Kingdom Hearts 4 creator Tetsuya Nomura has directly rejected speculation that the long-awaited RPG could slip beyond its newly announced late 2027 release window. Speaking during Disney’s D23 event, Nomura said he had seen players questioning whether Square Enix could actually hit the date and responded clearly: “That is not happening.”
The unusually firm statement came shortly after Square Enix and Disney confirmed that Kingdom Hearts 4 is targeting late 2027. Rather than leaving room for uncertainty, Nomura addressed the delay discussion himself, saying he had noticed comments online suggesting the release could move and wanted to make the situation clear.
Co-director Tai Yasue went even further. Yasue said he could “confidently” promise the game would release in 2027 and described development as being firmly on schedule. He stressed that the team was not merely 80% or 90% confident, but “100%” certain it would make the announced window.
That confidence matters because Kingdom Hearts 4 has already had a long road to release. Square Enix first announced the game in April 2022 as part of the franchise’s 20th anniversary celebrations. A late 2027 launch would therefore put more than five years between the initial reveal and the finished game, while also arriving roughly eight years after Kingdom Hearts 3 debuted in 2019.
The latest showing suggests Square Enix is finally moving into a more active phase of the game’s promotion. At D23, Disney and Square Enix presented around four minutes of Kingdom Hearts 4 footage, expanding considerably on the approximately 90 seconds previously shown during the event.
The footage confirmed a world based on Pixar’s Coco, with Sora travelling through the Land of the Dead. Nomura said the team selected Coco because it offered particularly strong opportunities to connect Disney’s setting with Kingdom Hearts gameplay.
Other returning characters shown or discussed included Donald, Goofy, King Mickey, Hades and Maleficent. Developers also revealed a Paper Mickey Mouse world that will allow Mickey to become playable in a storybook-style environment, with mechanics involving movement through wall cracks, transformation into an airplane and puzzle solving.
Kingdom Hearts 4 itself continues Sora’s story after Kingdom Hearts 3, with the protagonist trapped in Quadratum, a fictional city inspired by Tokyo’s Shibuya district. The game is planned for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2.
Nomura has also indicated that the marketing campaign is only beginning, meaning considerably more information should emerge before launch.
Release dates can always change during a lengthy development cycle, but Square Enix’s messaging is unusually definitive this time. With both Nomura and Yasue publicly attaching themselves to the 2027 target, the studio has effectively turned the late-2027 window from a tentative target into a promise players will now expect it to keep.
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