Kingdom Hearts 4 Gets a Late 2027 Release Window, a Coco World, and an Animated Series
Kingdom Hearts 4 will arrive in late 2027, Square Enix confirmed with a new trailer shown at Disney's D23 showcase on August 14, 2026. It is the first actual date the publisher has attached to the game after years of vague reassurances from director Tetsuya Nomura that development was on track.
The late 2027 window lands around the series' Western 25th anniversary. Square Enix plans to release the game on Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, according to Eurogamer. Nintendo Life and IGN both corroborated the trailer and release window in coverage published August 15, 2026 (Nintendo Life, IGN).
The D23 trailer also revealed a new world themed around Pixar's Coco, the 2017 animated film about a boy who crosses into the Land of the Dead during the Mexican holiday Día de los Muertos. Alongside the game footage, Disney and Square Enix announced an animated Kingdom Hearts series.
Kingdom Hearts 4 begins a new storyline called the Lost Master Arc, picking up after the events of Kingdom Hearts 3. The game is set primarily in Quadratum, a large, realistic hub city with a Tokyo-like feel — a departure from the Disney-world-hopping structure that defined earlier entries.
A note on where the news broke: Square Enix's North American press site hosts a June 9, 2026 press release titled "Square Enix Unveils New Kingdom Hearts Announcements During Nintendo Direct Showcase," and a separate assets page for Kingdom Hearts IV references the same release. However, the most recent reporting from Eurogamer, Nintendo Life, and IGN all places the new trailer and the late 2027 release window at Disney's D23 2026 showcase on August 14. The earlier press release appears to cover a separate June announcement window and also confirms that the series will mark its 25th anniversary in 2027.
For context, Square Enix recently denied accusations that it used generative AI to create promotional assets for Kingdom Hearts Collection I–III, a bundle of the first three main games. The publisher said the assets were created without AI and that the issues resulted from human error, according to Eurogamer. That collection is set to launch on October 8, 2026, with pre-orders open across all platforms.
For fans, the late 2027 window is the first concrete milestone after a long silence. The series, which blends Square Enix role-playing combat with worlds and characters licensed from Disney and Pixar, has sold over 36 million copies worldwide since the original game launched in 2002. The wait for a numbered sequel is nothing new to this franchise — twelve years separated Kingdom Hearts 2 (2005) from Kingdom Hearts 3 (2019).
