Xbox Developer Direct confirmed for January 2026

One of the few decisions made by Xbox in recent years which has turned out to be a success has been the launching of their Xbox Developer Direct Showcase. Having taken place in January of 2024 and 2025, it comes as little surprise that Microsoft is planning a 2026 edition of the showcase – now confirmed to be going live next month.

In an interview conducted by the publication Variety, president of game content and studios at Microsoft ‘Matt Booty’ confirmed that a 2026 edition of their dev direct will be happening in January, while also teasing some of the expected projects, stating:

“I can't share exactly what's there, but we've got a lot of stuff that we're shipping next year. In fact, usually Dev Direct is about highlighting what's coming up for the year ahead. This year, we've got more stuff coming up than we can fit in one show.”

Booty continued, “So I will tell you that Playground Games is going to be in the Dev Direct, but we'll have more stuff next year to ship than we can fit into one Dev Direct show in January, which is a good place to be.”

Whether this means that Xbox will host a second direct later in the year, or will instead save up those announcements for other industry shows we will have to wait and see. That said, Microsoft has been pretty successful with their Developer Directs so far and so it is encouraging to see them continuing the practice.

KitGuru says: Have you enjoyed the previous Xbox Directs? Outside of Forza, what do you hope to see shown off? Will we get a look at Fable? Let us know your thoughts down below.

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