After Years of Rumours, Total War: Warhammer 40,000 is Finally Coming

After announcing Total War: Medieval III only a week ago, Creative Assembly has doubled down on the exciting news with an announcement trailer that's been a long time coming - Total War is going to the grim darkness of the far future - Warhammer 40,000 is coming!

The Total War series has long been a series for epic, world spanning battles and conflicts, but until recently has been purely focused on the historical (and fantastical, adding the Warhammer Fantasy Battle license in there too - but I'm going to call it historical-style from now on).

Since 2000's Shogun: Total War, developer Creative Assembly has done little else (aside from a few left field titles and the like from its now defunct Australian subsidiary). I'd be selling the company short to not mention 2014's absolutely brilliant Alien: Isolation, but aside from that, futuristic titles have been very few and far between for the industry veterans.

So when rumours began swirling of a Warhammer 40,000-based Total War game, I'll admit I was more than a little dubious. The gameplay loop of Total War is well tuned to work with historical-style games. There's a focus on land movements, limited sea travel, and the technologies of most game tend to start primarily melee-based before slowly moving toward more powerful ranged weaponry. Battles tend to largely focus around smashing large armies against each other on relatively open battle fields.

Warhammer 40,000 doesn't quite have that vibe. The armies tend to be more smaller and more mobile, and quite often find themselves fighting within the confines of hives, industrial complexes or other close quarters environments. So for sure, a Total War: Warhammer 40,000 would require significant tweaks to the formula to work.

But the rumours are no more - Creative Assembly officially announced Total War: Wargammer 40,000 at the Game Awards during the week with an exciting but relatively detail-poor cinematic trailer (with a tiny bit of early gameplay tacked on the end).

What We Know So Far on Total War: Warhammer 40,000

The press release accompanying the trailer was reasonably light on detail but did include a few important details around what players can expect.

Four factions will come to the game at launch: Space Marines, Astra Militarum, Orks and Aeldari. It's interesting to not see Chaos as part of the launch lineup for the game, however Creative Assembly state that while Chaos are "not in the game at launch, they’ll absolutely be part of our plans at some point" - pointing toward likely post-launch DLC focused on the traitor legions or other aspects of Chaos. Total War: Warhammer (and its sequels) went hard on the DLC front (for better or worse), and it seems like the Warhammer 40k variety is likely to follow the same path.

The game promises numerous customisation options, with players able modify the name and colours of their army, as well as to "emblazon [their] regiments with an array of iconography that strikes fear into the hearts of [their] enemies". The initial press images make some reference to this, featuring shots of a Space Marine army in three different liveries, also showing a few different weapon and equipment customisation options.

There's also the promise of a "galactic scale" sandbox, confirming players will be managing fleets and fighting for planets rather than fighting for a singular planet. Still, the exact scale of the overworld, and how exactly fighting over planets will work is yet to be seen.

Game Director Attila Mohacsi states the Creative Assembly team "spent years imagining what Total War could look like in the grim darkness of the far future, and now we’re in the process of making it a reality".

The Path Forward

Creative Assembly say they don't have a release date for Total War: Warhammer 40,000 at this point, but will have more to share on this in the new year. They did however confirm that the game will be launching on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.

On 16th December 2025, Creative Assembly will be releasing what they're calling a "small roundtable" with some of the crew working on the game. There won't be a heavy gameplay focus in this roundtable, and it will be more based around the creative process of bringing the setting to life.

More details around the campaign are promised in the northern-hemisphere Spring.