Is Total War: Star Wars real? What are the chances of it actually happening in the future? Many fans of the galaxy far, far away have been wondering about this following several rounds of rumours, but with veteran studio Creative Assembly seemingly busy with other major strategy games, should we get our hopes up?
Here’s everything we know so far about Total War: Star Wars (or the rumblings of it) and what we’d like to see from a potential mix of Star Wars with the enduring “turn-based plus RTS” formula. In the meantime, you can look forward to Creative Assembly’s Total War: Warhammer 40K.
Total War: Star Wars - What We Actually Know
It’s been a minute since the last proper Star Wars strategy title approved by the rights holders at Lucasfilm. Even though Star Wars Zero Company aims to fix that later this year with a mix of XCOM-like turn-based strategy and flexible storytelling set in the Clone Wars, the fans still want a more traditional return to RTS Star Wars games like Empire at War or the scrappier Galactic Battlegrounds.
Chances are something on that front will happen sooner or later, but everyone got their hopes up when rumours surfaced in 2024 that Lucasfilm Games and Creative Assembly could be teaming up for a Total War: Star Wars. DualShockers was fairly certain “three new Total War games” were in dev at the time of writing.
Fast-forward to early 2026 and two new Total War games have been revealed: Medieval 3 and Warhammer 40,000. Thanks to Creative Assembly itself, we know the latter is further along in development, and with Medieval 3 barely into pre-production by late 2025, it’s not unreasonable to believe a third unannounced game could also be in the works, but as you probably know, part of the developer is also hard at work on the long-awaited sequel to Alien: Isolation, so is there even a big enough workforce to have a fourth game in development after combining all its teams?
In early December 2025, insiders pointed to a new Star Wars game being announced “very soon.” Indeed, during the Game Awards 2025 ceremony, not one, but two Star Wars games were revealed: Galactic Racer and Fate of the Old Republic. No signs of Total War: Star Wars, and considering there has been zero official noise suggesting it’s real, we don’t think it’s happening anytime soon.
That said, the new engine refresh, which makes sci-fi warfare doable and enables ports to consoles, also feels tailor-made for a Star Wars game, doesn’t it? We desperately want to believe.
Total War: Star Wars - What We Would Like to See
Whether Total War: Star Wars ends up happening or not, it’s fun to think about how it could actually work, and we’ve got some ideas.
The Clone Wars is the perfect setting
Total War games’ entire thing is the massive scope of its campaign maps, the large amount of different units and factions, and the feeling that you’re in a larger conflict with no end in sight. So far, we think the only established era in Star Wars that could perfectly support that vision is the Clone Wars.
Both the Grand Army of the Republic and the Separatist Army are full of renowned heroes and villains, countless types of soldiers, vehicles, ships, and whatnot. Most of the homework was already done by George Lucas and Dave Filoni’s animated TV show, and it’d just be a matter of putting all that into a familiar Total War package.
A stronger, more focused narrative
As far as strategy sandboxes go, the Total War games are the best you can get, but the downside to the highly replayable campaigns that put player freedom first is that handcrafted narratives (in a traditional sense) beyond inciting incidents aren’t really a thing.
With Star Wars’ history and lore being so dense, there’s more than enough material and opportunities to try to tell a focused story (or stories) within the confines of what a Total War game is. Creative Assembly has the pedigree to take on such a challenge and make the collaboration feel special beyond its IP flavour.
Space battles
Total War: WH40K might be delivering those already if some of the leaked details are to be believed, and even if they aren’t as fleshed out as the ground battles the Total War franchise is known for, they’d be an exciting twist of a formula in need of major gameplay refreshes.
With Star Wars, the idea of having entire fleets clash above planetary surfaces and/or in deep space is too good to pass up. One of the best things about the universe is that all sorts of big battles are common and exciting if executed correctly. We must again circle back to the potential of the Clone Wars era for space combat, but even if the powers that be decided to go with the Galactic Civil War, we’d love to guide squadrons to victory against capital ships again. (That entire side of Empire at War was one of its highlights.)
Modding support
This is probably the most unlikely feature in a modern Star Wars game, but we’re dreamers, and looking at how classics like Empire at War or Jedi Academy have survived for well over two decades thanks to user-generated content on PC, we’ll continue to beat this drum.
Creative Assembly’s popularity, as successful as its games are, isn’t super high right now, so every win could be massive. What better way to shock everyone than by getting Disney and Lucasfilm to entrust players with (part of) the future of an enduring Star Wars strategy game? Frontier and Universal have found plenty of success with similar ideas in Jurassic World Evolution 3, so why not let Star Wars diehards help make a game attractive in the long run?
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