Call of Duty 2026 could break from a recent tradition after major Activision shift

It deserves a bigger reset

Activision has announced a huge change for the Call of Duty series: we'll no longer be seeing consecutive releases in either the Modern Warfare or Black Ops subseries.

From 2005 until 2022, each annual Call of Duty release has had a different lead developer, usually alternating between Infinity Ward and Treyarch, with Sledgehammer Games taking point on a few too. Modern Warfare and Black Ops have been prominent throughout — and despite some divergences with games such as Ghosts, Advanced Warfare, and WWII, that alternation in developer has also translated to an alternation in each subseries, too.

In 2023, Modern Warfare 3 was released just a year after Modern Warfare 2, bucking that trend; despite Sledgehammer Games taking the lead for that one, it was the first time we'd seen two Modern Warfare games in a row. This year, Black Ops 7 immediately followed Black Ops 6. But the latest release hasn't had the best reception; our Black Ops 7 campaign review explains how it's one of the worst the series has seen, and while our take on the multiplayer isn't quite as damning, there's no hiding the fact Battlefield 6 has blown them out of the water on the sales front.

This announcement can, and arguably should, be read as an admission of fault from Activision. Back-to-back releases where the game is so similar to the one that came before have evidently resulted in a game that feels stale to the playerbase because they often seem like nothing more than expansions or DLC. In fact, there were rumors that's exactly what Modern Warfare 3 was planned to be, before it was turned into a full price, standalone release. Player counts are down and the main competitor is outselling Call of Duty, so Activision needs to take action, and this is the first step towards that.

What does Battlefield offer that Call of Duty doesn't? The answer's simple: they don't release a game every single year. This solution to not rush and ship consecutive Modern Warfare or Black Ops games just 12 months on from the last is fine, but it isn't what the series needs. On the multiplayer and Zombies front — essentially, the replayable, endless modes that Call of Duty needs players to return to in order to succeed — Black Ops 7 isn't bad! Zombies is especially impressive this year, and the maps in multiplayer are generally fantastic, thanks to a change in the core design philosophy.

This is a solid foundation that can lead to a thriving game with two or more years of support with post-launch content. We've already seen this begin with Black Ops 7 season 1, which has been dubbed "biggest seasonal content update ever" in Call of Duty history. So keep supporting this game for more than a year, please. Call of Duty is the only major series outside of sports games that insists on this annual release cadence, and Battlefield proves that a lengthier gap — in its case, four years between 2042 (which was also universally panned on launch) and Battlefield 6 — can be incredibly fruitful.

Having a longer development time for new entries in the series also means developers can iterate more, and with the official announcement saying they "will drive innovation that is meaningful, not incremental," I'm optimistic that's what the Call of Duty teams are aiming for. Black Ops 6 had a fantastic campaign, but everything it did well was abandoned for the direct sequel. Likely not because they didn't want to do something that impressive, but because they simply didn't have the development time. That's also, speculatively, the reason these back-to-back games in the same subseries happened in the first place: lack of time to develop a full game from scratch.

It's time to take a step back, Activision. Black Ops 7 isn't a bad game, if you disregard the campaign. The developers say they "won't rest until Black Ops 7 earns its place as one of the best Black Ops games" they've ever made, but for that to happen, it needs to be given the chance to flourish for more than a year.