Engineer Gold Mines Ltd. (TSX-V: EAU | OTC: EGMLF | WKN: A3EEVJ) said its 2026 Phase I exploration program is now underway at the 100% owned Engineer Gold Project, located 30 kilometers southwest of Atlin in northwestern British Columbia. The property covers 18,319 hectares and includes the historic Engineer Gold Mine, the TAG Property, the Wann River Prospect, and numerous other mineral occurrences.

The company said the Phase I program includes soil and rock sampling at the Engineer Mine, as well as soil geochemistry, core review, and resampling at the TAG property. Engineer Gold Mines is fully permitted to move forward with a Phase II program that may include diamond drilling, excavator trenching, and induced polarization geophysical surveys in the Engineer Mine area. The company said details of Phase II will be announced once finalized.

Engineer Gold Project hosts several styles of mineralization, including high-grade epithermal gold-silver veins, polymetallic veins, and structurally controlled bulk-tonnage gold systems. The Phase I work at the Engineer Mine is intended to expand high-grade gold mineralization and adjacent bulk-tonnage targets along previously identified structural corridors, Shear A and Shear B. The company said these structures have been traced by geophysics and geochemistry for more than three kilometers south of the past-producing mine. Expanded soil and rock sampling is planned to refine targets for future drilling.

At the TAG property, located six kilometers north of the Engineer Mine, the program includes detailed core review and infill core sampling. Between 2006 and 2008, 11,520 meters of diamond drilling in 69 holes was completed at TAG, according to ARIS reports #30931 and #29581. The company said a recent on-site re-examination showed that several drill intercepts crossing the mineralized trend were not fully sampled. After infill and expanded core sampling are completed, the company plans to produce a detailed model to identify expansion targets for gold mineralization and support an updated resource estimate. Soil geochemical sampling will also be carried out to follow up on anomalous gold and silver values that suggest a possible subparallel second mineralizing structure.

The historical Engineer Gold Mine produced approximately 14,263 tonnes grading 39.4 g/t gold and 19.5 g/t silver between 1910 and 1952, according to BC Minfile 104M014. A 2011 historical inferred mineral resource estimate, based on a 5.0 g/t gold cutoff, indicated 25,000 ounces of gold at a grade of 19 g/t, according to Snowden (2011), amended and restated in 2018 by O’Brien et al. on www.sedarplus.ca. The company said it is not treating that estimate as a current resource, and that confirmation would require review by an independent qualified person and additional drilling.

Historical drill results from TAG include hole TAG06-23, which assayed 1.7 g/t Au and 5.1 g/t Ag over 26.7 meters, and hole TAG08-59, which assayed 1.5 g/t Au and 8.05 g/t Ag over 42.1 meters, according to ARIS reports #30931 and #29581. The Wann River prospect, located four kilometers south of the Engineer Mine, is an orogenic gold target and returned grab samples of 263 g/t gold and 1,350 g/t silver from the Lum showing, according to ARIS Report #32004.

The company said it is fully funded for the current program and expects to release Phase II plans once finalized. For investors and industry watchers, the current work will help determine whether the project’s historical mine data and earlier drill results can be tightened into better-defined targets before any follow-on drilling is announced.