles to fit the new head - **added** — 22 beards available to choose from including 4 legacy beards - **added** — Legacy hairstyles category containing 31 female and 26 male hairstyles that will be updated to standard quality over time - **changed** — Base outfit kit pieces updated or tweaked to fit the new player avatar during character creation and at Thessalia's shop - **changed** — Most outfits and armour sets updated to work with the new avatar Today marks the launch of a long-awaited refresh to the Player Avatar! Discover a brand-new iconic face for the character you’ve always known and loved. _Accept [marketing cookies](https://secure.runescape.com/m=news/player-avatar-refresh-has-arrived#) to watch this video here. Alternatively, [watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbouJc_Fph8)_ Before we continue, let's clear up what is a "Player Avatar"? In short, the Player Avatar is you or, more accurately, your character in Gielinor. It's the character beneath the armour that you created when you first started your account. Those foundational customization choices such as gender, hairstyle, top, legs, shoes, and facial hair, along with the colour options available for each, are what make up your Avatar. These core appearance options are the focus of today's update. Handsome fellow, right? So, when we talk about the Player Avatar, we're talking about your character's baseline appearance, the foundation that everything else is built upon. Your adventures, achievements, and personal story all sit on top of this representation. But beneath it all is your new Avatar! Over the years, RuneScape has featured a variety of player avatars, from 2D sprites to fully 3D characters. Each was a product of the technology and game engine available at the time. In 2021, we began work on the Player Avatar Refresh project, with the goal of taking the next step forward. After weeks of community consultation, livestreams, and collaboration with players to develop a remastered visual style that felt true to RuneScape, we encountered a significant obstacle: technical limitations. The underlying systems simply weren't ready to support the changes we wanted to make. As a result, the project was put on the infamous shelf. While it may have seemed dormant from the outside, behind the scenes our technical teams continued laying the groundwork, building the tools and systems needed to make a future Avatar refresh possible. Now, we're ready to get this modern, grounded avatar into your hands today! ##### **Today's Release:** The Player Avatar is a gargantuan project that touches a wide variety of systems. It isn’t just your character, it also affects NPCs throughout the world as well as armour sets, outfits and cosmetics, the wardrobe system, chat systems, and much more. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find an area of the game that isn’t impacted in some way. Today's update lay's the foundations with a new base avatar, updated hairstyles and facial hair options. When you login today you should slip into your new shape with minimal friction as most outfits and armour have been updated to work with the new avatar! If you do encounter anything unexpected, please check out the [known issues section below.](https://secure.runescape.com/m=news/player-avatar-refresh-has-arrived#known) ##### **New Base Avatar** The star of the show, the base avatar has been updated to a new modernized standard whilst maintaining elements of the RuneScape style. So, new torso, arms, hands, legs, feet and of course face! With the face being updated we have also updated the chathead (which is actually a separate model) so your conversations will now be in higher definition! Additionally, several pieces of the base outfit kit you choose from during character creation or at Thessalia's shop have been updated, while others have been tweaked to fit this new body - your preferred style should still be available to you! ##### **Updated Hairstyles** With a fresh face we definitely needed some fresh cuts and so we have updated 46 Female hairstyles & 37 Male hairstyles to fit this new head, including tons of your favourite styles! And that's not all the styles! ##### **Legacy Hairstyles** You'll notice that some hairstyles are part of a new "Legacy hairstyles" category. Originally we had planned to remove some older and less used styles as part of this update, but after further investigation and insights fro _[Truncated at 4000 characters — full notes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1343400/view/719032843360011344]_