GoKawiilThe NetHack DevTeam is announcing the release of NetHack 5.0.0 on May 2, 2026
NetHack 5.0 is an enhancement to the dungeon exploration game NetHack, which is a distant descendent of Rogue and Hack, and a direct descendent of NetHack 3.6.
NetHack 5.0.0 is a release of NetHack. As a .0 version, there may be some bugs encountered. Constructive suggestions, GitHub pull requests, and bug reports are all welcome and encouraged.
Along with the game improvements and bug fixes, NetHack 5.0 strives to make some general architectural improvements to the game or to its building process. Among them, 5.0:
Has its source code compliant with the C99 standard.
Removes barriers to building NetHack on one platform and operating system, for later execution on another (possibly quite different) platform and/or operating system. That capability is generally known as "cross-compiling." See the file "Cross-compiling" in the top-level folder for more information on that.
The build-time "yacc and lex"-based level compiler, the "yacc and lex"-based dungeon compiler, and the quest text file processing previously done by NetHack's "makedefs" utility, have been replaced with Lua text alternatives that are loaded and processed by the game during play.
A list of over 3100 fixes and changes can be found in the game's sources in the file doc/fixes5-0-0.txt. The text in there was written for the development team's own use and is provided "as is". Some entries might be considered "spoilers", particularly in the "new features" section.
Existing saved games and bones files will not work with NetHack 5.0.0.
Checksums (sha256) of binaries that you have downloaded from nethack.org can be verified on Windows platforms using:
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