Earlier this month, we got our first hint at what to expect from Call of Duty 2026 as branded soda cans began showing up at certain retailers, but over the last few days, some official happenings in the world of COD have provided real teases about this year's title. It's very much looking like Modern Warfare is back for 2026.
This has been rumoured for some time now, but over the weekend, our first official hints at a return to Modern Warfare materialised. First off, Infinity Ward's MW19 currently has an unprecedented offer running on Steam (it's 90% off right now, COD titles usually only drop by about 50-60%). Furthermore, the team has also enabled a double XP weekend for the MW reboot, more than six years after it first launched.
This has all lead to an explosion in players over the last few days. Indeed, Modern Warfare has hit a peak concurrent player count of more than 60,000 on Steam in the last 24 hours, which is actually more than the modern Call of Duty launcher; which hosts both Warzone and Black Ops 7. This has all been done to build hype around Modern Warfare again, and it's clearly working to some degree.
But, what does this mean for COD 2026? Well, it's now looking extremely likely that a return to the Modern Warfare franchise is on the cards, with 'MW4' being rumoured for months now. In any case, we know that long-time COD dev Infinity Ward is at the helm, and we're likely to see this year's game revealed by Xbox and Activision at some point over the next few months.