Gemdale Gold Announces Commencement of Infill Diamond Drilling Program at its Flagship Pontio Gold Project, Finland

VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESS Newswire / February 23, 2026 / Gemdale Gold Inc. (TSXV:GEMG) (" Gemdale " or the " Company ") is pleased to announce the commencement of an extensive infill drilling programme at its 100% owned Pontio Gold Project in Western Finland. This campaign follows the Company's recent successful listing on the TSX Venture Exchange and the closing of a C$2.4 million strategic investment from Eldorado Gold Corporation.

The 2026 drilling programme is designed to provide the density of data required to move the project toward a maiden Mineral Resource Estimate and an updated NI 43-101 technical report reflecting the same. Drilling will focus on the main M2 Trend, a large-scale system where gold mineralization has been intersected near-surface over a strike length of approximately four kilometres. Additional technical information about the Pontio Gold Project and the Company's intended work program for the Pontio Gold Project is contained in the Company's technical report entitled " NI 43-101 Technical Report on the Pontio Project, Central Ostrobothnia, Finland ", dated September 30, 2025 (the " Technical Report "), and the Company's final prospectus dated January 30, 2026, each available under the Company's profile on SEDAR+.

Key Program Objectives:

• Resource Definition: Targeted infill drilling at 50m to 100m spacings within the core of the M2 Trend to confirm continuity of grade and thickness.

• Depth Extensions: Testing the down-dip potential of known high-grade shoots which remain open below 150 metres vertical depth.

• Trend Expansion: Following up on successful 2024 step-out drilling that extended the mineralized envelope to the south.

Dr. Toby Strauss, President and CEO of Gemdale Gold, commented:

"With our recent public listing and the strategic investment from Eldorado Gold, we are now fully funded to accelerate the development of Pontio. This infill programme is a critical step in our transition from discovery to resource definition. The M2 Trend has already demonstrated remarkable scale and consistency near-surface, and we are confident that this systematic drilling will further develop Pontio's potential to become a major gold deposit in Finland."

Summary of Previous Drill Results at Pontio

To date, there has been over 10,000 metres of drilling at Pontio, featuring consistent intersections into broad zones of near-surface gold mineralization. Previous highlights from the M2 Trend include:

• PONT053: 148.6m @ 0.71 g/t Au from 24.2m, including 16.7m @ 2.07 g/t Au.

• PONT057: 126.1m @ 0.80 g/t Au from 5.4m, including 15.8m @ 3.08 g/t Au (the highest-grade intercept to date on the project).

• PONT067: 20.34m @ 1.05 g/t Au (a significant 800m step-out to the south, extending the total strike to 4km).

• PONT006: 76.82m @ 0.88 g/t Au from 6.6m, including 32.20m @ 1.41 g/t Au.

• PONT028: 53.85m @ 0.70 g/t Au from 21.53m, including 11.44m @ 1.10 g/t Au.

A full list of significant intersections is provided in Tables 1 and 2. The mineralization at Pontio is typically hosted within a sheared diorite and is associated with disseminated sulfides and quartz-arsenopyrite veining. The system remains open in all directions. In addition, on the property, several parallel trends also show early-stage promise for further mineralization.

Figure 1 Plan of Pontio gold copper mineralization on drone magnetic image and planned infill drilling (in red)

Figure 2 Vertical long section looking west along the M2 trend at Pontio, showing current envelope of gold mineralization. Source: the Technical Report

Table 1 Highlights of Historical Belvedere Resources Ltd drilling results. Bulk intersections are reported at a cutoff grade of 0.3 g/t gold with 10m internal dilution. Higher grade intervals (in bold) use a cutoff is 0.9 g/t gold with 5m internal dilution. Intersections are downhole intersections based on diluted grades where areas of core loss or no sample interval are treated as 0 g/t Au. True widths are estimated as 65-85% of downhole intersect length. Source: the Technical Report