Naughty Dog used the closing moments of this year’s The Last of Us Day celebrations to drop a surprise fans have been waiting on for years: the studio is actively working on two brand-new projects set in the world of The Last of Us. Studio head Neil Druckmann shared the news in a blog post on Naughty Dog’s official site on September 28, ending months of speculation about whether the franchise had a future beyond its existing entries.
According to Druckmann, both projects are still in very early development — so early that the studio isn’t ready to share much about them. What he would say is that each one “will expand the canon of The Last of Us beyond Part I and Part II,” meaning neither is a retread of Joel and Ellie’s journey or Abby’s story. Beyond that, details are nonexistent: no titles, no platforms, no release windows, and not even confirmation of whether the two projects are video games at all.
That deliberate vagueness is worth noting. Druckmann never calls either project a game, and Naughty Dog has dabbled in screen adaptations and other formats before — most notably through the HBO series, which Druckmann himself helped shepherd. Still, for a game studio with a full development pipeline, the likeliest reading is that at least one of these is interactive. Fans hoping for an outright The Last of Us Part III announcement didn’t get one, and this isn’t that.
What makes the announcement land is the timing. It’s been more than six years since The Last of Us Part II released in June 2020, and the franchise’s momentum has been uneven since. Naughty Dog cancelled its ambitious multiplayer spin-off, The Last of Us Online, back in December 2023 after years of work — a decision that left a lot of fans wondering if the studio would ever return to the universe. The idea of telling more stories there has been simmering in interviews since the Grounded II documentary, and now it’s official.
Druckmann’s framing was characteristically careful: the studio, he wrote, wouldn’t go back to this world “unless we had something meaningful to say,” adding that “we believe these stories are worth telling.” In game-development terms, “very early stages” can mean anything from a pitch document to a rough vertical slice, so expect a long wait before anything surfaces publicly.
The blog post also touched on Naughty Dog’s other big swing. Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, the sci-fi title revealed at The Game Awards 2024 and the project Druckmann stepped back from HBO to focus on, won’t get its full reveal until 2027. Druckmann described it as shaping up to be the studio’s most ambitious game yet, but said the team needs “to cook for just a little bit longer.” The studio is going quiet for the rest of 2026.
The Last of Us Day itself had plenty of smaller offerings: a first themed animated background for the PlayStation 5 welcome hub, official franchise social accounts, a limited Bloody Clicker figure with Youtooz, new PlayStation avatars, and a charity stream that raised more than $11,000 for AbleGamers. Nice touches — but this is the headline fans will be talking about for a long time.
Sources:
- https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2026/09/new-the-last-of-us-projects-in-very-early-stages-of-development
- https://www.gematsu.com/2026/09/two-new-the-last-of-us-projects-in-very-early-stages-at-naughty-dog
- https://fictionhorizon.com/the-last-of-us-isnt-finished-yet-neil-druckmann-confirms-new-projects-that-push-beyond-part-ii/