Dead Island 3 is currently expected to release in Q1 or Q2 2028 as developer Dambuster Studios dedicates all of its resources to the upcoming zombie game sequel.
Despite its troubled development, Dead Island 2 not only brought the series back into the spotlight, offering visceral combat that made it easy to overlook its more repetitive aspects, but also managed to draw the attention of enough people to see the series continuing.
Dead Island 3 Currently Targeting Q1/Q2 2028 Release
As spotted by timur222 on Bluesky, developer Dambuster Studios’ latest annual financial report sheds some light on how far along in development the sequel has come as of March 2025, the end of the company’s previous financial year.
“After [the] release of Dead Island 2 Ultimate Edition in October 2024, the primary focus for Dambuster Studios is now Dead Island 3,” the studio confirms.
“All developers are assigned to the project and once the Luna and Mac versions of Dead Island 2 are complete, all of Dambuster’s QA team will also be assigned to Dead Island 3.”
Parts of the sequel were in “early production” as of March 2025, “with feature, character, world and story design moving at pace.”
The studio currently expects Dead Island 3 to release at some point in either Q1 or Q2 2028.
Dead Island 2 Ultimate Edition’s Luna and Mac versions came out earlier this year, in April and July, respectively.
Later in September, the title celebrated 20 million sales, when its follow-up was also teased. By the looks of it, Dead Island 3 will be set in a new location, leaving Los Angeles behind.
We’ll likely hear more about Dambuster Studios’ next game over the coming months. While development timelines can shift, we hopefully won’t have to wait as long for it as we did for Dead Island 2.
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