Nintendo Switch 2 owners want to know what games will be coming out later this year, as the second half of 2026 still looks particularly bleak. Splatoon Raiders just confirmed its release date, so now we know at least one of the games that will help fill out the second half of Nintendo's release schedule this year.
The Splatoon spinoff got a lengthy new trailer this morning, but if you don't have the Nintendo Today app, you might have missed it. Just as it revealed the release date for the upcoming Zelda movie, the major Splatoon Raiders update was only shared on the app.
Splatoon Raiders will be Nintendo's July release
That's exactly what Nintendo confirmed. Splatoon Raiders will be released exclusively for Nintendo Switch 2 on July 23, 2026. There's over three minutes of new game footage that confirms that Raiders will be a single-player only experience. In case you couldn't tell that from the new footage alone, Nintendo will make it clear at the end with a badge that says it's a “single-player focused Splatoon game.”
It's been pretty clear since the reveal of Raiders that this won't be like a standard Splatoon game, but it's surprising that it focuses entirely on solo play. Every Splatoon game to date has been rooted in playing with other people or against other people. It seemed like there would at least be a co-op element in Raiders, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
The setting of Raiders is quite different from the core Splatoon games. The new trailer shows off more of the island where most of the game will likely take place. But everything else about it is unmistakably Splatoon. The guns and brushes are taken from the main game, as are the brightly colored paints you'll fire to take down what appear to be mostly new enemies.
I even spotted the big man there, which immediately convinced me that this was going to be a fantastic game.
Check out other games on the Nintendo calendar
Nintendo tends to release one big first-party game every month, so let's take a look at their release schedule and see what this means for the rest of the year. Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream was the featured game in April, while Yoshi and the Mysterious Book took the helm in May. Splatoon Raiders will likely be July's big game, which means June is still on the up and up.
There are more games to be revealed, but for now the only leaks and rumors are known about what they are. One of them is reportedly a new Star Fox game, and there may be an Ocarina of Time remake coming soon. Splatoon Raiders is the only game Nintendo has officially released.
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