Kingdom Hearts 4 Is Not Getting Delayed Further, Confirms Series Creator

Nomura Wants To “Set The Record Straight”

Kingdom Hearts 4 fans finally got real news over the weekend at Disney’s D23 conference in Anaheim, California. Square Enix confirmed on Friday that the long-awaited RPG is targeting a late 2027 release, more than four years after its initial reveal, followed by a new trailer and a dedicated “Deep Dive into Kingdom Hearts” panel the next night. According to GamesRadar, that news was almost immediately met with fan skepticism about whether the date would actually hold.

Series director Tetsuya Nomura wasn’t originally confirmed to attend the panel, making his appearance something of a surprise. According to VGC, Nomura took the stage anyway, speaking through an on-stage interpreter, to address that doubt head-on. 

We announced that the game is going to be coming late 2027, and I saw online that some people were saying, ‘oh, you know, maybe the actual release date might still get pushed back,'” he said. “I just wanted to set the record straight: that is not happening.”

Nomura also indicated Square Enix plans to keep the momentum going rather than going quiet again before launch, and briefly looked further ahead. “A lot of the marketing for the game has only just started, and so I do hope that people also look forward to hearing more news as well,” he said, adding that with the franchise’s 25th anniversary underway, the team is already “thinking about what the 30th anniversary looks like.”

Yasue Backs The Timeline With “100%” Confidence

Co-director Tai Yasue backed Nomura’s statement with even more specific language. “I can confidently say and promise that it will launch in 2027,” he said. “Schedule-wise, the development is very smooth. It’s not like an 80%, 90%, it’s a 100% thing. We’ll be there in 2027 for sure.”

That kind of certainty is notable given how quiet the project had been for years, and it arrives alongside real new details: Pixar’s Coco has been confirmed as the first Disney world revealed for the game, and Goofy, Donald, and Micky Mouse are playable for the first time.

Confidence Doesn’t Guarantee A Date Holds

There’s a real reason for fans’ skepticism beyond just habit. Kingdom Hearts is notorious for long gaps between mainline entries, with 14 years separating Kingdom Hearts 2 and Kingdom Hearts 3. A late 2027 launch would still mean roughly 8 years between Kingdom Hearts 3 and Kingdom Hearts 4, a much shorter wait by the series’ own standards, but still enough time for plans to shift.

GamesRadar also points to a more recent cautionary tale: Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said in early 2025 that he “felt really good” about GTA 6 launching that year, a game that has since been delayed twice. Square Enix’s own recent history isn’t spotless either. Kingdom Hearts sits within a company that has just confirmed itself as one of Disney’s billion-dollar gaming franchises, and that scale of expectation only raises the pressure on Square Enix to actually deliver on a date this firmly promised.

For now, Nomura and Yasue’s message is about as confident as a pre-launch statement gets. Whether that confidence holds through the next 15 months of development remains the only real question left.