Square Enix left Kingdom Hearts 4 out of Summer Game Fest last week, turning another major gaming showcase into another day without a real update for a sequel fans have been chasing since April 2022. Instead, the company used the moment to push Final Fantasy 7 Revelation toward a spring 2027 release window, keeping attention on a different marquee project from the same game division.
The timing matters because Kingdom Hearts has been one of gaming’s biggest mysteries since Tetsuya Nomura first unveiled Kingdom Hearts 4 four years ago, along with a trailer that introduced Quadratum, a strange new world that looked more realistic than the series’ earlier settings. Square Enix also announced Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link that month, and the mobile project was later canceled in May 2025 as part of what the company called a strategic shift from quantity to quality. When that cancellation was announced, Square Enix released a few new screenshots from Kingdom Hearts 4, giving fans one of the few signs that the game was still alive.
Nomura tried to calm that impatience a few months later, saying the game was making great strides and going according to schedule. But the silence around the project has only grown harder to ignore. Square Enix has offered no official Kingdom Hearts 4 update for more than a year, even as fans kept scanning major gaming events for any sign that the series would return to the stage.
That gap is what made Summer Game Fest sting. Square Enix’s Creative Business Unit 1 handles the mainline Final Fantasy franchise, the Final Fantasy 7 remakes and the Kingdom Hearts series, and last week it chose to talk about Final Fantasy 7 Revelation instead. The pattern fits the company’s recent history: Final Fantasy 16 was announced in 2020 and released four years later, while Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth was announced in June 2022, less than two years before it shipped. By contrast, nearly six years passed between the announcement and release of Kingdom Hearts 3.
For now, the clearest answer is also the least satisfying one for fans: Square Enix does not appear ready to show Kingdom Hearts 4 again until it wants to shift the spotlight away from Final Fantasy. The next official update is still unknown, and until the company breaks that silence, Kingdom Hearts remains the game everyone is waiting for and no one can yet place on a calendar.
