Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy Locks In a January 28, 2027 Launch Date
Owlcat Games has confirmed Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy launches January 28, 2027 on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, with a Switch 2 version to follow.
Owlcat Games has set a launch date for its second Warhammer 40,000 role-playing game. Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy arrives on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S on January 28, 2027, the studio confirmed today in a post on the game's official site alongside a new Release Date Announcement Trailer. A Nintendo Switch 2 version is also planned, though Owlcat has not yet given it a date.
From Acolyte to Inquisitor
Dark Heresy casts players as a newly appointed acolyte of the Inquisition, investigating heresy and corruption across the Calixis Sector for the mysterious Tyrantine Cabal. It is a party-based, story-driven cRPG in the mould of Owlcat's Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, but built around investigation rather than starfaring command. Players interrogate suspects, piece together conspiracies, and decide how far they are willing to go in the Emperor's name, with the studio promising multiple endings shaped by those choices.
The warband surrounding the player draws from across the Imperium and beyond it: a veteran Astra Militarum guardsman from the death world of Catachan, a towering Ogryn conscript, a sanctioned pyromancer psyker, and xenos allies including a Kroot tracker and an Aeldari corsair all travel together, each with fully voiced dialogue and their own perspective on the investigation.
A Long Road Through Early Access Testing
Dark Heresy has spent more than a year in public testing ahead of this date. An alpha opened on Steam in December 2025, followed by a closed beta for Founder's Pack owners in May 2026 that Owlcat has kept running ever since, folding in community-voted rewards as the game's wishlist count climbed past one million. That beta is now entering its final stretch: Owlcat says it will close on January 7, 2027, three weeks ahead of launch, to let the team focus on polishing the full release.
Founder's Packs, including the Core, Premium and Developer digital tiers and a physical Collector's Edition, remain on sale through early January. Owlcat is also reminding anyone who has already pre-ordered the Collector's Edition to double check their shipping address on the game's site, since physical orders are due to ship shortly after launch.
Turn-Based Combat With Teeth
Outside of its investigations, Dark Heresy leans on turn-based tactical combat that rewards targeting enemy weak points and managing each party member's morale, which Owlcat says directly affects combat effectiveness when kept high. The studio has framed the system as more deliberate and build-focused than Rogue Trader's, with an original score built to underline the weight of the Inquisition's missions as they escalate. The team has also said it drew on player feedback from the alpha and beta periods to rework how investigations branch, so that a botched interrogation or a missed clue can close off one path to the truth while opening another.
A Studio Finishing One 40K Game to Start Another
Dark Heresy is Owlcat's second original Warhammer 40,000 role-playing game, following 2023's Rogue Trader, and much of the new game's design and writing team overlaps with that project. Owlcat has said staff are moving onto Dark Heresy full-time as Rogue Trader's final expansion, Lex Imperialis, nears its own release, giving the smaller, more investigation-focused game a team already fluent in the setting's bureaucracy, factions and grim sense of humour. Where Rogue Trader put players in command of a sprawling voidship and its crew, Dark Heresy narrows the scope to a single warband working the ground level of the Imperium, a shift the studio has pitched as broader in narrative variety even as its scale shrinks.
Where to Find It
Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy is available to wishlist now on Steam, with listings also live on the Epic Games Store and GOG. Console release details for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S pre-orders have not yet been detailed beyond the January 28 date, and Owlcat says more announcements are coming before launch.
Official links
Theo covers the business of games for Gamers6: studio moves, platform strategy and the press releases nobody else finishes reading. He files most days before the coffee is cold.
