Modern Warfare 4 is 2026’s new Call of Duty, set amid Korea conflict

Captain Price is back

Modern Warfare 4 is the title of this year's Call of Duty game, as the longstanding FPS series returns to the subseries after a lengthy absence. Infinity Ward is back at the helm, following the last two years of Treyarch spearheading Black Ops 6 and Black Ops 7, and it's the start of "a new chapter" according to a digital presentation recently attended by Polygon.

A brand-new setting awaits, as Modern Warfare 4 will primarily take place amid a "rapidly escalating global conflict centered on the Korean Peninsula," reads a fact sheet sent to Polygon following the presentation. North Korea is on the brink of invading its southern neighbor, which "ignites a crisis unlike anything the franchise has tackled before."

Why Korea? Jack O'Hara, co-studio head at Infinity Ward explained there are a few different reasons, including the fact that it's a location the series have never been before, and because we're in what's being dubbed as the "third Hallyu wave" right now, which is the name given to the spread of Korean culture globally. However, there's another, somewhat darker reason this fictional Korean conflict is the setting of choice:

O'Hara explained that the two nations have been deadlocked since the Korean war, and as a result, North Korea has thousands of artillery batteries pointed directly at Seoul, the capital of South Korea. To Infinity Ward, it "felt like a setting that could be ripped from the headlines," which is one of the core pillars the team is striving for when telling a story in the series.

He went on to say that it's been a long time since the "grunt perspective" has been portrayed in Modern Warfare, with the series opting for special ops teams and military veterans to lead the way in recent games. Due to South Korea's mandatory military service for adults aged between 18-28, however, it makes for the perfect setting to return to the perspective of young soldiers who "have no idea what's going on" and are blindly following orders, just trying to survive to the next moment.

Korea isn't the only location for the campaign in Modern Warfare 4, though. Captain Price makes a return, but he's on the run after the events of Modern Warfare 3 (2023), where he enacted revenge upon the man who got his friends killed. Internally, he's been referred to as "Dark Price," because this is a completely different side of him to what we've seen before. Price's side of the campaign will see players go to New York City, Paris, Mumbai, and eventually North Korea, because he is somehow tied directly to the conflict happening between the two nations.

On the multiplayer front, classic modes such as Domination, Hardpoint, and Search and Destroy are all returning, but there are also three new core modes: Counter Attack, Inflation, and Hijack. We don't know the details for all of these yet, but Inflation was described as a "high-stakes deathmatch-style mode where players drop bounties and the team holding the most cash at the end wins," according to Jacky Reynolds, the multiplayer design lead.

The game will have 13 maps at launch, some of which will be based on levels from the campaign, but there are also locales coming that are purpose-built for multiplayer. There appears to be a healthy variety, from Silkworm, which appears to be set in the middle of a Korean city, and Rooftops, which looks like the, uh, rooftops in New York, to Nautical, a Wetwork-esque ship map and Cachette, a remote village in France.

However, there's one map that sounds unlike anything we've seen before in Call of Duty: Kill Block, aka the "Westbridge Training Facility." Reynolds described it as "a living map that changes every time you play it." He explained it was inspired by the Santiago Bernabeu, Real Madrid's soccer stadium and how the pitch would split and submerge beneath the ground for other events.

Kill Block is made up of three slabs, where the "center slab" is considered the "hero," aka where most of the engagements on the map take place. Six examples for the hero slab were given, two of which included iconic locations from previous Modern Warfare games: Killhouse and Crash from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Most interestingly, the layout of the map will update as you play, so from one round to the next, you could go from a forest to trenches, despite being in the same place.

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 will be released on Friday, Oct. 23, for Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.