The franchise is set to rise from the grave in 2028
According to a recently released end-of-year financial report from Dambuster Studios, a third entry in the Dead Island series is currently in development. Per the financial report (first spotted on BlueSky), Dambuster is all hands on deck for Dead Island 3, which is slated for release sometime in 2028.
“After the release of Dead Island 2 Ultimate Edition in October 2024, the primary focus for Dambuster Studios is now Dead Island 3,” the report reads. “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.”
Dead Island 2 was initially planned for development by Techland, which created 2011’s Dead Island and its 2013 spin-off, Dead Island: Riptide, but Publisher Deep Silver eventually accepted a sequel pitch from Yager Development. The partnership with Yager ended when Deep Silver and Yager’s visions for the game “fell out of alignment” in 2015. By March 2016, it was announced that Sumo Digital had taken over development of the project, but after a few years of silence, players learned that Dead Island 2 was now in the hands of Deep Silver’s own internal studio, Dambuster Studios. The game finally launched in April 2023. By September, it had surpassed 20 million players, and Deep Silver greenlit a third mainline entry.
Still, it looks like players will have to wait a few years to sink their teeth into Dead Island 3, which is currently projected to arrive sometime in the first half of 2028.
“Parts of the game are now in early production with feature, character, world and story design moving at pace,” Dambuster’s 2025 fiscal report reads. “The current predicted release window for the project is Q1/2 2028.”
