During this year's D23 event at the Anaheim Convention Center and Honda Center in Anaheim, California, Square Enix presented a new Kingdom Hearts IV trailer and revealed its release window of late 2027 . The timing is perfect, as the franchise will celebrate its 25th anniversary next year.

The new trailer shows that the world of Coco , 2017's Pixar movie themed around the Mexican Day of the Dead tradition, is featured in Kingdom Hearts IV. The Japanese publisher also shared the following overview of the game:

As the Kingdom Hearts series nears its 25th anniversary, a fresh adventure unfolds. Sora awakens in the strange realm of Quadratum. While he searches for a way to navigate back from this contemporary city to his original world, his companions Donald and Goofy venture into the Underworld, hoping to uncover clues about his location.

The exhilarating, fast-paced combat system enables players to seamlessly blend attacks and magic while creating combos through an innovative battle feature. They can switch up the Keyblade that Sora wields to unleash distinctive attacks, aligning the rhythm of battle with their personal strategies and gameplay style.

Kingdom Hearts IV was first revealed in April 2022 during the franchise's 20th-anniversary celebration, kicking off a new storyline called the Lost Master Arc . The game takes place roughly a year after the events of Kingdom Hearts III. Sora awakens in Quadratum , a large, realistic city inspired by Tokyo's Shibuya and Minami-Aoyama districts, after using the Power of Waking to save Kairi.

There, he reunites with Strelitzia , a Keyblade wielder previously introduced in the mobile game Kingdom Hearts Union χ. Series director Tetsuya Nomura has described Quadratum as "a world behind the scenes that is different from reality," though he noted that from the perspective of its inhabitants, the world feels entirely real. Quadratum will serve as Sora's home base for the early part of the game, with Sora's apartment in Minami-Aoyama functioning as the player's initial hub before he ventures to other worlds and returns.

On the gameplay side, previous trailers have shown the return of a variation of the Flowmotion traversal mechanic, along with familiar abilities such as magic and Sora's signature Keyblade combat. Footage has also shown Sora using a Keyblade's keychain as a grappling hook and climbing building exteriors in a manner reminiscent of Kingdom Hearts III.

Kingdom Hearts IV, powered by Unreal Engine 5 , will be available on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S and X, and Nintendo Switch 2.

About the author : With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.

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