Warhorse Studios Teases Open-World Middle-earth RPG And New Kingdom Come Adventure
Warhorse Studios has confirmed two projects in development, but teased fans by being cryptic and withholding further information. In a post on its official X account, the Czech studio announced that it is working on an open-world Middle-earth RPG and a new Kingdom Come adventure, with no further details beyond the confirmation. Naturally, it's now caught the gaming community excited. But the studio did not give any release windows, platforms, working titles, or gameplay information. The studio said it will "tell you more when the time is right."
The cheeky announcement carries a lot of weight. Warhorse built its reputation on two of the most grounded, immersive medieval RPGs of the past decade in Kingdom Come: Deliverance and its sequel, and the studio now has a licensed creative sandbox with no obvious ceiling set in Middle-Earth.
A Middle-earth Game, Not Necessarily a Lord of the Rings One
Warhorse's post described the project as a "Middle-earth RPG" rather than explicitly calling it a Lord of the Rings game, which is a deliberate distinction. Middle-earth encompasses all of Tolkien's legendarium: the First Age, the Second Age, the Numenorean era, the War of the Ring, and well beyond. Calling it a Middle-earth RPG leaves the studio room to explore territory that hasn't been touched by previous games in the license, similar to how Monolith previously explored the time between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. That flexibility is intentional and interesting.
Warhorse is owned by Plaion, which is part of Embracer Group, the current holder of Middle-earth entertainment rights. Reports by Vice have pegged Warhorse's upcoming Middle-Earth open-world game's budget at $100 million. For a studio that has operated in the grounded medieval space with Kingdom Come, the pivot to fantasy is significant, but not as jarring as it might look: both properties demand large-scale open worlds, historically and lore-grounded storytelling, and complex faction systems, stuff that Warhorse already showed mastery over.
A New Kingdom Come Adventure, Not Necessarily Kingdom Come 3
The second project is described as "a new Kingdom Come adventure," not Kingdom Come: Deliverance 3 or a direct sequel. That language could mean a great many things: a standalone spin-off, a different protagonist in the same version of Bohemia, a new historical era, or an entirely parallel story set in the same world. Heck, it could even turn out not to be a game but an extension of the Kingdom Come universe to other media like comics or a TV series. Warhorse was deliberately non-committal, which suggests the project is still in its early development, and details could still change as time passes.
Both games (if, they are both games indeed) are in development simultaneously, which makes Warhorse a significantly larger studio operation than it was when the original Kingdom Come: Deliverance shipped in 2018. This development is exciting for fans of open-world games, especially since Warhorse has shown what they can accomplish with their first two sprawling epics. Whatever shape these games take when they're finally revealed in full, the ingredients are there for something genuinely ambitious.
Copyright The Arena Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This story was originally published May 20, 2026 at 3:02 PM.