State of Play September 2026: Everything Announced

PlayStation ran two broadcasts back to back last night: a long-form State of Play, followed by a State of Play Japan focused on studios from Japan and Asia. Between the two, they packed in more than thirty announcements, and the split wasn’t accidental: the first carried the weight of the big dates, while the second was reserved for conversations with the development teams.

The show made three things clear. First, that 2027 is going to be packed: most of the confirmed dates land there, not in what’s left of this year. Second, that Sony has chosen to shore up the fall with what it already had in the chamber —Marvel’s Wolverine, Ghost of Yōtei, Gran Turismo 7— rather than stretch out new announcements. And third, that Japanese output has a space of its own again, with productions that three years ago wouldn’t have left their home market.

Below is everything that was shown, with dates, platforms, and what each trailer actually revealed.

The big headlines

Final Fantasy VII Revelation — the trilogy finally has an ending

April 8, 2027 · PS5

The show’s closer was also the most anticipated announcement: Final Fantasy VII Revelation now has a date, April 8, 2027. Square Enix gave it the longest segment of the night, an extensive look at an open world that, from what was shown, plays on a different scale than Rebirth.

The thing they pushed hardest to show was traversal, and it works on two levels. Up top, the Highwind as an airship for crossing the planet. On the ground, a grappling hook for climbing rooftops and moving through the city, and once again Piko, the chocobo, who this time isn’t just a mount: it fights alongside the party, levels up with the group, and gains abilities useful for both travel and combat.

The combat system expands with FITS, short for Function-Integrated Tactical Suitwear. These are outfits that completely change a character’s move set, and there are four specializations: Warrior, Knight, Black Mage, and Summoner. It’s not just a stat change — it alters each party member’s skills and role in battle — and it’s not purely mechanical either, since the character’s appearance changes when equipped. The trailer shows Cid wearing the Knight suit and Vincent wearing the Summoner one.

There are two more additions that change how the game plays outside of combat. The first is dynamic character switching: you can jump from one party member to another on the fly while exploring. The second is more significant than it sounds: you can choose which character handles certain missions, and that choice changes how specific story moments play out. It’s a way of personalizing the narrative that the trilogy hadn’t used until now.

Queen’s Blood also returns, the card game from Rebirth, and not as a minor addition: it brings a new campaign centered on Red XIII, with opponents capable of turning a match around and challenges designed for players who already know it by heart.

Pre-orders are open now, with the Mecha-Chocobo & Moguri Summon Materia as a bonus across all editions. The Premium Edition adds the Story Expansion Pass — two story-focused DLC packs —, 24-hour early access ahead of launch, and an in-game accessory; the Premium Plus throws in a digital art book and soundtrack, another summon materia, and extra equipment.

One platform clarification: the date was given at a PlayStation showcase and confirmed for PS5. The lineup already detailed when the game was shown in August hasn’t changed.

Marvel’s Wolverine — two weeks from release

September 15, 2026 · PS5

Insomniac wrapped up its campaign with the launch trailer, and at this point the game hardly needs an introduction: it comes out in two weeks. What the footage did add was the cast around Logan, which had only been shown in dribs and drabs until now.

Jean Grey shows up, with her telekinetic powers taking a visible role in the action, along with members of Team X, the covert military unit tied to the character’s past. New allies and enemies that hadn’t been shown before also make an appearance. The tone remains that of a gritty, adult story, closer to a thriller than a team superhero romp.

Metro 2039 — first gameplay, running ray tracing at 60 fps

February 4, 2027 · PS5

4A Games showed the game in motion for the first time, using footage captured on PS5 Pro. The sequence opens right as the protagonist steps out of the tunnels and into the ruins of a Moscow in the middle of a thaw.

The studio spent a good chunk of the announcement explaining who the Stranger is, and the setup is darker than usual for the series: he’s a former Spartan with a murky past who never wanted to return to the Metro he left behind. His armor marks him as one of the good guys, and the studio itself is quick to warn that he isn’t. In the series, the Spartans were wolves; the Stranger, according to 4A, is something worse.

Gameplay-wise, it’s still a single-player first-person shooter with a self-contained story, and the surface remains a place you don’t want to linger: in the demo, the protagonist heads for a Novoreich stronghold built into a dam, and within seconds he’s already swimming through radiation. Players have to manage exposure and gear, and each encounter is left open-ended: load the Shatun rifle for silent headshots, clear a room with Molotov cocktails, or move in close and finish enemies off with the Duplet shotgun.

The technical side got the most emphasis. The game runs on the studio’s own 4A Engine, and both PS5 and PS5 Pro will get ray tracing, with a performance mode running at 60 fps. That’s not an empty promise coming from this team: the enhanced edition of Metro Exodus was, back in 2021, one of the first games to hold ray tracing at 60 fps on PS5.

It launches on February 4, 2027, one day later in some Asia and Oceania territories. It can already be added to the wishlist; pre-orders open at a later date.

Until Dawn 2 — January, and the script is in good hands

January 28, 2027 · PS5 · pre-orders open September 10

Firesprite’s horror game now has a date: January 28, 2027. The lead group is Dead True, eight YouTubers who fake ghost hunts for their channel, with a chicken as the team mascot. Whether all of them make it to the end, or just some, is up to whoever’s playing.

The trailer lays out the setup clearly. It starts at the Blackwood Sanatorium, where the team is filming an episode about what happened there twelve years earlier — the nod to the first game is direct — and where Izzy, the newly hired intern, finds something she wasn’t expecting. Later, at a horror convention in Sydney, the group meets Yoona, a survivor of a supernatural attack who shows off the scar it left her. Her warning pushes them toward a remote island in the South Pacific, abandoned since a resort complex closed without explanation back in the seventies.

The decision examples that were shown give a sense of the game’s scale. Owen, the channel’s star, has to choose between following a signal to help a missing teammate or breaking off to investigate a suspiciously lively bar. And Mina, the co-host, gets an uncomfortable demand from the production company: a live ritual sacrifice. Either the chicken gets sacrificed to keep the bosses happy, or she does.

The detail that carries the most weight in the mid term is behind the scenes: Firesprite is co-writing the story with AdHoc Studio, the team behind Dispatch. And Dr. Hill is back — with Peter Stormare reprising the role — who in the first game was the piece holding the entire narrative scaffolding together.

Pre-orders open on September 10.

Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance — the big expansion

2027 · PS5

Capcom announced Ascendance, the major expansion for Monster Hunter Wilds, for 2027, and framed it as a full-fledged continuation: the story picks up after the ending of the base game.

The trigger is the appearance of Lao-Shan Lung in the Forbidden Lands, a colossal Elder Dragon that’s been part of the series’ iconography since its earliest entries, and one the Expedition can do nothing against. From there, the story jumps forward several years: the team digs in, builds the Madoi stronghold, and prepares for its return. That time jump also affects familiar characters — Nata, the kid who used to be an apprentice, is now a fully fledged hunter and joins the Expedition alongside his Wudwud, Bangard.

The new setting is the Skybound Eyrie, revealed once the fog covering Wyveria’s skies clears: a floating region above the clouds, with open landscapes, ancient ruins, and wildlife never seen before. The thread running through the expansion is an ecological investigation — the changes left behind by Lao-Shan Lung, the sudden expansion of the Guardian Monsters’ territory, and the appearance of more Elder Dragons.

Two new named monsters. Araketa is a Bird Wyvern that flies in flocks at high speed, manipulating air currents, with dominant specimens coordinating the group through calls. Gundoraja is the brand-new Elder Dragon, capable of controlling storms, that emerges from the storm clouds of the Skybound Eyrie.

On the gameplay side, the key piece is the Boost Bracer: new gear activated from the slinger that, for a few seconds, amplifies whatever each weapon does best. It’s been tuned individually for all fourteen weapons. Fine print worth noting: Ascendance requires the base game and reaching Hunter Rank 40 with the “Awakening from a Dream” quest completed.

At the State of Play Japan, producer Ryozo Tsujimoto expanded on all this. There will be a playable demo at this year’s Tokyo Game Show, featuring a hunt against Araketa. And anyone who’s never touched the series now has a free prologue demo available, with all fourteen weapons unlocked and save data that carries over.

Ghost of Yōtei — a roguelike, an expansion, and a free patch

October 1, 2026 · PS5

Sucker Punch used the game’s first anniversary to bring three things, all landing on October 1.

The first is Most Wanted, and it’s not just another horde mode — it’s a roguelike. You pick a bounty from a board — each one headed by a member of the Six of Yōtei — fight through waves of enemies and sub-bosses, and choose a perk after each wave to build out the run. Bounties repeat at increasing difficulty up to the hardest of all, against Lord Saito himself. Between runs, you spend Mon on techniques, weapon upgrades, charms, and unlocks, and the cosmetics earned here also carry over to the main campaign.

There are four playable characters, and each one genuinely changes how a run plays. Atsu, the default character, fights with dual katanas and Ghost tools; her ultimate summons two wolves. Oyuki uses kusarigama, kunai, and tanegashima, and can summon a Nine-Tails ally. Nagato is the ranged option: yari, pistol, and two bows, with an ultimate that guarantees two headshots. And the fourth is Jin Sakai, the protagonist of Ghost of Tsushima, who arrives with all four of the original’s stances intact, his Dance of Wrath as an ultimate, and the Ghost Stance as a streak bonus.

The second is Echoes of Sekigahara, the story expansion, split across two timelines: Atsu’s past at the Battle of Sekigahara, which tells her history with Nagato, and the present, with Nagato arriving in Ezo pursued by the Vipers — poachers loyal to the Serpent, leaderless since his death — who have dug in around the hills of Ashoro, a new area once teeming with wildlife and now stripped bare. It brings new enemies, heavy weapons, mythic tales, and gear. At the State of Play Japan, Fairouz Ai, who voices Atsu in Japanese, appeared to talk about the character.

And the third is worth calling out because it’s free: the same day brings a patch for everyone, whether or not they’ve bought the full edition. It includes a Beauty of Yōtei mode for exploring the scenery in photo mode, new music for Watanabe mode, an option to keep one armor’s appearance while using another’s stats — something the community had been asking for since launch — and a high-contrast accessibility option.

Gran Turismo 7 — the Spec IV update, free and in two waves

October and December 2026 · PS5 · free

With the 30th anniversary of the original Gran Turismo on the horizon for 2027, Polyphony kicks off the celebrations with the Spec IV update, which is free and, given how much it packs in, has been split into two waves: one in October and another in December.

Two tracks are coming, and they’re not equivalent. October’s is Sportsland SUGO, a Japanese circuit with sharp elevation changes, chained corners, and the Dunlop bridge as its signature landmark. December’s is Autumn Ring, and that one carries different weight: it’s a track from the series’ history, present as far back as the original Gran Turismo, making its first appearance in this entry. Twelve cars are being added across the two waves, still unrevealed.

Of the new modes, the one that most changes the routine is Online Drift Trials, which turns drifting into a competitive discipline scored on control, precision, and style. Shuffle Races randomizes the conditions of each online race so memorizing them doesn’t help. And there’s more still to be detailed along the way: new driving experiences, an expanded car viewer, progression elements, and a car-buying concierge feature.

The most deliberate addition is Family mode, arriving in December and designed as an entry point for players with no time behind the wheel. In a series with this kind of learning curve, and thirty years on from the first entry, that’s not a minor addition.

The full breakdown of cars and modes will be given on October 3, during the third round of the Gran Turismo World Series in Singapore.

The Grand Theft Auto VI DualSense controllers

November 19, 2026 · pre-orders open September 10

Two limited-edition DualSense controllers inspired by Grand Theft Auto VI, one black and one white, done up in Vice City style. They launch on November 19, the same day as the game, with pre-orders opening on September 10. Anyone who wants the pair should move fast: there’s plenty of precedent for what happens to limited-edition controllers when they coincide with a launch this size.

The rest of the show

Japanese RPGs, anime, and licensed games

Fate/Extra Record

January 28, 2027 · PS5 and PS4

The full remake of Fate/Extra now has a date. Besides rebuilding the Moon Cell Holy Grail War with more scope, it changes the combat system: Command Cards now work as a deck-building mechanic, adding a layer of pre-battle decision-making the original didn’t have. It’s one of the few announcements of the night still supporting PS4.

Digimon Story Time Stranger: A Hero’s Eternal Legacy

2027 · PS5

A downloadable expansion that picks up three years after the base game, with a new protagonist and partner and roughly fifty Digimon added. Given the sheer number of creatures, it plays more like a second campaign than filler content.

Dragon Ball Xenoverse 3

2027 · PS5

The third entry in the Xenoverse line, the one that lets you create your own character instead of playing as the established cast. The formula stays the same: build a fighter, develop your own combat style, and take on rivals from the series.

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World

December 3, 2026 · PS5

A new trailer focused on the two young tamers and the monsters that join them as they cross an alternate world. It’s one of the few releases of the night landing in 2026, and right in the middle of the December rush.

Sword Art Online: Echoes of Aincrad — Genesis Maidens

Winter 2026 · PS5

The game’s first piece of DLC, with a story set on the lower floors of Aincrad and Mito joining the playable party, along with gameplay additions. It was revealed with promotional art rather than a trailer, something it shared over the whole night only with the PlayStation Plus segment.

The Eminence in Shadow: Phantom Echoes

2027 · PS5

The series makes its first jump to consoles with a roguelite centered on the Seven Shadows, featuring an original story overseen by Daisuke Aizawa, author of the novels. The fact that the plot is written from scratch rather than adapted from already-aired episodes is what most sets it apart from the usual tie-in product.

Horror, action, and auteur projects

Hunter’s Moon

October 26, 2026 · PS5

First-person folk horror set in 17th-century England during a witch hunt, unfolding over a single night. You play an accused woman fleeing through a rural village: there’s no combat — instead you eavesdrop on conversations, move without being seen, and escape the hunters under a full moon.

One clarification on the date, since it’s been circulating both ways: it launches October 25 in North America and October 26 in Europe.

Keeper

Available now · PS5

Double Fine’s game was the only announcement of the night you could actually buy the moment the broadcast ended: Keeper launched that same September 3. It’s a third-person puzzle adventure told without a single word, starring a lighthouse that wakes up and a seabird that accompanies it into the heart of an island.

Stupid Never Dies

October 21, 2026 · PS5 · demo available

Unhinged action against zombies whose twist is stealing abilities from monsters to grow stronger. There’s a demo available now covering the opening hours, and save data carries over to the full game.

SlashZero

Spring 2027 · PS5 · limited-time demo

A fast-paced, side-scrolling action roguelike set across broken timelines. The limited-time demo is no small taste: it includes three playable characters, boss fights, and more than ten hours of content.

Maneater 2

2027 · PS5

The sequel keeps the premise: you play as the shark. This time the setting is a water theme park on a private luxury island, right in the middle of a launch event for VIP guests, and the goal is to eat, explore, and evolve your way to an escape.

Rhapsody in Scarlet

No release date · PS5

Konami unveiled an action-adventure blending 1920s New York, jazz, and magical beasts. The sorceress Ellie Myers ends up tangled in a plot involving a mob organization.

At the State of Play Japan, producer Takanori Murayama premiered a separate story-focused trailer and explained the combat: the hook is chaining magic and beast abilities together into customizable combos.

Rev. Noir

2027 · PS5

Konami’s RPG, first revealed back in February, returned to both showcases with new gameplay trailers and a release year: 2027. It follows Asch and Finé as they try to stop a catastrophe called lightfall.

Open worlds, strategy, and experiments

CONQ: Crown of No Quarter

No release date · PS5

A brand-new announcement, and one of the most ambitious on paper: a shared open world of large-scale warfare where you command armies on land and sea, storm fortresses, build siege engines, and fight for a faction. The trailer doesn’t yet make clear how all of that actually holds together in a match, which is exactly the important question.

Crimson Desert: Charting the Unknown

October 15, 2026 · PS5

A substantial expansion for Pearl Abyss’s game, with Kliff, Oongka, and Damiane searching for where they belong. The trailer was captured on PS5 Pro and leaned on variety of situations rather than any single mechanic.

Daba: Land of Water Scar

Spring 2027 · PS5

Developed by Dark Star Games as part of the China Hero Project, the program through which PlayStation funds Chinese studios. You play a man made of clay crossing a land where the water has dried up, and that premise — a body of mud in a world without water — doubles as the underlying mechanic.

Where the Seeds Fall

November 5, 2026 · PS5

Cygames used the night to unveil CygamesEdge, a new label dedicated to riskier projects, along with its first game. It’s an action-adventure in which a soldier and a creature descend the World Tree toward an ailing surface, through ruins, wind, and falls.

Uncanyon

2027 · PS5

Graceful Decay, the studio behind Maquette, returns with another puzzle adventure built around a perspective-based idea. Here it’s about controlling convergences between universes that shouldn’t touch, blending realities, and exploring the resulting mash-up.

Gundam Rogue Orbit

March 5, 2027 · PS5

A confirmed date and a combat-focused trailer. At the State of Play Japan, producer Yuya Tomiyama detailed the weapon types and tactical abilities, and explained that mobile suit parts change how a unit moves and fights. Colors can also be customized, or a MOD Skin applied to give it the look of the RX-78-2.

World Phasebound Control Authority: WPCA

2028 · PS5

The furthest-out announcement of the night. An action RPG set in Seoul, where you play a containment agent entering isolated zones to confront supernatural phenomena. With a 2028 date attached, it’s best taken as a statement of intent for now.

Catalog, services, and a movie

Final Fantasy Resonance

October 22, 2026 · PS5 · demo available

Two pieces of news at once. First, that Sephiroth appears in the game as an optional encounter: you can seek him out, face him, and earn a reward for it. Second, and more practical, that the complete first chapter is available right now alongside the opening of pre-orders, and save data carries over to the final game.

Saros — the Zenith update

Late 2026 · PS5 · free

A free update for anyone who already owns the game. It brings Overlord Rush, which chains the campaign’s bosses back to back with a global leaderboard, and Eclipse Layers, a New Game+ with modifiers and progression options. It also adds new accessibility options, including one to slow down the game’s speed, which in a title this demanding meaningfully changes who’s able to finish it.

Rematch × Blue Lock

September 24, 2026 · PS5

Sloclap’s online soccer game crosses over with Blue Lock, bringing the series’ Egoists into its matches. It arrives on September 24.

PlayStation Plus

Multiple dates · PS5 and classics

Four additions. Mycopunk, a highly customizable co-op looter shooter for one to four players, joins the Game Catalog before the year is out: the premise is cleaning up a fungus-infested planet with a crew of janky robots.

Joining Premium Classics this year are Mega Man X: Command Mission, in September, along with Dino Crisis 2 and the original Ratchet & Clank. The monthly lineup can vary by region.

The LEGO set of the original PlayStation

October 1, 2026

Outside the realm of games, the first official LEGO replica of the original PlayStation and its controller: 1,911 pieces and about 26 cm wide once assembled, essentially at real-world scale. It launches on October 1.

The Resident Evil movie

September 18, 2026 · theaters

The broadcast opened with a movie, not a game: a new look at the Resident Evil film directed by Zach Cregger. The story is original — a medical courier, Bryan, tries to make a delivery to Raccoon City General Hospital and ends up trapped in a viral outbreak — and it hits theaters on September 18.

Calendar of confirmed dates

Everything from the night with a locked-in date, in order. Anything announced with only a year, or with no date at all, is left out of the table.

Date	Game	Platforms
Sep 3, 2026	Keeper	PS5
Sep 3, 2026	Final Fantasy Resonance — demo	PS5
Sep 3, 2026	Stupid Never Dies — demo	PS5
Sep 3, 2026	SlashZero — demo	PS5
Sep 15, 2026	Marvel’s Wolverine	PS5
Sep 18, 2026	Resident Evil — movie	Theaters
Sep 24, 2026	Rematch × Blue Lock	PS5
Oct 1, 2026	Ghost of Yōtei: Most Wanted	PS5
Oct 1, 2026	Ghost of Yōtei: Echoes of Sekigahara	PS5
Oct 1, 2026	LEGO PlayStation	—
Oct 15, 2026	Crimson Desert: Charting the Unknown	PS5
Oct 21, 2026	Stupid Never Dies	PS5
Oct 22, 2026	Final Fantasy Resonance	PS5
Oct 26, 2026	Hunter’s Moon	PS5
Nov 5, 2026	Where the Seeds Fall	PS5
Nov 19, 2026	DualSense — Grand Theft Auto VI	PS5
Dec 3, 2026	Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World	PS5
Jan 28, 2027	Until Dawn 2	PS5
Jan 28, 2027	Fate/Extra Record	PS5, PS4
Feb 4, 2027	Metro 2039	PS5
Mar 5, 2027	Gundam Rogue Orbit	PS5
Apr 8, 2027	Final Fantasy VII Revelation	PS5

What this State of Play leaves us with

The bulk of it lands in 2027, not the holiday season. Of the twenty-two locked-in dates, only five major announcements fall before December, and three of those —Marvel’s Wolverine, the Ghost of Yōtei additions, and the Spec IV update for Gran Turismo 7— are material that was already in motion. The genuinely new stuff has been placed after January.

The demo has become a sales tool again. Three games launched demos the same day as the broadcast, all three with save data that carries over into the full game. In SlashZero‘s case, that’s more than ten hours of playable content months before release. It’s a shift in attitude compared to a few years ago, when trying before buying had become the exception.

The second showcase wasn’t padding. State of Play Japan didn’t repeat trailers: it delivered a separate Ghost of Yōtei expansion, the technical detail on Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance, and explanations from the producers of Gundam Rogue Orbit and Rhapsody in Scarlet. Splitting the what from the how across two broadcasts worked.

And part of the catalog is being sustained with free updates. The Spec IV update for Gran Turismo 7 costs nothing, the Ghost of Yōtei patch on October 1 reaches everyone regardless of whether they buy the full edition, and the Zenith update for Saros is also free. These are three of the announcements that got the most airtime on the night, and none of the three is a new product: they’re already-released games getting their lifespan extended without asking players to pay again.

And there’s a gap worth noting. In a night with more than thirty announcements, not a single previously unannounced game came from PlayStation’s Western first-party studios. Everything carrying their name was a continuation of something already known. The genuinely new material came from outside: Konami doubling up, Cygames launching a new label, a studio from the Chinese program, and several smaller teams.