Bethesda is teasing the "Terran Armada" for its Xbox RPG Starfield — So what does it mean?

On Sept. 5, 2025, the official Starfield Bluesky account posted a message for players, celebrating two years since Bethesda Game Studios' science-fiction role-playing game first launched.

"Celebrating two incredible years in the #Starfield." the post reads. "Thank you to everyone who has explored the Settled Systems with us. We look forward to the adventures yet to come."

Accompanying this is a short video that initially shows the Starfield logo with the text "Happy Anniversary," but this text suddenly begins glitching out, with flashes of other words before the video ends.

Going frame-by-frame, it's pretty clear that there are two barely-hidden words in the message: Terran Armada.

Is the next Starfield DLC Terran Armada?

Right now, it's unclear exactly what this means, but there are some obvious takeaways.

Bethesda Game Studios parent company, ZeniMax Media, previously filed a trademark for the term "Starborn" which many (myself included) speculated could be the title of a new expansion following the release of 2024's Shattered Space.

I'll hold off on spoilers for now, but Starborn refers to a group of people in the main story of Starfield, including the player character.

It's possible that plans could've changed, however, or even that Starborn isn't the next planned DLC. I'm inclined to believe that Terran Armada is the name of the next expansion, as otherwise it would be a bit weird to prominently display text in a teaser like this.

No matter what, we know Bethesda Game Studios is developing the next expansion, with producer Tim Lamb recently confirming that work is continuing, with other parts of the team also working on free updates, including improvements to space gameplay.

When I previously covered this news, I speculated that some of the other free improvements that could be offered could include Space Station construction, letting players build bases in the deep of space or in orbit around moons and planets. This could even lead to further random quests, such as having to defend a station against attacking pirates.

What could this next expansion bring?

It's important to note that in order to really examine just what this next DLC could bring, there will be some spoilers for Starfield's main story.

Still here? Okay, good.

Starborn characters hail from different universes, with the player character also becoming Starborn and able to visit new versions of reality after going through the Unity, which functions as an explanation for Starfield's New Game Plus mode.

After going through the Unity, players can see different timelines, with some radically varying changes in regard to characters and factions.

There are some major constants however, as no matter what, you'll always see Earth has been long-abandoned in favor of the Settled Systems.

In Starfield, there is no currently-known faction called the Terran Armada. The name certainly implies Earth-based forces (Terra means Earth or Land in Latin), which doesn't seem possible given the timeline of events in Starfield.

To speculate, what if this faction is so new because it hails from a completely different dimension, perhaps a world where Earth wasn't abandoned after its atmosphere was destroyed? If that's the case, we could see something akin to Star Trek's Mirror Dimension, an alternate universe where instead of minor changes, things are radically different.

From there, we could possibly have to rally the factions of the Settled Systems to defend against extradimensional invaders. The possibilities have me excited.

No matter what, I'm curious to see when this next DLC could be launched. I'm not expecting it to arrive this year, but maybe early in 2026, to coincide with the aforementioned major free updates?

Starfield is currently available on Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC (Steam and Xbox PC). Like all Xbox first-party games, it's also available in Xbox Game Pass.