Kingdom Hearts 4 Locks In Late 2027, and Sora Is Headed to the Land of the Dead

Kingdom Hearts 4 was announced all the way back in 2022, and for four years the release date question has been answered with variations of "when it's ready." That changed this weekend. During the Disney Entertainment Showcase at D23 2026, Square Enix and Disney & Pixar Games confirmed the game will launch in late 2027 on Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC, and they brought a trailer that finally shows the series doing what it does best: dropping Sora into a beloved Pixar movie.

Video: KINGDOM HEARTS on YouTube

A guitar Keyblade in the Land of the Dead

The headline reveal is the first confirmed Disney world of the game: the Land of the Dead from Pixar's 2017 film Coco. The trailer leans all the way into it. Sora picks up skeletal Day of the Dead face paint to blend in with the locals, his Keyblade transforms into a guitar, and Miguel and Hector show up as allies while Heartless swarm the neon-stacked towers of the afterlife. Visually it might be the most striking world the series has ever shown, and the official key art of Sora riding a trolley above that glowing skyline sells the whole idea in one image.

The trailer also confirms that Donald Duck and Goofy are back, and that Mickey, Donald and Goofy will all be playable as they investigate where Sora has gone. That last detail matters for the story. Kingdom Hearts 4 picks up with Sora in Quadratum, a realistic city styled after Tokyo, and his friends apparently have to find him first.

Late 2027, every platform, and a promise

Square Enix says late 2027 for every platform at once, with wishlists live now. The Switch 2 version is worth underlining, since Nintendo players mostly had to settle for cloud versions of past entries on the original Switch. Square Enix has been on a real Switch 2 push lately, following Final Fantasy XIV's console debut earlier this month, and shipping its biggest crossover series day one on Nintendo hardware continues that pattern.

During the Deep Dive into Kingdom Hearts panel celebrating 25 years of the franchise, the co-directors went out of their way to kill any delay speculation, with series creator Tetsuya Nomura flatly stating a delay is not happening and co-director Tai Yasue calling 2027 a certainty. We have heard confident directors before, so we will believe a date when we see the day one patch, but it is notable that the team volunteered this rather than hiding behind a vague window.

An anime too, because Disney does not do small

The other announcement tucked into the show: an original animated series, working title Kingdom Hearts, is in development for Disney Channel and Disney+ with Nomura and the Square Enix creative team involved. For a franchise that has shipped over 39 million games, a proper show has been a strangely long time coming, and it suggests Disney wants this universe in front of people well before the game arrives.

Our take: a late 2027 window is still a long wait, but this is the first time Kingdom Hearts 4 has felt real. A dated launch, a stunning first world and a cross-media push all in one showcase is exactly how you restart the hype machine. And if the trailer left you wanting something Disney flavored to play right now, our Disney Speedstorm codes page is kept up to date with free unlocks.