Images, clockwise from top left: At Fate's End (Thunder Lotus Games); Control Resonant (Remedy Entertainment); Marvel's Wolverine (Insomniac); MIO: Memories in Orbit (Focus Entertainment).
Don’t trust video game release dates. Delays and schedule changes run rampant, making it hard to ever take any announced date seriously. We’ll believe a game’s being released when we’re actually playing it on our own screens in our own homes, and not because a trailer or press release says it’s coming. Several of the games below have been delayed multiple times, and are currently penciled in to finally come out years after their initial announced dates. It is a guarantee that at least one of these games will be delayed out of 2026, and possibly several of them. As you’ll see, only two of these 10 games have even announced a release date; the rest are all TBA. So don’t view this as a hard and fast guide, but a suggestion of what the next year in games might look like. If any of them actually come out, well, view it as a pleasant surprise—a nice little treat. Here’s our preview of the games we can’t wait to play in 2026.
MIO: Memories in Orbit
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 5, Switch 2, Switch, Xbox Series X|S Release Date: January 20
If the ongoing deluge of arty search action games hasn’t slaked your thirst for classic Metroid sidescrolling, a reservation with MIO: Memories in Orbit might be in order. And even if you aren’t into backtracking through levels you’ve already explored, opening up more of the map as you acquire new power-ups and abilities, you might still marvel at MIO’s art style, which looks like a Moebius comic come to life. (Yes, like the iconic comic artist Jean Giraud, MIO is French, coming from the Saint-Ouen studio Douze Dixièmes and Parisian publisher Focus Entertainment.) If MIO plays as well as it looks, it should have no problem establishing itself in what has become an extremely crowded genre. [Garrett Martin]
Pragmata
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 5, Switch 2, Xbox Series X|S Release Date: April 24
Tired of the major publishers’ unwavering commitment to moribund franchises and live-service games that will inevitably get flattened by the endless steamroller that is Fortnite? Annoyed by how every major new single-player action game that isn’t a sequel or reboot desperately wants to be a Dark Souls game? Pragmata recalls an earlier era of big-budget action games, the mid ‘00s to mid ‘10s, when companies would take chances on new games like Vanquish and Binary Domain and Dark Void (eh, they can’t all be winners) in-between cranking out the old favorites. This long-in-the-works sci-fi actioner’s signature move is a twofold approach to combat: before your hulking spaceman hero can damage his cybernetic enemies with his guns, the little robot girl on his shoulder has to pull off a real-time hacking minigame that deactivates their defenses. For Pragmata to really work those puzzles will have to continually scale up in difficulty without becoming too complex or repetitive. We’ll see if the devs can walk that tightrope when the game lands in April. [GM]
At Fate’s End
Platform: PC Release Date: TBA
While it may seem a little superficial to be almost entirely excited about an upcoming game due to its visuals, At Fate’s End simply looks that good. This new title from the team that worked on the eye-catching Spiritfarer comes across like a moving painting on glass, with impressive background art, strong character designs, and some great animation that brings its fantastical world to life. Similarly intriguing is the premise: the story follows a young woman forced to fight the other members of her noble house as she attempts to guide her family down the right path. It’s a strong angle, and while the biggest question is how it will play—it’s apparently a Metroid-style search action platformer—Thunder Lotus Games has experience in that department thanks to its work on Sundered. This particular sub-genre may be slammed, but between its great sense of style, strong hook, and promising unique elements, like its “narrative puzzles” that have you engage in battles of words, this is one that very much seems worth checking out. [Elijah Gonzalez]
Control Resonant
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S Release Date: TBA
If there’s a game studio out there that has earned the benefit of the doubt, it’s Remedy, a team whose output has been a much needed bastion of weirdness in a relatively stale AAA industry. The first trailer for Control Resonant was a strong reminder of why they’re held in such high regard. Trading the paranormal third-person shooting of the first game for close-range combat that looked more like what you’d expect from a new Devil May Cry, this follow-up will focus on the brother of Control’s protagonist as he explores non-Euclidean space and hits guys with a giant hammer. Bizarre imagery, immaculate sound design, and a cameo from everybody’s favorite sad boy Alan Wake are just a few of the reasons to be excited about what will hopefully live up to the studio’s sterling output (besides that recent multiplayer game we don’t talk about). If there’s one reason for concern, it’s that the company’s recent executive shakeups could potentially adversely affect development or release timing. But until proven otherwise, there’s little reason to doubt Remedy when they’re in their wheelhouse, and Control Resonant looks every bit as odd and expectedly unexpected as you would hope. [EG]
Denshattack
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S Release Date: TBA
Skating games are on a good run. 2025 brought new Tony Hawk and Skate games for the traditionalists, Skate Story turned kickflips into a metaphysical metaphor, and now 2026 promises the most outside-the-box (yet, paradoxically, most on-the-rails) skating game ever: Denshattack, where there are no skaters or boards, only a Japanese train doing tricks on (and off) its tracks. As our preview from last summer detailed, Denshattack reframes basic skating concepts through the high-speed momentum of a train, with cel-shaded art and a musical focus that recalls Sega’s classic Jet Set Radio and 2023’s Hi-Fi Rush. If the whole game can maintain the level of inspired chaos seen in the trailer—where, at one point, a train flies off its rails and grinds on a Ferris wheel, which then becomes the train’s new track as it rolls around a bay—it’ll be a shoo-in to win the award for “best game about a skating train.” [GM]
Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave
Platform: Switch 2 Release Date: TBA
At this point, each new mainline Fire Emblem feels like spinning a roulette wheel in terms of what you’re going to get—two mainline games ago was Three Houses, which featured some of the best writing in the series and gameplay that eventually wore thin, which was followed by Engage, which had some of the worst writing in the series and some great mechanics. However, there are reasons to expect that Fortune’s Weave may be another banger. For starters, it seems like a rare series entry set in a familiar world, and luckily, that backdrop is the same one from the previously mentioned fantasy high school sim Three Houses. Set in the middle of gladiatorial games that seem rife for drama, the main cast has already made quite an impression both visually and narratively, which hopefully implies the game will be driven by the types of human concerns that made Three Houses so compelling. And while we haven’t seen enough to determine how its tactics RPG systems will fare, hopefully Intelligent Systems learned the proper lessons from its last few games. [EG]
Marvel’s Wolverine
Platform: PlayStation 5 Release Date: TBA
Wolverine’s a tough nut for games to crack. His claws should slice easily through any bum that gets in his way, but instant kills aren’t particularly compatible with the kind of difficulty progression you expect from a game. What’s the point of snikting adamantium knives out of your fists if they don’t get the job done in one? At least we know his healing factor will work in a game—it’s basically been copped by half the action games made this century. It remains to be seen if Insomniac can make Ol’ Canucklehead work from a combat perspective, but there’s little doubt their take on Wolverine will present an entertaining comic book-style story; they’ve practically set the current state of the art of superhero games with their three Spider-Man adventures. So, yes, you could probably say they’re the best there is at what they do. [GM]
Mixtape
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S Release Date: TBA
There were a few red flags in the Mixtape demo we played at SGF last year: the writing was too arch, it relied too much on easy nostalgia, and its disinterest in adhering to any consistent style of play made it feel disjointed. That grab bag approach to mechanics could also be an asset, though, especially when it intersects with the game’s palpable love of music. An opening scene where its mid ‘90s teens skate down a busy road in rhythm to Devo’s “That’s Good” is genuinely exhilarating, and we can’t wait to see how the game asks us to interact with announced songs like “Love Will Tear Us Apart” and “Just Like Honey.” And even if the Silverchair song that soundtracks it is a bust (the devs are Australian, so we can at least understand and excuse their love for their local grunge demigods), a rhythm minigame where you headbang along to some crushing riffs in your beater of a car is inspired. Even the best mixtapes can have a bum song or two, but if Mixtape keeps its hit rate up, it could be something special. [GM]
Relooted
Platforms: PC, Xbox Series X|S Release Date: TBA
Relooted’s justice-minded concept—a team of scholars and adventurers from Africa pull heists to reclaim artifacts stolen by Western museums—is certainly eye-catching, but that’s not what made it one of the best games we played at Summer Game Fest last year. (It helped, of course.) The new game from South African studio Nyamakop presents players with clockwork puzzles that put an equal emphasis on strategy and action, with planning phases setting up fast-paced bursts of side-scrolling platforming. And the dozens of artifacts in the game are real and are currently held in Western museums, so the detailed notes on each one will educate you while the game scratches your problem-solving itch. Given everything happening in the world in the last… oh, several centuries, but especially this very week, with America firmly reasserting its commitment to imperialism, a (smart, fun, challenging) game that’s overtly anticolonialist is very welcome indeed. [GM]
Virtue and a Sledgehammer
Platforms: PC Release Date: TBA
Sometimes you’ve simply got to smash those thinking machines, as the Luddite-channeling Virtue and a Sledgehammer can attest. This narrative exploration game is a dreamlike trip down memory lane, following a main character who returns to their rural home only to find it filled with androids that share the memories of those who once lived there. It’s the latest from Devolver Digital and Deconstructeam, the Spanish studio behind a spate of thoughtful genre titles like The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood and The Red String Club, and this seems like an ideal crew to tackle a story about the difficulties of returning to your hometown and ongoing AI anxieties. And quite importantly, it seems like you’ll really get to let your foes have it: the words “interactive fiction” and “narrative exploration game” don’t typically conjure images of swinging around demolition equipment, but it seems like this will be quite a cathartic process indeed. [EG]
Keep scrolling for more great stories.