Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth PC unlock times

(Image credit: Square Enix)

Close to a year after its launch on PlayStation 5, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is escaping from Midgar and entering into the wider world of PC gaming. Rebirth's official PC launch date is on January 23, but how that date applies to you depends on your timezone. While you wait, we've got more for you to read on Rebirth:

Now here's exactly when you can start playing it.

Does Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth have a preload on PC?

Unfortunately there's no preloading for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth on Steam. Square Enix decided not to take advantage of that feature, which means you'll have to start downloading it the moment the launch countdown ticks down to zero.

That means you'll be waiting a bit to play Rebirth, because it's a whopper of a download—153 gigabytes!

When does Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth PC launch?

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has a single global launch time on PC: 9 am EST on Thursday, January 23. That makes it dead simple to know when to open up your Steam (or Epic) client and start downloading the game, but it does mean that it could launch in the middle of the night or the start of the work day depending on where you live—not exactly ideal for a gigantic open world RPG, especially if you've been itching to play it since the PS5 launch in 2024. But at least here's no confusing "midnight release" math to do here!

Here's how the FF7 Rebirth PC release time correlates to a bunch of timezones:

6 am PST, January 23 (Los Angeles)
9 am EST, January 23 (New York)
2 pm GMT, January 23 (London)
11 pm JST, January 23 (Tokyo)
1 am AEDT, January 24 (Sydney)

If your timezone isn't listed above, you can use this time zone converter to add your location and bango-presto, it'll do the conversion for you.

If you're excited for the launch, take a look at the Steam download stats page when Rebirth releases. Since Rebirth has already been out on consoles for a year it may not have a massive PC launch, but there should still be enough people downloading those 153 gigabytes at once to send Steam's bandwidth spiking way up.

FF7 Rebirth PC launch times — (Image credit: Square Enix)

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Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).