Forget GTA 6, these are the ten games we’re most looking forward to in 2026

What’s that you’ve made there, Rockstar Games? Another absolutely brilliant open world game that singlehandedly raises the bar for the entire medium? Just like all the others that you made? How original.

Oh, and you’re going to make us all wait ages for it, are you? November 2026? Well, you know what, we don’t like your smug tone. We’ve gone out and found quite a lot of good games that aren’t called GTA VI, thanks, and even though we will definitely be playing the aforementioned pop culture phenomenon whenever it lands, even though we will almost certainly love it, even though everyone in the observable universe will play it and love it too, we’re not going to let 2026 be all about one game.

Mark your calendars: these are the titles worth taking for a spin in the upcoming year.

Although we’re legally and contractually bound to emit pantomime boos whenever we see a motorcycle, the cold, hard truth is that it is quite cool to watch people steering two-wheeled horsepower generators by hanging off them until their shoulders scrape the ground. What’s even cooler? Being the rider doing that.

Ride 6 pairs a massive roster of 250+ bikes with the kind of preposterous festival concept that Forza Horizon’s been getting away with for years, and which no HSE team would sign off on in a million years. Jump on a bike, race it against stars like Casey Stoner or Guy Martin, then head off the black stuff and enjoy the all-new off-road riding.

Hands up who remembers Little Nightmares and its sequel a few years back? A few at the back there – good. You’ll recall, then, how good developer Tarsier is at using scale and camerawork to evoke dread in its side-scrolling horror experiences. For those who didn’t play them, imagine if David Cronenburg was in charge of the Super Mario Bros. development team and you’re some way there.

Reanimal is the next of those projects, in which you play a brother and sister fleeing a very poorly lit island where ghastly things lurk, saving your friends along the way. Horror games can lean too heavily on baiting YouTubers into cartoonish shrieks by throwing jumpscares at them, but this studio resists that baser urge and goes about things in a more atmospheric fashion, so that the real scares come from narrative revelations, not loud bangs.

No, it absolutely isn’t safe to come out from your pathetic hiding place in the laundry room yet because we’re about to talk about a Resident Evil game. And if that sounds like hyperbole, try walking past the windows of Raccoon City PD alone in the living room with the lights off, then come back and tell us if you’re still feeling like Charlie Big Potato.

So what do we know about the latest in this venerable survival horror series? Well, a requiem is an act of remembrance, or as Capcom defines it, ‘a cool word to put in a videogame subtitle’. With this title plus longtime protagonist Leon Kennedy hinted to make a return, expect a visit back to the classic formula: a linear, third-person story that’s all about slow, creeping terror, amassing herbs, and solving convoluted puzzles that it seems incredible anyone constructed just to store some files.

The name’s James Bond. James Bond. License to kill, and make devastating quips over the corpses of his still-twitching enemies without seeming like a vindictive sociopath, and, most recently, to star in an upcoming open-world action game from the makers of Hitman.

The latter assassination sims are so devilishly enjoyable because they offer you so many different ways to fulfil your objectives, all of them full of slapstick humour so dark you need night vision goggles. We’re expecting all that in a tuxedo for First Light, which also features some delectable Aston Martin machinery to bomb around in.

Fable was originally conceived as the RPG that showed you real consequences of your actions. You’d plant a seed at the start of the game and return to find a tree later on. You’d slay people and find their families in tears after the battle. Given creator Peter Molyneux’s affection for the tall tale, the original games didn’t always fulfil that lofty brief, but with Forza Horizon developer Playground Games at the helm of the upcoming one, and two particularly enjoyable trailers brimming with dry British humour and Peep Show actors, the excitement we feel for this one feels built on firmer foundations.

Other than the fact Super Hans is in it, we don’t know much more about this one yet, except that it’s a third-person action-RPG set in Albion that sweats the little details. And frankly, we don’t need to. We just need it to turn up and install itself onto our hardware.

Got your tickets for Glastonbury next year? Nah, nor us. Who needs to stand in wellies that they’re pretty sure a stranger relieved themselves in last night, eating £18 rice and beans out of a styrofoam box while Rod Stewart paces the stage like an officious toddler when you could be at Horizon Fest?

Granted, it’s never been clear precisely what attendees do all day in Playground Games’ fictitious automotive festival, but for those behind the wheel life couldn’t get much sweeter. For number six, Forza Horizon is off to Japan, where copious touge runs, cherry blossoms and aggressive bumper mods await. Can’t wait.

Let’s play a round of ‘games that couldn’t possibly go wrong’, shall we? As much as it feels like tempting fate to say so, Halo: Campaign Evolved feels like particularly safe ground to pin one’s hopes in 2026. It’s the campaign from the original Halo: Combat Evolved, remade from the ground up for modern hardware. As pitches go, that’s akin to listening to your favourite Linkin Park mp3s you downloaded in 2003, but as crystal-clear lossless audio.

If we’re really picking nits we could point out the fact it’s being developed in Unreal Engine 5, a game engine which if we were being charitable we’d say has a chequered history with performance in recent releases. But if Halo Studios can keep it running at anything beyond flip-book frame rates, this should be a nostalgia hit akin to kicking back with a glass of Sunny Delight to enjoy that VHS of the Freddie Prinze Jr movie you rented.

It seems amazing that we went through so many big blockbuster games about comic book superheroes before this one got greenlit. He’s Wolverine. He’s known for having enormous biceps, razor-sharp claws and a short fuse. Why did we spend all those hours messing about with the teenager who can secrete webbing and the billionaire gadget fetishist when we could have had those claws all along?

Marvel’s Spider-Man and Resistance developers Insomniac Games are making this one, which means we’ve already got some clues about how the rhythm of combat might feel, and spectacular, bombastic cutscenes are a given. Whether this game can out-Jackman Mr Jackman’s cinematic turns, though, is another question…

Back in the ‘90s, racing games were a simpler beast. The ingredients were as follows: some vague collection of polygons that implied a motor vehicle, a countdown, and some outrageous MIDI hair metal to soundtrack it, and 1995’s Screamer had that recipe absolutely down.

Well, now it’s back. Not as a remake, but a complete re-imagining of what the future-dystopian arcade racer would be like if it were being made from scratch for 2026 players. After a 2025 that was rich in fastidious, demanding racing sims, we’re crying out for simple arcade fun. Screaming, even.

Some years ago now, studio director Warren Spector and exec producer Paul Neurath were busy making some of the most seminal stealth games of all-time. In 2026, they join forces once more to build a new title that cherry-picks the best bits from the Thief games and Deus Ex and drops them into a PvPvE multiplayer game.

We know what you’re thinking: why not just make a brilliant singleplayer game like the titles we just mentioned? And honestly we thought the same. But with such legendary names attached to the project, we trust their vision. Just please don’t try to sneak a season pass of cosmetic nonsense past us, Thick as Thieves.