CI Games delays Lords of the Fallen II to the first quarter of 2027

Lords of the Fallen II is not coming out this fall. CI Games and developer Hexworks announced on June 23 that the Soulslike sequel has moved from its fall 2026 window into the first quarter of 2027, which puts the new target somewhere between January and March.

The old window had the game arriving in the busiest stretch of the calendar. The new one does not. That is most of the story, and to the studio's credit, it mostly says so.

What CI Games actually said

The delay came with a statement from CI Games founder and CEO Marek Tyminski. He credited a "Gameplay Feedback Team," which he describes as a group of Souls-like veterans inside the studio's Launch Creative Team, with flagging "meaningful opportunities to further refine and strengthen the overall experience." Those changes, he said, "will benefit from additional integration, iteration, and polishing time."

Then the part that matters for the timing: the new window "strategically positions Lords of the Fallen II outside of a highly competitive holiday period, ensuring the game receives the dedicated attention it deserves."

He did not name the competition. He did not have to. Grand Theft Auto VI is set for November 19, 2026, after its own delay, and no publisher wants to launch a mid-budget action RPG into the crater a new GTA leaves in the release calendar. Reading "highly competitive holiday period" as "we are getting out of GTA's way" is the obvious read, and it is a reasonable call rather than a red flag.

This is a schedule move, not a rescue

Worth keeping the two apart here. A delay because a game is broken is one thing. A delay to add polish and dodge a release-window pileup is another, and this reads like the second kind. The 2023 Lords of the Fallen reboot shipped rough, with performance problems that took months of patches to sort out. If Hexworks wants extra runway so the sequel does not launch in the same state, that is the lesson from last time being applied, not ignored.

None of which guarantees the extra months land. "More polishing time" is what every delayed game says, and some of them still arrive with the same problems. The honest position right now is that we have a new date and a plausible reason, and not much else to go on until CI Games shows more of the actual game.

The platforms

When it does arrive, Lords of the Fallen II is planned for:

• PlayStation 5
• Xbox Series X and S
• Nintendo Switch 2
• PC, via Steam and the Epic Games Store

The Switch 2 version is the one to watch, since a current-gen Soulslike running on Nintendo hardware is not a given, and CI Games has committed to it in writing.

The wider picture

The delay lands in a bruising few weeks for the industry. Microsoft pushed through a global price increase on Xbox Series consoles, and Bungie announced another round of layoffs and a reorganization. A studio choosing to take more time rather than throw a sequel into a crowded, expensive holiday is a small, sane decision against that backdrop, and it costs players nothing except patience.