2026 Has Been a Surprisingly Excellent Year for Shooters

Developers big and small keep hitting the mark this year

All the way back in January, it seemed like 2026 might be a rough year for fans of shooters. Highguard’s launch and almost immediate delaunch created an anxiety around the genre that was hard to shake. Scrutiny around Marathon in the lead-up to its launch doubled that uncertainty, leaving some to wonder if the shooter genre — at least in its trusty live-service form — was going out of fashion.

Rumors of the shooter’s demise were greatly exaggerated, it turns out. Looking back at the year from October’s vantage point, 2026 has turned out to be a landmark year for the genre. While sales have been erratic at times, this year has given us plenty of big-budget and indie shooters alike that have revitalized a category that needed some fresh blood.

Xbox has been a major player in that charge, despite having a disastrous year from a business perspective. Even so, the studios working under the publisher have still found a way to deliver a handful of hits. Chief among them is Gear of War: E-Day, which has been a hit with critics and players alike since launch. It’s a highly polished throwback to the golden age of cover-based shooters, one that packs a lot of delicious brutality into a lore-expanding prequel campaign. With Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 positioned as a similar return to glory, Xbox could wind up with two behemoths on its hands this year.

PlayStation had its own notable contributions to the genre. Housemarque’s Saros landed as a critically acclaimed follow-up to the roguelike action of Returnal. Then there’s the weird case of Marathon, the extraction shooter that has struggled to lock down a massive player base since launch. While developer Bungie is currently in the process of retooling it, the game has earned some dedicated supporters who have praised the shooter for its satisfying action, slick art direction, and top-notch world-building.

Even Nintendo is in the conversation, against all odds. Splatoon Raiders successfully took the multiplayer fun of the ink-shooter series and adapted it into an ingenious looter-shooter. It was a big hit with Switch 2 owners; it’s currently the third-highest rated game of 2026 on Metacritic based on user reviews. As for other major publishers, you can give Capcom some credit for Pragmata. The hacking-shooter put an inventive spin on a genre that’s difficult to truly innovate, and players were happy to go along for the ride.

Outside of the big players, indie developers have taken the space by storm this year. Wardogs is the alpha leading the pack at the moment. Despite garnering some mixed reviews, the tactical shooter has been a major hit on Steam since it launched. It’s easy to see why: It scratches an itch held by those who grew up with games like Battlefield 3 exceptionally well.

Live-service shooters saw some promising signs of life across the board, despite Highguard and Marathon’s struggles. Overwatch has had a major year, finding new life with a slew of high-profile updates that have turned the narrative around on Blizzard’s decade-old standby. Embark Studios was also able to keep its momentum going with Arc Raiders thanks to its successful Frozen Trail update.

The list only gets longer when you dive into the indies. Mouse: P.I. for Hire offered a cheeky, cartoon spin on the boomer shooter that resonated with audiences. Sprawl Zero is an excellent, fast-paced ode to PS2-era shooters. Don’t Stop, Girlypop! playfully dressed Doom up in bright pink. I’ll go to bat for the underrated High on Life 2, which has all the energy of a Ratchet and Clank game. Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 joined that list this week, bringing another round of thrilling retro action to Warhammer fans. The hits just keep coming.

As exciting as all of that is, some games have come with major asterisks. Over at Xbox, for instance, both Halo: Campaign Evolved and Doom: The Dark Ages’ Revelations DLC were dampened after layoffs gutted the teams responsible for them. Halo Studios and Id Software deserve some flowers for delivering well-received games in their respective franchises in the midst of a drastic company reorganization.

Indie developers weren’t safe from the harsh realities of the current industry landscape either. Weeks after launching the excellent Luna Abyss to rave reviews, publisher Kwalee laid off the entire development team. To say it’s a shame would be an understatement; Luna Abyss still might be my favorite shooter of 2026, thanks to its unsettling atmosphere and snappy combat.

It’s hard to know how 2026 will be remembered when everything is said and done. Grand Theft Auto 6 is sure to change the narrative for the year right at its finish line, with a generationally successful cash cow papering over countless stories of mass layoffs. It’s impossible to ignore the bigger picture of an industry that has failed to take care of the people making games. But I hope we can carve out some space to celebrate what developers accomplished this year, against high-stakes and distressing odds. The wide success of shooters in 2026 should remind us that there’s still innovation happening at every level of gaming, and the industry should be doing everything in its power to retain the talent responsible.