Update 1.4 starts the process of revitalizing Christianity in EU5, and the focus is squarely on Catholicism. The developers set out their design goal in one quotable line: the Catholic Church becomes “less of a menu and more of people.” Cardinals with names, holy wars with a chest and a leader, and religious orders that live in the player’s provinces instead of lurking behind abstract panels.

Everything here comes from Tinto Talks 125, posted September 23, 2026 and hosted by Content Design Lead Pavía, and it is all preview content for update 1.4. None of it is live in the current build. Those same developers have said repeatedly across the 1.4 diaries that preview numbers and mechanics can change before release. For the full running picture of the update, the Río Salado hub article keeps the tally, and the economy and trade guide already pointed at this diary as what was coming next.

One more framing point up front: this diary is part one of a confirmed four-week arc, so the detail level below is honestly uneven. One of the three topics is already fully fleshed out. The other two are confirmed at the framing level, with deeper mechanics explicitly promised in the weeks to come.

Source: Paradox Interactive / Tinto Talks 125

Cardinals and Curia rework

The simplest part of the Cardinals change is also the biggest: they become characters. The old “Cardinal Seat” building idea is gone, replaced by named individuals you can interact with. The diary’s example is Cardinal Gil Álvarez de Albornoz, a historical Castilian figure, and screenshots in the diary show the named-cardinal treatment for real.

That is where the confirmed detail currently stops. Exactly how cardinals are appointed, what powers each one holds, and how the Curia works as a body have not been itemized yet in the material covered here. Presenting made-up mechanics now would be worse than admitting the gap, so this section stays at the level of confirmed framing: cardinals are people now, and the Curia is made of them. The coming weeks of diaries are where this gets its teeth.

Crusade and Jihad overhaul

This is the section with real confirmed depth. Holy wars are reworked so they have a defined leader and real stakes, which the developers frame as “a chest and a leader,” and the confirmed content list for the rework is specific:

• Crusade Privileges: a papal bull available while a Crusade is ongoing.
• Incite Desertion: a country interaction available during a holy war.
• Take Up the Cross and Answer the Holy Call: two Parliament agendas tied to holy wars.
• 35 events: confirmed to cover the life cycle of a holy war from start to finish.

That list is the complete set of what has been shown. There is plenty of machinery still surrounding it, from how the leader is chosen to what the chest contains, but that machinery has not been itemized in this diary, and inventing it would blur the line between the confirmed and the imaginary. What the list does establish is the shape of the rework: holy wars in 1.4 are not a blunt button tag on a war anymore, they are a proper system with privileges, counterplays, parliamentary buy-in, and a full event life cycle attached.

Religious Orders

The new Religious Orders mechanic is introduced with a physical framing: orders that live in your provinces. That is the core pitch, a location-based presence rather than an abstract background system, and the diary shows them that way in its panel shots.

Exactly how 1.4’s Religious Orders are founded, what they cost, and what standing in a province actually does mechanically have not been confirmed in detail yet. That is the same honest caveat as the Cardinals section, with the same reason behind it: detail is coming. For now the confirmed shape is clear, orders physically exist in your provinces, and the coming diaries will fill in what that means for a campaign.

Part one of a four-week story

Tinto Talks 125 has no release date of its own because it is not an isolated diary. It is the confirmed first entry of a four-week run hosted by Pavía, covering the last 1.4 features and the new content of the upcoming Across the Pillars Chronicle Pack. Deeper detail on Cardinals, the Crusade and Jihad system, and Religious Orders is explicitly expected across those following weeks.

One boundary matters while waiting: some unique content specific to Iberian and Maghrebi countries will be covered in a future, DLC-focused Tinto Talk tied to Across the Pillars. That is not part of the free 1.4 content described in this article, and the two are kept separate here on purpose.

This page is a living document in the same way the Río Salado hub is. When the next diary in the series posts, this article gets its next refresh, the Cardinals and Religious Orders sections get their promised mechanical depth, and the part-one assumptions written above get replaced by something more solid to sit on.