The most anticipated gamesof 2026 and 2027

Grand Theft Auto VI, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 and Castlevania: Belmont's Curse lead a busy stretch of crime epics, returning favourites and strange new adventures. From Samus hunting on an unfamiliar moon to Lara Croft reopening ancient tombs, there's plenty ahead to get excited about. We update this list every week with release details, platforms and trailers.

01Grand Theft Auto VI

Jason and Lucia's easy score goes wrong, dragging them into a criminal conspiracy across Leonida. Grand Theft Auto VI returns to Vice City and takes the pair beyond its neon streets, with each forced to rely on the other to survive. The relationship gives this enormous crime adventure a focus: two people trying to find a way through a state full of trouble.

• Vice City and the wider state of Leonida
• Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos at the heart of the story
• A criminal conspiracy sparked by a botched score

A new Grand Theft Auto is an event in itself, and Vice City's return makes this one especially hard to ignore. Jason and Lucia's precarious partnership gives the spectacle a human hook, whether the trailer is lingering on city nightlife or the dangers waiting beyond it.

02Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 follows Private Park, a young South Korean soldier caught in an invasion, while Captain Price operates in the shadows. That split puts an inexperienced soldier at the front alongside an operator who knows the machinery of war all too well. Beyond the campaign, multiplayer and DMZ offer two very different ways to spend an evening: quick matches or risky trips into an extraction zone.

• A campaign following Private Park and Captain Price
• 12 new 6v6 multiplayer maps at launch
• DMZ extraction mode returns

Price's return will draw the familiar crowd, but the new soldier's perspective gives the campaign a fresh point of entry. DMZ is another big attraction: getting out with your loot creates a different kind of tension from winning the next round.

03Castlevania: Belmont's Curse

Rose Belmont heads into a burning Paris in 1499, where monstrous creatures and a looming castle threaten the city. In Castlevania: Belmont's Curse, the Vampire Killer whip doubles as a way to swing through the environment, linking exploration and combat. Defeated bosses become tarot-card Arcana, letting Rose turn their powers against the next enemy in her path.

• Whip swings for traversal and fast combat
• Boss powers collected as tarot-card Arcana
• Weapons in seven categories, plus equipment-changing Relics

A new 2D Castlevania is plenty to get excited about, and this one comes from Evil Empire with Motion Twin involved. Their work on The Rogue Prince of Persia and Dead Cells makes Rose's whip-led movement a particularly tempting prospect.

04Metroid Ravenous

Samus Aran is ambushed and stranded on an unfamiliar moon in Metroid Ravenous. You gather her arsenal, navigate twisting corridors and hunt powerful bosses in a new 2D adventure. Her awakened Metroid instincts let her devour foes, putting an aggressive new ability alongside the beams and missiles she needs to stay alive.

• An all-new side-on Samus adventure
• Metroid instincts that let Samus devour enemies
• A maze of corridors and powerful bosses

The appeal starts with Samus returning to 2D exploration, then gets stranger with that appetite for her enemies. 'Eat or be eaten' is a wonderfully blunt setup for a bounty hunter who has already survived some very unpleasant places.

05Final Fantasy Resonance

Final Fantasy Resonance sends a party of companions into a pixel-art world threatened with ruin. Its HD-2D presentation brings dynamic camera angles and pixelised 3D models to a classic RPG adventure, while turn-based battles reward exploiting weaknesses and staggering enemies. Visions of familiar Final Fantasy characters join the fight with their own skills, giving you more ways to arrange a party.

• HD-2D art with cinematic camera work
• Stagger enemies to seize extra turns
• Visions of familiar heroes aid party customisation
• A first-chapter demo with save transfer

This is a particularly appealing combination for players who miss pixel-art Final Fantasy but still want something new to learn. The stagger system and Visions give the battles a clear identity, while airships, crystals and moogles keep the world recognisably Final Fantasy.

06Deadlock

Deadlock is Valve's multiplayer project, currently playable through invitations from existing playtesters. It remains in early development, with experimental gameplay and temporary art as its systems take shape. There is no release date yet, so the invitation test is the way into its evolving PC build.

• A multiplayer game from Valve
• An evolving build with experimental gameplay
• Playtest access through invitations from existing players

A new Valve multiplayer game is an intriguing prospect even with such a spare public introduction. The appeal here is following a project as it develops and seeing what this studio builds around competitive play; its finished form is still ahead of it.

07Resident Evil Veronica

Claire Redfield's search for Chris takes her to France, where Umbrella forces capture her and send her to Rockfort Island. Another biological disaster turns the island into a nightmare she must escape in Resident Evil Veronica. This remake revisits Resident Evil Code: Veronica's isolated survival-horror story with modernised gameplay and a reimagined storyline.

• Claire Redfield's search for her brother
• Rockfort Island rebuilt for a new survival-horror adventure
• Modernised gameplay and a reimagined story

Claire's journey gives Resident Evil a different place and family story to revisit after its recent remakes. Returning to Rockfort is a strong draw for long-time fans, while the captive-to-survivor setup gives newcomers an immediate reason to care about getting her out.

08Final Fantasy VII Revelation

Cloud and his companions take to the skies aboard the Highwind in Final Fantasy VII Revelation, the final part of the remake project. Sephiroth is closing in on his goal, Meteor threatens the planet and the mighty Weapons have awakened. A wider world opens beneath the airship as the party's journey reaches its final battle.

• The conclusion of the Final Fantasy VII remake trilogy
• Highwind airship exploration
• A showdown with Sephiroth and the mighty Weapons

The draw is both the destination and the journey: bringing this party's story together while finally taking the Highwind into the sky. For anyone who has followed the remake project, that combination makes Revelation one of the biggest RPGs on the horizon.

09Kirby and the World Beyond

Kirby and the World Beyond puts Copy Abilities to work across an expansive 3D world. Bomb jumps launch Kirby into the air, while a sword planted in a tree becomes a way to climb. A mysterious girl, a strange new power and a huge wall give his journey something curious to chase beyond the next enemy.

• An expansive 3D world to explore
• Copy Abilities used for movement as well as fighting
• Bomb jumps and sword-assisted climbing

Kirby's talent for borrowing powers is the perfect excuse to make getting around playful. Watching familiar abilities become ways to reach new places is the main attraction here, and a new adventure in the series' 35th anniversary year adds to the occasion.

10Fable

Fable returns to Albion with a hero you create and townspeople whose opinions follow your decisions. You mix melee, ranged and magical combat against creatures from British folklore, then make a life beyond the fighting: run businesses, become a landlord or start a family. It is a fresh beginning for the series, with its peculiar humour and opinionated Demon Doors intact.

• A customisable hero in an open-world Albion
• Melee, ranged and magical combat
• Reputation shaped by your choices
• Returning Demon Doors, businesses and family life

Fable's charm has always been in the collision between heroic fantasy and being a nuisance to the neighbours. Playground Games is bringing that mixture back, with enough room to worry about both the monsters outside town and what the villagers think of you.

11Phantom Blade Zero

Soul fights through a dark wuxia world in Phantom Blade Zero, where kung fu choreography meets fantasy and folk horror. An arsenal of main weapons and secondary Phantom Edges gives you different tools for its rapid battles. Upgraded equipment can be reforged to recover materials, so finding something new needn't strand the resources you put into an earlier weapon.

• More than 30 main weapons and 25 Phantom Edges
• Reforge equipment to recover upgrade materials
• Difficulty options from Wayfarer to Hellwalker
• Donnie Yen as creative consultant and Mo Yuan performer

The speed and staging of its martial-arts fights are the immediate draw. Donnie Yen's involvement adds a compelling connection to kung fu cinema, while the weapon choices and difficulty options give players several ways into Soul's violent journey.

12Persona 6

Persona 6 introduces a fresh cast in a standalone story built around everyday life and supernatural adventure. Social bonds sit alongside strategic turn-based battles, with the power of Persona linking the two sides of the experience. You can start with this group without catching up on the lives of the earlier games' heroes.

• A new cast and standalone story
• Daily life and social bonds
• Supernatural adventures and turn-based battles

The excitement lies in meeting a new group and discovering how their ordinary routines collide with the extraordinary. Persona's combination of relationships and RPG battles gives a fresh cast room to become the reason you keep coming back, well beyond the next dungeon.

13Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis

Lara Croft retraces her original adventure in Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, exploring ancient places with new puzzles to solve. Egypt includes an Anubis puzzle built around raising and lowering scales, alongside a journey into tombs and beneath the city of Kamun. Crystal Dynamics and Flying Wild Hog are rebuilding familiar destinations around fresh obstacles for Lara and the player.

• A reimagining of Lara Croft's original adventure
• New puzzles within familiar ancient locations
• An Anubis scales puzzle in Egypt

Returning to Lara's first journey is a strong nostalgic pull, but the puzzles give it a practical reason to be revisited. Recognising a place and then having to work out a new route through it is exactly the sort of return that makes an old adventure intriguing again.

14Persona 4 Revival

Persona 4 Revival sends a group of small-town friends into the mystery of the Midnight Channel and a series of bizarre murders. Everyday relationships develop alongside a supernatural investigation and turn-based battles. This remake of Persona 4 Golden rebuilds the graphics, interface, combat and cutscenes, with added content and quality-of-life improvements.

• The Midnight Channel murder mystery returns
• Social bonds alongside turn-based battles
• Reworked graphics, interface and cutscenes
• Added content and quality-of-life improvements

The attraction is spending time with this particular cast again, and following the way their friendships become part of the investigation. For newcomers, the small-town setting gives the mystery a different flavour from Persona's other adventures, with something sinister lurking behind familiar daily life.

15Nintendo Switch Sports Resort

Nintendo Switch Sports Resort takes you to Wuhu Island for twelve motion-control sports and a holiday's worth of wandering. Skateboarding uses Joy-Con 2 mouse controls, Power Cruising sends you across the waves and Prop Plane lets you tilt your way through the sky. Between events, you can explore the island and collect photos from sightseeing spots.

• 12 sports with motion controls
• Free exploration of Wuhu Island
• Offline Island Crown challenges against champions
• Joy-Con 2 mouse controls for Skateboarding

The return to Wuhu Island is a big part of the appeal, especially with things to discover between matches. Island Crown gives solo players champions to work towards, while the mix of sports makes this an easy adventure to picture with friends around the television.

16METRO 2039

METRO 2039 follows the Stranger back into the tunnels beneath a ruined Moscow. Hunter has united their survivors under the oppressive Novoreich regime, and the Stranger's past draws him towards the place he swore to avoid. It is a single-player first-person adventure combining exploration, survival, combat and stealth in a world dangerous above and below ground.

• A new protagonist, the Stranger
• Post-apocalyptic Moscow and its Metro tunnels
• Single-player survival, combat and stealth
• Ray-traced 60fps mode on PS5 and Xbox Series X

Returning to the tunnels gives Metro's claustrophobic setting a fresh story, with 4A Games again working with series author Dmitry Glukhovsky. The promise of exploring this world through a new protagonist is a strong reason for both returning players and newcomers to follow it.

17Valor Mortis

William, a soldier of Napoleon's Grande Armee, rises from a battlefield grave in Valor Mortis. The Europe he wakes to is being ravaged by a mysterious plague, and its corrupting power now runs through his own veins. You face the resulting horrors in a first-person soulslike, using weapons, supernatural abilities and precise defensive moves to survive.

• First-person soulslike combat
• Parries, dashes and visceral finishers
• Supernatural powers from a corrupting plague
• An alternate-history Napoleonic Europe

One More Level's Ghostrunner experience makes the first-person perspective especially interesting here. A plague-stricken Napoleonic battlefield is also a striking place for a soulslike: the soldier coming back from the dead is carrying the horror with him as well as fighting it.

18Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV brings base-building real-time strategy back to the series. You construct a foothold, build an army and fight over resource points, using cover and garrisoned buildings to keep squads alive. Four factions include the Space Marines, Orks, Necrons and Adeptus Mechanicus, with the Dark Angels joining the Blood Ravens as a playable Space Marine sub-faction.

• Base-building and resource-point control
• Four factions, plus the Dark Angels sub-faction
• Squad upgrades and a Unit Veterancy system
• Last Stand, Skirmish and multiplayer modes

The return to classic Dawn of War strategy is the big attraction: bases, armies and contested ground in the same battle. Adeptus Mechanicus offers something new to command, while the Blood Ravens give series followers a familiar way back into the war.

19Kingmakers

Kingmakers sends you back five hundred years to medieval England with modern weapons and an apocalypse to prevent. You can fight directly with guns and vehicles, then switch to issuing orders to an army of archers, swordsmen, spearmen and cavalry. Thousands of soldiers clash in real-time battles as you build fortifications and try to change the course of history.

• Modern guns and vehicles in medieval battles
• Switch between direct combat and army commands
• Thousands of soldiers simulated in real time
• Online co-op for up to four players

The irresistible first impression is the absurd mismatch between an assault rifle and a medieval army. The strategy layer is what makes that premise more interesting: you can jump into the chaos yourself, then step back to direct the forces trying to hold the ground.

20State of Decay 3

State of Decay 3 puts a community of survivors at the centre of a world gripped by blood plague. You reclaim territory, scavenge supplies and choose who to recruit, while a new zombie evolution threatens the landscape. Multiple settlements let you build a network, and up to four players can start a shared community together.

• A shared world for up to four players
• Multiple settlements linked into a community network
• Recruitment, scavenging and base defences
• Permadeath makes every survivor vulnerable

Survival matters more when losing somebody changes the community you've built around them. Bringing friends into that shared world, alongside several settlements to manage, gives the sequel a clear attraction beyond another round of zombie fights: making a home together and trying to keep it standing.

21Tides of Annihilation

Gwendolyn fights through a shattered London after an invasion from the Otherworld in Tides of Annihilation. Arthurian legend collides with modern ruins as she uncovers the catastrophe's secrets and tries to save her family. Legendary Knights of the Round Table become combat companions, while colossal knights are places to climb, explore and challenge.

• A ruined London intertwined with an Otherworld
• Over a dozen legendary knights with distinct combat roles
• Knight combinations for different combat builds
• Colossal knights to climb, explore and fight

London's landmarks meeting Arthurian fantasy give this action adventure a memorable setting straight away. The knights add a practical hook to the spectacle: assembling companions with different roles is a reason to follow the fights as well as the enormous figures towering over them.

22Clockwork Revolution

Morgan Vanette, a customisable member of the Rotten Row Hooligans, gains the power to change Avalon's history in Clockwork Revolution. Lady Ironwood has been manipulating time to keep the working class down, and travelling into the past gives you a way to fight back. This first-person steampunk RPG lets decisions ripple forward into the characters, shops and streets of the city.

• Travel between past and present
• Choices that reshape Avalon
• Character creation, attributes, skills and equipment
• Hack automatons and craft steampunk weapons

A city that changes because of what you did in its past is a compelling RPG playground. inXile's focus on character choices gives the time-travel premise a strong fit, with clockwork machinery and dark humour making Avalon somewhere distinctive to cause trouble.

23Total War: Warhammer 40,000

Total War: Warhammer 40,000 takes the series' turn-based campaigns and real-time battles into the 41st millennium. You expand across a galactic sandbox, capture planets, upgrade fleets and build a war economy before deploying armies on the ground. Space Marines, Orks, Aeldari and Astra Militarum bring four very different forces to command.

• Four factions with distinct armies and campaign mechanics
• Turn-based expansion across planets
• Real-time battles with destructive terrain changes
• Custom army names, colours and iconography

Total War's appeal is seeing an empire's plans become a battle you have to win yourself. Moving that mixture into Warhammer 40,000 brings fleets, orbital bombardments and huge war machines into the picture, with army customisation adding a welcome connection to the tabletop's personal touch.

24Planet Zoo 2

Planet Zoo 2 expands your zoo with fully aquatic species and flying birds, then takes conservation into Wildlife Reserves. You build freshwater or saltwater aquariums, construct custom aviaries and create habitats around each animal's needs. Alongside managing visitors and staff, you can work towards releasing animals into the expansive ecosystems you've designed.

• Fully aquatic animals and custom aquariums
• Flying birds in customisable aviaries
• Wildlife Reserves for conservation projects
• Career, Franchise and Sandbox modes

Aquariums and aviaries give zoo builders two big new subjects to design around. Wildlife Reserves extend the purpose of caring for those animals beyond the zoo gates, giving Frontier's sequel an appealing direction for players who enjoy conservation as much as construction.

25Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 sends Ultramarine Malum Caedo and Sister of Battle Nyra Veyrath into another pixel-splattered fight against heretics. Each has a different playstyle, and a branching campaign sends you through distinct levels as you choose your path. New enemies, weapons and environments build on the original's fast retro FPS combat.

• Two playable characters with different playstyles
• A branching campaign with distinct levels
• New enemies, weapons and locations
• A navigation guide to keep the action moving

Boltgun's appeal is direct: charge into a fight and turn the enemy into pixels. A second character and branching routes give that familiar energy more variety, while the navigation guide is a welcome addition for anyone keen to spend more time fighting than finding the exit.