After being pushed back to a vague 2026 release window, the Switch 2 port of Elden Ring is now slated to launch at the end of summer.
When Nintendo announced the first batch of games for the Nintendo Switch 2 last year, one of the many third party games confirmed to be getting a dedicated port was Elden Ring.
It was initially announced to launch before the end of 2025, but after some less than flattering comments about its performance emerged from a public Gamescom demo, the port was delayed into 2026.
If you were expecting a re-reveal at a future Nintendo Direct – perhaps the one rumoured for next week – publisher Bandai Namco has decided to continue the current trend for boring unveilings and just announce it’ll be out on August 28 via social media.
As a reminder, this Tarnished Edition of the game also includes the Shadow Of The Erdtree DLC plus two new starting classes and character customisation options. These will be made available for the other versions of Elden Ring as well.
Although it was suggested that the game’s allegedly poor performance on Switch 2 had been exaggerated, there must’ve been some truth to it as Bandai Namco acknowledged the delay was to ‘allow time for performance adjustments.’
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With the Switch 2’s first anniversary tomorrow on June 5, it’s become clear that the console is far more powerful than initially expected, capable of running demanding games like Cyberpunk 2077 very well.
However, it’s also apparent that these ports work as well as they do because real time and effort was put into them. And for as beloved as FromSoftware games are, they’ve always struggled from a technical standpoint, so something like Elden Ring would’ve needed a lot of time in the oven.
While this new release date is good news for Switch 2 owners, we’re more interested in learning what FromSoftware’s next traditional Soulslike could be.
It’s been four years now since Elden Ring and while there was Armoured Core 6 in 2023, FromSoftware has otherwise been busy with multiplayer-centric games.
It launched Elden Ring Nightreign last year, which was decent but a far cry from the studio’s usual calibre, and its next project is PvPvE game The Duskbloods, which is also exclusive to the Switch 2.
There’s a good chance The Duskbloods will feature in next week’s rumoured Nintendo Direct (where it’ll hopefully get a firm release date beyond a 2026 window), but that still leaves PlayStation, Xbox, and PC owners with no traditional FromSoftware game any time soon.
FromSoftware does have multiple projects in development, but it’s already ruled out an Elden Ring 2. It was rumoured last year that the studio would launch another game in 2026 besides The Duskbloods (this was before the Elden Ring delay), but some suspect it could be a remaster of Dark Souls 3 rather than something entirely new.
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