Twenty-five years of XBOX is the focus behind the brand’s gamescom 2026 booth, which opens in Cologne with 25 upcoming games spread across 140 gaming stations. The floor runs Thursday, August 27 through Sunday, August 30 in Hall 7, booth A-0.61, with FanFest and the first live broadcast landing the day before. Alongside the games, XBOX is building interactive experiences that revisit moments and innovations from every console generation.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 takes top billing, with the Core 6v6 multiplayer playable on XBOX Series X for anyone who wants another look after the Early Access Beta. Gears of War: E-Day is arguably the bigger draw, since gamescom marks the first public hands-on with the campaign ahead of its October 6 release. That’s a separate thing from the multiplayer Open Beta weekends, which start earlier on August 6.
Fable gets its first live demo theater presentation from Playground Games, which is a showcase rather than something attendees can play, built around the game’s combat. Minecraft Dungeons II is playable for the first time, as is Stranger Than Heaven, whose demo covers three of the five Japanese cities and eras from the full game and hands you independent control of the left and right sides of protagonist Makoto Daito. Metro 2039 also goes hands-on for the first time ahead of a February 2027 release, which sits inside the winter window 4A Games gave at reveal.
Halo: Campaign Evolved is on the floor as well, letting people try the modernized remake of Combat Evolved’s campaign with its updated visuals and expanded combat options. Forza Horizon 6 is showing off a new Drift Attack feature plus a sneak peek at partnership collaborations dropping over the next few months, and in my review I said it came damn close to being the perfect racing game for me. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 rounds out the marquee list with the first public hands-on for the National Championship Air Races.
The rest of the booth lineup runs wide across third-party and smaller titles:
- Alien Deathstorm
- Alien: Isolation 2
- Bad Magpie
- The Blood of Dawnwalker
- Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse
- Crowsworn
- Genigods: Nezha
- Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy
- Star Wars Zero Company
- Terrible Lizards
- Turok: Origins
- Valor Mortis
XBOX is running live broadcasts from inside the booth at 7:00 AM Pacific (10:00 AM Eastern) on both Wednesday, August 26 and Thursday, August 27, carrying developer interviews, special guests, gameplay reveals, and new trailers. Both streams go out on YouTube and Twitch with American Sign Language and English audio descriptions, and select segments will be available in additional languages. FanFest returns that same Wednesday from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM Pacific (2:00 PM to 5:00 PM Eastern) at the booth, with tickets handed out through a sweepstakes announced on official channels.
The booth itself runs 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM local time Thursday and Friday and 9:00 AM to 8:00 PM across the weekend, and the accessibility setup is worth mentioning. Everything is wheelchair accessible, XBOX Adaptive Controllers are available on request, and select demo stations come with adjustable-height desks and monitors. There’s a quiet room stocked with sensory items for anyone who wants a lower-stimulation break, “Here to Help” staff on hand for adaptive setups, and ASL, BSL, and DGS interpreters plus English and German audio descriptions on site from noon to 5:00 PM Thursday through Sunday.
