During Gamescom Opening Night Live, 2K and Gearbox officially announced Borderlands 4. While exciting, the announcement wasn't totally unexpected.
Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford had previously been teasing that a new Borderlands game was in development. We just didn't know how far along it actually was. Now we know it's coming next year.
"The definitive looter shooter arrives in 2025," the Borderlands 4 website teases. "See if you have what it takes to go down in history as a legendary Vault Hunter as you search for secret alien treasure, blasting everything in sight."
The announcement was accompanied by a brief teaser trailer that gives us a glimpse of an all-new planet, and the moments directly following the ending of Borderlands 3. For those who haven't played the previous installment, 2K has offered a bit of a wrap-up:
After a pursuit that took the Crimson Raiders across the universe, Lilith finally regained her stolen Siren powers—but Pandora's moon of Elpis was on a catastrophic collision course with the planet. To save all of Pandora, Lilith was determined to "run towards the fire" and launched herself at Elpis, teleporting the entire moon into unknown space and leaving behind the Firehawk emblem. Now we've seen where Elpis ended up—along with the cataclysmic aftermath.
“The team and I at Gearbox have a lot we’ve wanted to do with Borderlands since we first introduced the looter shooter genre to the world with our original game,” said Randy Pitchford, founder and President of the Gearbox Entertainment Company. “All of us at Gearbox have massive ambitions for Borderlands 4 and are putting everything we have into making everything we love about Borderlands better than ever before while taking the game to new levels in exciting new directions.”
The announcement comes at an interesting time as the Borderlands movie adaptation just recently released in theaters. While 2K and Gearbox were probably hoping the movie would boost the excitement for a new Borderlands game, the film has performed poorly both critically and commercially at the box office. The movie currently sits at just a 10% on Rotten Tomatoes, making it one of the worst-reviewed films of the year, with just a 53% audience score.
Of course, the movie is only related to the Borderlands video games by name alone and in no way will impact the excitement heading into Borderlands 4's release. We don't yet have a release date, although the press release confirmed it will launch sometime in 2025 during Take-Two's Fiscal Year 2026. It will be available on PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.