[UPDATE - May 27, 2026] In a subsequent community livestream, Warhorse confirmed that the next Kingdom Come: Deliverance will also be an open world RPG. The current launch window is between April 2027 and March 2028.
[ORIGINAL STORY] Two months after the rumor that Czech developer Warhorse Studios was working on a new open world game set in the world of The Lord of the Rings, the studio officially confirmed the news, stating publicly that it's working on a Middle-earth RPG as well as a "new Kingdom Come adventure". Presumably, the latter is Kingdom Come Deliverance 3; it could also be a spin-off of sorts. Then again, that seems unlikely given the excellent success of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, which sold five million units in its first year on the market and outperformed internal expectations even in the latest quarter, as reported today by Embracer Group.
Indeed, Warhorse's news is not happening on a random day, as the studio's parent company has just released its Q4 2026 and full year financial report. The biggest news from the report is that Embracer Group, which had rebranded as Fellowship Entertainment exactly one year ago, has decided to split Fellowship Entertainment into its own company starting next year.
Fellowship Entertainment is being built around major IP and premium game publishing and will include the following studios and franchises:
- Studios: 4A Games, Crystal Dynamics, Dambuster Studios, Dark Horse Media, Eidos-Montréal, Fishlabs, Flying Wild Hog Studios, Gunfire Games, Middle-earth Enterprises, Redoctane Games, and Warhorse Studios.
- Franchises: Darksiders, Dead Island, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Metro, Remnant, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Tomb Raider, and many more.
In that context, Warhorse's two-game announcement is more than a juicy studio update. It is a direct example of the kind of portfolio Embracer wants Fellowship to own: proven RPG talent, marquee IPs, and brands with real commercial momentum. Kingdom Come Deliverance 2's strong sales make a third entry look like a logical continuation, while the Middle-earth project puts Embracer's crown-jewel license into the hands of a studio that has already delivered a breakout RPG hit.
It's hard to guess what the studio's open world Middle-earth RPG will look like right now. Warhorse has made itself a name for immersive first-person historical RPGs, but this is a fantasy IP, or rather, THE fantasy IP, and given its massive potential audience, I'd wager it's probably going to be a third-person game.
Will the developers choose to create a brand new character in Tolkien's mythos and allow players to "level" them up from a virtual nobody? That's just one of a wealth of questions that are already swarming through the minds of fans right now. We should keep in mind that there's a long wait ahead before the game becomes available; even so, I already cannot wait.
This will be arguably the first-ever proper Middle-earth RPG, and it's mind-boggling that it's taken so long. Sure, there was The Lord of the Rings Online, but that's an MMO. And the Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War games made by the now-defunct Monolith Productions were not really roleplaying games to begin with.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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