New Lord Of The Rings Game Officially Announced For October 2027

Published Oct 25, 2026, 2:01 AM EDT

Bruno Yonezawa is a Gaming Senior Writer for Screen Rant. He's been practicing professional journalism for over 10 years, and is also a communications specialist. He's played games all his life and turned that passionate hobby into a passionate career, in an industry where he's worked as a writer, editor, analyst, and more.

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A new The Lord of the Rings game has been officially announced, and it’s arriving much sooner than you would normally expect, with a release set for October 2027. The franchise, based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s book series, has been consistently expanding and getting new releases, especially after the Peter Jackson movies were released in the early 2000s. Now, two new Lord of the Rings projects, both led by Peter Jackson himself, are in the works, and one of them is nearly done. Outside of movies, however, the LotR franchise is growing, too, and a new game arrives next year.

While there are a few LoTR video game projects both confirmed and rumored to be in development right now, there is also an expansion of the franchise into the tabletop scene. As seen on a project page on Kickstarter, The Lord of the Rings: The King’s Gambit is also in production, allowing fans of the high fantasy series to embark on a board game adventure across several important locations in Middle-earth, including Minas Tirith and Pelennor Fields. The project has been fully back on Kickstarter, and the estimated delivery is October 2027.

The release of Lord of the Rings: King’s Gambit will enable fans to face off in full-on war for the future of Middle-earth across four different battlefields. This game can be played by up to four players, in matches that are expected to last between 90 and 150 minutes, on average. As war wages on across multiple battlefields at the same time, you’ll need to position and redeploy your troops strategically from one battle to another, as you try to conquer each location. There are two major factions in the game: Servants of the Shadow and the Free Peoples.

Each faction also has different ways of winning the game, be they related to the military efforts or the power of the One Ring. There are also cards, dice, tokens, and objectives in The King’s Gambit, making the sieges for Middle-earth in LoTR feel a lot more alive and complex. A fun thing about this upcoming board game is that it can even be played solo, a mode designed by Dávid Turczi. The draft rulebook is already available to download via Kickstarter if you want to get familiar with what the game will look like.

There are a few different editions of the game, but they do come with miniatures, playmats, and location gameboards. Despite the fact that the board game project has been fully funded, you can partake in a Late Pledge on Kickstarter if you want to ensure a copy of it once it comes out. If you think the game’s name is familiar, it’s because it is: The Lord of the Rings: The King’s Gambit is an adaptation of an official Star Wars board game from the early 2000s called Star Wars: The Queen’s Gambit.

With the funding period having come to an end a few days ago, Restoration Games will be working on the project for the next few months. Because this is a project, it is subject to potential delays, but for now, we can all rejoice that we’ll be able to dive back into The Lord of the Rings with a brand-new board game that intends to capture the ferocity of the battles across Middle-earth.

The Lord of the Rings is a multimedia franchise consisting of several movies and a TV show released by Amazon titled The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. The franchise is based on J.R.R. Tolkien's book series that began in 1954 with The Fellowship of the Ring. The Lord of the Rings saw mainstream popularity with Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies.