The Elder Scrolls 6 Gets Official Release Date Update From Bethesda

Published Oct 22, 2026, 5:23 AM EDT

James is a gaming writer from London who has spent thousands of hours exploring titles from every genre. Though he has a particular affinity for multiplayer titles like World of Warcraft, Destiny 2 and League of Legends, he has also put thousands of hours into single-player experiences, from deep RPGs to epic PC strategies. When he's not playing or writing, he can usually be found supporting his beloved Brentford FC.

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It has been fifteen whole years since Skyrim released for the first time, blowing everyone away with its sprawling take on the RPG genre. Back then, it would have been scarcely imaginable that we wouldn't be a playing a new game in the series by 2026, particularly given that the game between games previously had only been around 4–5 years.

Even worse than that, it doesn't really seem like The Elder Scrolls VI is on the immediate horizon, given that we have basically seen nothing of it so far beyond a five-second announcement trailer. Add to that everything that's going on at Xbox right now, and the situation feels like it can't be anything other than a bit bleak for the average player.

Well, as it turns out, the latter might not be affecting the development of the game quite as much as it might first appear, hopefully meaning a reveal could be on the horizon over the next year or two.

As first reported by Eurogamer, Bethesda was one of the studios affected by the layoffs at Xbox over the last six months or so. Within that, the main game studio lost fifty staff members, and though they didn't describe exactly what their roles were at the time, they were described as "key, high-performing people in the trenches" by internal sources.

As worrying as that is, it might not have affected development on the next Elder Scrolls game quite as much as it would first appear. Specifically, the YouTuber Mr Matty Plays sent over a bunch of questions to the developer about how things were progressing in light of the layoffs, who retorted by simply saying, "The roadmap [for TESVI] is unaffected."

The studio also commented on their new strategy of dropping a bunch of information on the heads of fans. You might remember that they broke down everything they were working on a few months back, confirming production on Fallout 5 and two Fallout remakes, as well as a bunch of other projects (including TESVI).

That's seemingly going to be a bit of a theme moving forward, after Bethesda confirmed a major shift in their communication strategy, saying, "Look, we read the internet too. All of our fans and plenty of creators have been asking for us to lay out our road map for a long time. As bits of info or announcements come out individually, they get lost in the larger picture of all we're doing as a studio."

"So, we felt it was best to do it all at once and paint a clear picture for everyone," it added. "This is a shift in our approach to communication that Bethesda Game Studios has been contemplating for some time now."

The fact remains that Bethesda has millions of fans of their games all over the world, and The Elder Scrolls VI will be an enormous commercial success whenever it drops. That said, it would be nice to see it soon, before we're all too old and grey to play it properly.

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