Heya Everyone! With Hollow Knight: Silksong's launch year coming to a close, we wanted to take a moment and share a peek at what we've been working on, what's available now, and what's coming in 2026. But firstly, and most importantly, we wanted to say a huge thank you to all the players who've braved Silksong's distant and dangerous lands. That's over seven million of you who've purchased the game, alongside millions more playing on Xbox Game Pass!

It's a truly staggering number of players, more than we could have ever expected (enough to crash all of the storefronts!). Watching the community grow, seeing the amazing art, the mods, the unexpected strategies, and the support between players through the game's challenges has been hugely rewarding for us here at home. Your continued enthusiasm remains a massive motivator as we work towards expanding the game even further. That first big expansion is already well underway!

Hollow Knight: Silksong was one of the most anticipated game launches of 2025, shoring up enough excitement that other indie game developers postponed launches to avoid being overshadowed, and Steam's servers crashed on launch day. Despite this, Ari Gibson, co-founder of Team Cherry, the studio behind the Hollow Knight franchise, said in a recent Bloomberg
interview that there are other things the development outfit would rather make. Team Cherry is still working on ambitious content updates for Silksong, although the studio is notorious for its long development timelines. When asked about whether the studio's next game release would be a Hollow Knight game, Gibson said that "We have said we'll go elsewhere as well. Although we've also said those experiences will still be about exploring big worlds full of weird characters and giant bosses and whatnot."

Gibson continued that "That's not to say we won't return to these Hollow Knight worlds. We do have ideas around what forms those would take. But we also don't want to be exclusively people that make Hollow Knight." But it's not all bad news for Hollow Knight fans. One of the motivations for Team Cherry's desire to pursue other universes and new characters is passion—it would open up new creative possibilities and could have an interesting effect on the storytelling or the outcome. Gibson and his Team Cherry co-founder, William Pellen, were also asked about what they thought of people modding Silksong to tweak damage, add difficulty sliders, and the response was that "the fact that people are modding it is totally fine," with Gibson going on to explain that, even though tweaking difficulty runs counter to the game's approach to problem-solving, keeping it difficult forces the developers to think creatively and create alternatives for players when impassable obstacles appear. This outlook and acceptance of the modding community is somewhat refreshing, especially compared to instances where game developers and distributors have taken down game mods and removed access to mod tools.

Team Cherry Games has teased a "special announcement" about Hollow Knight: Silksong for Gamescom 2025. The game developer is obviously playing things close to the chest, but it seems likely that this announcement will finally reveal the release date for the sequel to the wildly popular Hollow Knight. The teaser, posted on X at 9:32 AM CT, suggests the announcement will take place in 48 hours, meaning August 21 at around 9:30 CT (14:30 UTC). The announcement will also premiere on YouTube.

Hollow Knight: Silksong was announced as the successor to the smash-hit Metroidvania, Hollow Knight, as long ago as 2019, and the game has suffered several setbacks, with an initial planned 2023 release being pushed back indefinitely. A late 2025 release date was then confirmed by Team Cherry, more or less lending credence to the idea that this Gamescom announcement will finally reveal the actual release date for Silksong. Recent reports have also confirmed that Silksong, or at least a demo of the upcoming Metroidvania, will be playable at Gamescom.

Team Cherry first introduced Hollow Knight: Silksong back in February 2019, as a mainline sequel to the first entry (2017) in the series. Since then, the independent Australian development studio and publisher has produced a minimal amount of preview material. The last significant chunk was delivered during an Xbox 2022 presentation. Fast-forward to June (2025); many Metroidvania genre enthusiasts were hoping for some newer signs of life—potentially amid a flurry of special preview events. Pre-event SteamDB updates seemed to point to an imminent announcement of sorts. Days later, Sony's State of Play and Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest did not harbor any fresh Hollow Knight series updates.

Thankfully, yesterday's Xbox Games Showcase provided a hint of things to come. Sarah Bond (President of Xbox) discussed the status of Team Cherry's magnum opus during Microsoft's public unveiling of ASUS ROG's Xbox Ally and Ally X gaming handhelds: "the highly anticipated Hollow Knight: Silksong will be available at launch, and on Game Pass, when the Ally releases later this year." Unsurprisingly, Team Cherry did not launch a parallel promotion/hype campaign. Instead, Matthew Griffin—the team's resident PR and marketing expert—headed over to the official Hollow Knight Discord community channel, and disclosed some pleasing news: "I confirmed BEFORE Holiday—we are not tied to a console release." When pressed about a specific launch window, Griffin envisioned a pre-Christmas arrival.

Hollow Knight: Silksong's long gestation period has frustrated many Team Cherry fans. The Adelaide, Australia-based independent development and publishing house has only released one title: Hollow Knight (2017). The much-anticipated sequel was officially delayed two years ago; a "planned" H1 2023 launch window was scuppered. Since then, Metroidvania genre fanatics have pored over the slightest of new details or external insights. Team Cherry has maintained a very low profile the ensuing years, but hopes were elevated in March. At the time, Microsoft's ID@Xbox initiative boasted about their empowering (aka supplementary funding) of development on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Descenders Next, FBC: Firebreak, and "of course Hollow Knight: Silksong." Early last month, Team Cherry's PR and marketing chief—Matthew Griffin—confirmed that the team was working on versions of Silksong for Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 consoles. Aditionally, two new in-game screenshots emerged via Nintendo of Japan's official website.

Fresh signs of activity were welcomed and celebrated by the upcoming game's intended audience. More good news has turned up this week—eagle-eyed observers noticed that The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) will be previewing a playable build later this year. As disclosed within a new exhibit description: "Game Worlds transports you inside the levels of 30 unforgettable video games, from global blockbusters like World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment) to pioneer of the life simulation genre The Sims (Electronic Arts), Neopets (World of Neopia) and highly anticipated Australian title Hollow Knight: Silksong, plus more to be announced." The Melbourne-based museum could attract an unprecedented number of paying gamer tourists; playable titles will be showcased until February of next year.

Team Cherry, the indie development outfit responsible for producing smash hit 2D platformer Hollow Knight (2017), has this week announced that the sequel - Silksong - will be missing its proposed early-ish 2023 launch window. The Australian team's publishing and marketing manager Matthew Griffin confirmed via a tweet that Hollow Knight: Silksong is still a work-in-progress project: "Hey gang, just a quick update about Silksong. We had planned to release in the 1st half of 2023, but development is still continuing. We're excited by how the game is shaping up, and it's gotten quite big, so we want to take the time to make the game as good as we can."

Hollow Knight: Silksong was first revealed to the public back in 2019, with Team Cherry taking a quiet approach to the release of preview material since then. A playable demo was on show at E3 2019, but a wider internet-based public has only had access to a pair of video trailers, some screenshots and minimal written details on official sites and product pages. Silksong was initially conceived as a DLC/expansion for the base game, but the designers expanded their project's scope - thus creating a standalone and entirely new entry in the series. It seems that the development team's ambitions have grown over the years - Griffin has not confirmed a revised release date but requests that fans wait for further announcements: "Expect more details from us once we get closer to release."