Valve Opens Waitlist for Pre-Ordering its $1,059 Steam Frame Headset

Valve has finally revealed the price of its Qualcomm-powered Steam Frame VR headset, and it’s probably more expensive than most people expected. The headset starts at $1059/£889/€1049 for the base model with 256GB of storage, but Valve is also offering a free copy of the critically-acclaimed Half-Life: Alyx to sweeten the pot.

If you need more storage, the model with a 1TB SSD is priced at $1299/£1089/€1279 in Europe. Just like for Steam Machine pre-orders, you’ll need to join a waitlist to signal your interest in the headset before Thursday, September 17 at 7:00 PM CEST. Valve will then randomly email people on the list to let them pre-order the new headset.

Valve’s Steam Frame is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Series chip and 16GB of RAM, and it runs the same SteamOS operating system as the Steam Deck and the Steam Machine. The LCD display offers a 2160 x 2160 resolution (per eye) and a 72-144Hz refresh rate, and the headset supports inside-out camera-based tracking with no setup required.

Steam Frame is here! Our wireless VR headset + controllers, available now in the following models:

Steam Frame 256GB
Steam Frame 1TB
Sign up now and learn more on @Steam https://t.co/N9IvWskQRP pic.twitter.com/9sfIUSjiwL

— Valve (@valvesoftware) September 14, 2026

The new Steam Frame controllers support capacitive finger tracking and support the full SteamVR catalog, but they can also be used to play non-VR games. Because it has an ARM processor, the Steam Frame may not be able to run all PC games running through Valve’s Proton compatibility layer, but Valve has a list of games that have been verified for the headset.

The Steam Frame can also stream Steam games installed on a PC or a Steam Deck, with support for the Steam Machine coming soon. Valve includes a 6GHz wireless adapter in the box for streaming VR and non-VR games wirelessly. The headset can also connect with Valve’s Steam Controller, which is priced at $99 in the US.

Valve’s Steam Frame will be competing with Meta’s much cheaper Quest headsets, which start at $349.99 in the US for the Quest 3S with 128GB of storage. Valve’s headset is more PC-like as it lets users play non-VR games, but its high price will probably limit its appeal. Speaking with the BBC, Valve developer Jeremy Selan said that the global RAM and storage crisis “has impacted us the same way they have impacted everybody.”