Borderlands 4 gets official announcement, few other details at Gamescom

Borderlands 4 — Official Teaser Trailer This story is part of our Summer Gaming Marathon series.

2K Games announced the long-awaited Borderlands 4 at Gamescom Opening Night Live on Wednesday, complete with an intense cinematic trailer.

This is an announcement trailer through and through, complete with a CGI cinematic with no characters beyond a faceless Vault Hunter picking up a Psycho mask. There wasn’t a lot of information revealed, but we know a couple of things. It’ll follow a similar plot to past Borderlands games: You play as a Vault Hunter looking for a mysterious and powerful vault. The trailer also shows what we believe is Pandora, the planet where the series mostly takes place, floating violently through space before it gets hit by fiery meteors. Borderlands 3 took players to other planets beyond Pandora, so it’s possible we’ll see even more beyond Pandora in Borderlands 4 — especially if it gets destroyed.

The game currently has a 2025 release window, and is available to wishlist on Steam. The Steam addition is a surprisingly big change, as Borderlands 3 launched as an Epic Games Store exclusive before eventually coming to Steam six months later. It’ll also be available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.

As Opening Night Live host Geoff Keighley said, this game didn’t leak, so it worked as a good first announcement. New Gearbox owner Take-Two Interactive did previously reveal that Borderlands 4 was in the works. In a recent interview with The Gamer, Gearbox founder Randy Pitchford admitted he hasn’t done a great job hiding its existence, either.

This is welcome news for Borderlands fans, who just had to watch the long-gestating movie adaptation hit theaters with poor reviews and an even worse box office return. The last game released in the franchise was New Tales from the Borderlands in 2022, which continued the Telltale story-driven spinoff Tales from the Borderlands. Players last got first-person shooter action with Borderlands 3 in 2019, but also