Warhorse Studios just had one of the biggest weeks any mid-sized RPG developer has had in recent memory. Not only did the Czech studio confirm that a new Kingdom Come: Deliverance game is in development with a fiscal year 2027 target — putting its release window somewhere between April 2027 and March 2028 — they also confirmed the long-swirling rumour that they are developing an open-world Middle-earth RPG set in Tolkien’s universe. Two major RPG projects simultaneously. For a studio of Warhorse’s size, that’s an extraordinary hand to be holding.
How the Announcement Actually Happened
The original reveal came on May 20, 2026 via a social media post from Warhorse Studios coinciding with Embracer Group’s latest earnings call. The post read: “You might have heard the rumours, it’s time to reveal what we are working on” — and then confirmed both a new Kingdom Come adventure and an open-world Middle-earth RPG in a single announcement. The reaction was immediate. Comments ranged from pure hype to fans simply writing “You have my money” without further elaboration.
The timing matters. Embracer Group, which owns Warhorse Studios, announced on the same day that it was spinning off a new division called Fellowship Entertainment, specifically built around its major IP holdings — including the Lord of the Rings franchise and Warhorse itself. The double-announcement appears to have been partly designed to generate excitement ahead of Fellowship’s IPO, but that doesn’t diminish what was confirmed. Both games are real and in active development.
A follow-up stream on May 21 then added more detail. Warhorse Communications Director Tobias Stolz-Zwilling and Community Manager Tom Grey went live to clarify that the new Kingdom Come game is an open-world RPG targeting fiscal year 2027, with lead designer and new Creative Director Prokop Jirsa leading the project. Design Director Viktor Bocan has been appointed Creative Director for the Middle-earth RPG and is heading that project.
What We Know About the New Kingdom Come Game
Warhorse has been deliberately careful with their language here. They used the phrase “a new Kingdom Come adventure” rather than calling it Kingdom Come: Deliverance 3 outright. That distinction is meaningful — it suggests the next entry may not be a direct continuation of Henry’s story but could instead explore a different period, protagonist, or corner of medieval Bohemia. Given how decisively KCD2 closed Henry’s arc, a fresh perspective might actually be the stronger creative choice.
What has been confirmed is that it will be an open-world RPG in the same tradition as its predecessors, targeting a fiscal year 2027 window — so anywhere from April 2027 to March 2028. Former director Daniel Vávra, who co-created the franchise and directed both previous entries, will not be leading this one. Vávra has stepped away from game development entirely to work on a Kingdom Come: Deliverance movie that Warhorse also announced this week, which is a fascinating move for a franchise that’s earned that kind of cross-medium expansion.
Prokop Jirsa, who served as Lead Designer on KCD2, steps up as Creative Director for the new game. His deep familiarity with the systems and design philosophy of the series makes him a logical choice to carry the torch, even without Vávra in the chair. Stolz-Zwilling was emphatic in the follow-up stream: “Kingdom Come: Deliverance always was and still is and always will be an absolute passion project here in the studio.” For fans worried that the Lord of the Rings project signals a shift in priorities, that statement was as direct a reassurance as you’re likely to get before a formal reveal.
What We Know About the Lord of the Rings RPG
The Middle-earth project is the more mysterious of the two, and in many ways the more immediately exciting as a concept. Warhorse described it simply as an “open-world Middle-earth RPG” and used the Lord of the Rings hashtag — but notably never said “Lord of the Rings” by name in the post itself. That phrasing — “Middle-earth” rather than “Lord of the Rings” — could hint at a story set outside the Third Age entirely, which would open up the enormously rich First Age and Second Age history that Tolkien documented in The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales.
Viktor Bocan, who served as Design Director on both Kingdom Come games, is leading this project as its Creative Director. The connection to someone who built his career on historically grounded open-world RPGs is the reason this announcement immediately generated excitement. The Lord of the Rings gaming space has been defined recently by middling tie-ins — the Gollum game in 2023 was widely panned, and Amazon’s Lord of the Rings MMO was cancelled just days before Warhorse’s announcement. The idea of a studio with KCD2’s pedigree applying their open-world design philosophy to Middle-earth is a legitimately compelling prospect.
The timing of the reveal — coming immediately after the Amazon MMO cancellation — wasn’t planned, but it couldn’t have landed better for Warhorse. The Middle-earth RPG audience suddenly had nowhere to go, and here was a serious studio announcing a serious project in the same week.
The Fellowship Entertainment Spin-Off and What It Means
The structural context for all of this is important. Embracer Group — which has been going through a brutal restructuring period over the past two years — announced the spin-off of Fellowship Entertainment as a dedicated subsidiary focused on its premium IP portfolio. Fellowship will encompass Warhorse Studios, the Lord of the Rings IP, and other major Embracer franchises. The IPO setup means Fellowship needs to demonstrate a strong slate of upcoming projects to investors, and a new Kingdom Come game plus a Lord of the Rings RPG from the same studio is as strong an opener as you could ask for.
For players, the practical meaning is that both games have clear financial backing and institutional support going forward, independent of Embracer’s wider corporate turbulence. Fellowship is being structured specifically to protect and develop these IPs, which is a more stable position than some Embracer subsidiaries have found themselves in over the past two years.
Where Does This Leave Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2?
KCD2 launched in February 2025 to outstanding critical reception, landing in Game of the Year conversations alongside Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. The game completed its final DLC content in late 2025, at which point Warhorse publicly stated it was looking for new challenges. The announcement of both a sequel and a Lord of the Rings project answers that question definitively.
For context on how well KCD2 performed — it became one of the best-selling RPGs of 2025 and demonstrated definitively that the historically grounded open-world RPG format Warhorse pioneered has a genuine mainstream audience. That success is almost certainly what unlocked the Lord of the Rings IP for the studio. Publishers don’t hand their most valuable franchises to teams without a proven track record, and KCD2 is a very strong track record.
A new Kingdom Come game targeting 2027, a Lord of the Rings RPG somewhere behind it, a movie in development, and a studio with two critically acclaimed games behind it — Warhorse’s next chapter is shaping up to be something genuinely special. More details on the Kingdom Come game are expected at a major showcase in June.
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