Ubisoft revealed Rainbow Six Tactics at Gamescom 2026’s Opening Night Live show: the first single-player Rainbow Six game in 19 years, and a turn-based tactics title built in the style of XCOM. The game is due on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox in 2027, developed by Ubisoft Paris with the team behind the Mario + Rabbids series leading the project. It’s a rare full singleplayer outing for a franchise that has spent most of the last decade as a live-service shooter.
A turn-based campaign built on Siege’s cast
The story picks up after the events of Siege Year 10, centred on rebuilding Rainbow, a plot that Ubisoft has mostly told through seasonal lore videos until now. The playable cast draws 15 operators from Rainbow Six Siege, and a press briefing ahead of the show included Ash, Montagne, Glaz, Doc and Nook. Characters from the Vegas series also feature, though Siege is the clearer source material for the plot.
Combat plays out turn by turn, in the vein of XCOM: players use cover and destructible environments to outmanoeuvre enemies, gather clues and unpick a global conspiracy across a number of locations worldwide. Operators carry over the same weapons, gear and tactical tools tied to their loadouts in Siege, rather than a fresh kit built for the campaign, and the environments themselves are meant to be worked rather than just moved through, in keeping with the genre’s emphasis on positioning over reflexes.
Filling a 19-year single-player gap
Rainbow Six Siege’s runaway popularity hasn’t translated into much else in the franchise. Aside from Rainbow Six Extraction, a co-op spin-off that dropped operators into a fight against an alien parasite and never found the audience Ubisoft wanted, the series has stuck to updating Siege itself for years. Tactics is the first attempt at a traditional single-player Rainbow Six campaign since the franchise’s earlier singleplayer era, and the first time Ubisoft has built a full story mode around Siege’s cast rather than treating them as reskins for a different genre.
The Mario + Rabbids team takes on a harder tone
Ubisoft Paris also made the Mario + Rabbids games, and Rainbow Six Tactics applies that turn-based formula to a much harder property. The pitch leans on cover, flanking and destructible terrain rather than the fast, arcade gunplay that built Siege’s audience, which is why the XCOM comparison keeps coming up rather than any earlier Rainbow Six game.
What Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Tactics reveal adds
Ubisoft’s own reveal post frames Tactics as a direct continuation of Siege’s decade-long story, not a spin-off borrowing its cast for flavour, which matters given how much of that story has only ever reached players through seasonal cinematics most skip past. TechPowerUp reported that the project had already leaked back in January 2026, months before Ubisoft confirmed anything, so today’s reveal is less a surprise than the closing of an open secret.
What to watch next
Ubisoft hasn’t detailed a specific release date beyond 2027, nor confirmed the full operator roster past the 15 shown in the briefing. The reveal landed amid a wider run of Gamescom-week gaming news, including leaked Xbox Series X25 price and release date details; expect more on Tactics’ mission structure and platforms as Ubisoft moves toward a fuller gameplay showing.
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