Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 announced for October 23, campaign early access starts October 16

Activision and Infinity Ward have officially announced Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, launching October 23, 2026 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC (Battle.net, Xbox on PC, and Steam), and Nintendo Switch 2. The game will not be available on PS4 or Xbox One. Campaign early access kicks off a week earlier, on October 16, for anyone who digitally pre-orders the Standard or Vault Edition.

The campaign puts you in the boots of Private Park, a young South Korean soldier thrown into a full-scale North Korean invasion. Alongside that storyline, Captain Price is operating off the books — hunting revenge and stumbling into a conflict far bigger than he bargained for. Locations span Korea, New York, Paris, and Mumbai. Multiplayer is built around grounded, precise movement, introduces apex attachments that dramatically reshape weapon behavior, and replaces the old randomized bullet bloom with a new deterministic bullet trajectory system. DMZ also returns as an extraction mode where every deployment forces hard calls about objectives and extraction timing. The Nintendo Switch 2 version is being developed natively by Infinity Ward in partnership with Digital Legends; Beenox is handling PC optimization.

Modern Warfare 4 is the first Call of Duty to offer campaign early access since Modern Warfare 3 in 2023 — a game whose campaign scored 4/10 from IGN. Black Ops 6 and Black Ops 7 both skipped the feature, so its return here is being read as a sign of confidence in this year's story. Notably, the game is not a day-one Game Pass title; new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma pulled new Call of Duty releases from the subscription service, meaning players will need to buy it outright at launch.

The community is already watching the cosmetics angle closely. After years of crossovers with Beavis and Butthead, Nicki Minaj, and others, Infinity Ward's community team has been blunt: "No Lady Gaga. No Omni-Man. No Teletubbies. No SpongeBob. Keep the receipts." The studio says every cosmetic and collaboration will be anchored in the game's narrative. An open beta is confirmed before launch, with more details still to come via the Call of Duty blog.