Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus II confirms 2026 release with a new trailer and promises of improvements on the demo
Rude cyborg vs. immortal robot strategy sequel Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus II is releasing in Spring 2026, publishers Kasedo Games have announced. For anyone keeping track of the 40K XCOM-alike, that’ll sound like a delay, considering it had previously mumbled something about launching in 2025. But then, we’d reached the dying days of December and it still didn’t have a specific date. Can one delay something that wasn’t dated to begin with?
Yes, actually, since Kasedo’s press release specifically mentions using the time to “further refine the experience in response to player requests following the Steam Next Fest demo” from this past October. There’s also a new trailer, complete with “SPRING 2026” rendered in confident steel, that rather finely details two of the playable faction leaders: posthuman battle-nan Scaevola of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and Omninekh the Necron Lord.
My god, that’s a lot of tech trees and skill unlocks. And the extra few months is apparently going to be dedicated to stuffing in even more features, including re-adding the Admech’s beep-boop binary chatter as a language option; this was replaced by disgusting human-speak in the demo, despite ‘lingua-technis’ having been their native tongue in the first Mechanicus.
“Movement systems are also being enhanced, with an optional setting to allow the Move action to auto-select when cycling between units, creating a smoother and more efficient tactical flow,” the statement continues. Developers Bulwalk Studios will also work on “addressing performance concerns raised during the demo period” – I didn’t play it myself so can’t attest to any framerate wobbles, though a canter through the Achivum Redditorium does turn up multiple complaints of having to manually select the Move command. Have I got good news for those people, about 90 words ago.
I sat and watched a Bulwalk dev play Mechanicus II back at Gamescom 2024, and cumbersome moving aside, it looked alright, especially the asymmetry of the two factions. The titular machine cult are still about gathering Cognition, a resource they can then spend on special attacks or extending move distance, but the system’s been revamped so different units can produce Cognition in distinct ways, up to and including the humble Servitor allowing himself to be shot. The Necrons’s equivalent, Dominion, is accrued through more straightforward means (like, ironically, shooting Servitors), but stacks up attack bonuses over time, potentially turning them into a big old snowball of scowling roboskulls. I couldn’t pay too much attention, though, as I kept thinking about this wanton abuse of the original game’s OST:
Omnissiah help us.