| Milestone | Date and time | Status on 23 Oct |
|---|---|---|
| Full launch: Multiplayer + everything else | Fri 23 October, midnight local time on PC; 04:00 UTC on PS5 and Xbox | Out now |
| Campaign Early Access (digital pre-orders) | Fri 16 October (PT) | Ended — now part of the full game |
| DMZ Early Access (digital pre-orders) | Tue 20 October (PT) | Ended — now part of the full game |
| Shipment (6v6 map) | Tue 27 October | Coming next week |
| Infected + Possession (Halloween modes) | “Next week”, before Season 1 | Coming next week |
| Season 1 + new Warzone | Not dated | Warzone waits for Season 1 |
| Game Pass | Holiday 2027 | Not included |
The Modern Warfare 4 release date was Friday 23 October 2026, and the game is out now on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC and Nintendo Switch 2. It unlocked at midnight local time on PC and at 04:00 UTC on PS5 and Xbox. Multiplayer opened with 20 maps, joining the campaign and DMZ that pre-order owners had played since 16 and 20 October. Early reviews are strong: 84 on Metacritic for PC. Prices did not move at launch: $69.99 Standard, $99.99 Vault, and no Game Pass until Holiday 2027.
Modern Warfare 4 release date and time
Activision announced Modern Warfare 4 on 28 May 2026 and never moved the date: it launched on Friday 23 October 2026, on every platform at once. That includes Nintendo Switch 2, the first Call of Duty on a Nintendo console since Ghosts in 2013. PS4 and Xbox One are not supported. Infinity Ward leads development, with Beenox handling the PC version.
Modern Warfare 4 unlock time in your time zone
Activision’s PC launch post said it plainly: “the full game releases on October 23 at midnight local time.” So on Steam, Battle.net and the Xbox app the game unlocked at 00:00 on 23 October wherever you were. One quirk we noticed on launch morning: Steam’s store page now gives the release date as 22 October 2026, most likely because a midnight-local launch reaches the Pacific islands and New Zealand while it is still 22 October in UTC. Nothing changed for anyone else: in Europe and the Americas the unlock was still the night of the 22nd into the 23rd.
On consoles, the US PlayStation Store listing for the Vault Edition and Microsoft’s catalogue entry for the Xbox version both carried the same release timestamp when we re-checked them on 23 October: 2026-10-23T04:00:00Z, which is midnight on the US East Coast. Activision never published a console launch map, so a console store set to another region may have unlocked at local midnight instead. This is what 04:00 UTC was where you are:
| Region | Console unlock at 04:00 UTC | Date |
|---|---|---|
| US West Coast (PDT) | 9:00 PM | Thursday 22 October |
| US East Coast (EDT) | 12:00 AM | Friday 23 October |
| UK (BST) | 5:00 AM | Friday 23 October |
| Central Europe (CEST) | 6:00 AM | Friday 23 October |
| Saudi Arabia (AST) | 7:00 AM | Friday 23 October |
| UAE (GST) | 8:00 AM | Friday 23 October |
| India (IST) | 9:30 AM | Friday 23 October |
| Japan (JST) | 1:00 PM | Friday 23 October |
| Sydney (AEDT) | 3:00 PM | Friday 23 October |
How Modern Warfare 4 Campaign and DMZ Early Access went
Campaign Early Access went live on Friday 16 October, as promised, for any digital pre-order of the Standard or Vault Edition on every platform. It was the whole campaign, all sixteen missions. DMZ Early Access followed on Tuesday 20 October. Both are simply part of the game now, so the only lasting difference is what early players banked: finishing missions unlocks eight base Operators (Cho, Dallas, Luca, Oh-Ji, Kal, Dunn, West and Park), Double XP and Double Weapon XP tokens, a calling card, an emblem and a loading screen. Those rewards are still there for anyone who plays the campaign now.
“With launch just days away, we want to walk you through the changes, improvements, and fixes we’ve made as we prepare to welcome everyone into Modern Warfare 4 on October 23.”
— Infinity Ward, Modern Warfare 4 launch patch notes, 21 October 2026
Modern Warfare 4 maps and modes at launch
| Playlist type | Maps at launch | Count |
|---|---|---|
| Core 6v6 | Cachette, Coal, Lithium, Lotus, Mumbai, Munition, Nautical, Reactor U92, Rooftops, Sentry, Silkworm, Transit 213 | 12 (+ Shipment on 27 October) |
| Ground War 32v32 | Imjin Farmland, Wolves Stadium, Forest | 3 |
| Gunfight 2v2 | Cafe, Library, NYC, Smuggler | 4 |
| Kill Block (3v3 and 10v10 Gunfight) | Westbridge Training Facility, a modular map with 500+ layouts | 1 |
There are over a dozen modes on day one. The new ones are Inflation (collect cash from eliminations; big carriers become a High Value Target), Hijack (carry a Data Spike to the enemy Comm Station), Collateral (Search & Destroy with an $800 buy phase) and Combat Outpost for Ground War. Hardcore is in at launch. Infected and a new Halloween party mode, Possession, arrive next week. The new version of Warzone does not arrive until Season 1, and Infinity Ward has still not given Season 1 a date. Create-a-Class unlocks at level 4, and for the first time there are two Prestige paths to choose from.
Modern Warfare 4 reviews: Metacritic and Steam
Critic reviews started appearing on 22 October, and the early verdict is good. When we checked Metacritic on launch morning, PC had a Metascore of 84, “Generally Favorable”, with every counted review positive. The platform card counted 19 PC reviews, though the headline box still said 11. PS5 (7 reviews), Switch 2 (2) and Xbox were still “tbd”, and user scores only open at 12:00 PM PST on 24 October. The highest scores so far are 90 from DayOne and 88 from COGconnected. The Guardian gave it 80, praising the polish but calling the campaign short.
Steam players agree. On launch morning the store page read Very Positive: 89% of 3,043 English reviews, up from 2,245 reviews on 21 October, when only the campaign and DMZ were playable. Multiplayer only opened at midnight, so the score will move over the weekend as Multiplayer reviews arrive. One thing we could not measure is Steam player numbers. Valve’s concurrent-player API returned 0 for the Modern Warfare 4 store app on launch morning. Players most likely count towards Valve’s shared “Call of Duty” app instead, and that number mixes in Black Ops 7 and Warzone, so we have not quoted it.
Modern Warfare 4 preload and download size
Preloading is over now that the game is out: a purchase today downloads straight away. PC preloading opened on Thursday 15 October at 9 AM PT on Steam, Battle.net and the Xbox app, the day before Campaign Early Access. On consoles, the early-access download doubled as the preload, and the Multiplayer data arrived as an update. The official storage figure is 115 GB of free SSD space on PC, up from the 70 GB Activision listed before the beta. Activision warns that mandatory updates may need more. Neither Activision nor the console stores list a console download size we could verify, so leave plenty of headroom.
Modern Warfare 4 final PC requirements
| Component | Minimum | Recommended (90 FPS, High) | Ray tracing (4K upscaled) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Operating system | Windows 10 64-bit | Windows 11 64-bit | Windows 11 64-bit |
| Processor | Ryzen 5 1400 or Core i5-6600 | Ryzen 5 3600 or Core i7-8700K | Ryzen 7 3700X or Core i7-10700K |
| Memory | 8 GB | 16 GB | 32 GB |
| Graphics | RX 470, GTX 970 / 1060 or Arc A580 | RX 6600 XT, RTX 3060 Ti or Arc B580 | RX 9070 XT or RTX 5070 Ti |
| Video memory | 3 GB | 8 GB | 16 GB |
| Storage | 115 GB SSD | 115 GB SSD | 115 GB SSD |
The final minimum specs are actually lower than the beta-era ones: 8 GB of RAM instead of 12, and older CPUs. The storage requirement went the other way. Three settings block more PCs than the graphics card does: TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot must both be on, the CPU needs AVX, and Intel Arc cards need Resizable BAR. Activision recommends AMD driver 26.7.1, NVIDIA 616.56 (Activision said an ASD-compatible NVIDIA driver would follow before launch, so install the newest one) and Intel 32.0.101.8974.
Modern Warfare 4 editions and prices
| Edition | Price (US) | Format | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard Edition | $69.99 | Digital (all platforms) or disc (PS5, Xbox Series X) | The full game: Campaign, Multiplayer and DMZ. Digital copies bought before launch also got the pre-order bonuses |
| Vault Edition | $99.99 | Digital only | The game plus two Operator Packs, five Signature Weapons, one season of BlackCell and a DMZ Deployment Bonus |
| Vault Edition Upgrade | $30.00 | Digital only | Turns a digital Standard Edition into the Vault Edition, on the same platform |
What the Vault Edition adds
- Hostile Alliance Operator Pack — Price, Valeria, Ghost and Blix (Price and Valeria come with masked and unmasked skins).
- Special Forces Operator Pack — four national special-forces Operators from the UK (SAS), Germany (KSK), France (COM SFT) and South Korea, each with a voice pack in their own language.
- Signature Weapon Collection — Kastov 762, ISO Nightshade, Rezi 12, Oris 8.6 and a Combat Knife, each with its own Blueprint; the four guns come with an Apex Attachment.
- BlackCell for one season — the premium Battle Pass tier with 20 tier skips and 1,100 COD Points. It becomes usable when the Season 1 Battle Pass goes live, which Activision only describes as “shortly after launch”.
- DMZ Deployment Bonus — Activision still hasn’t itemised it.
Modern Warfare 4 pre-order bonuses
| Bonus | Digital Standard | Vault | Physical disc | When it arrived |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Campaign Early Access | Yes | Yes | No | 16 October |
| DMZ Early Access | Yes | Yes | No | 20 October |
| Hunter Killer Operator Skin | Yes | Yes | No | Already in Black Ops 7 and Warzone, then in MW4 at launch |
| Inner Circuit M4 Weapon Blueprint | Yes | Yes | No | At launch (OG Green translucent version on Xbox consoles) |
| Gilded Pearl Weapon Camo Pack | Yes | Yes | No | At launch |
Is the Modern Warfare 4 Vault Edition worth it?
Our read hasn’t changed since September: the Vault Edition is a season of BlackCell plus a cosmetics bundle for $30 more. If you would buy the premium Battle Pass anyway, it pays for itself. If you mostly want the campaign, Standard loses you nothing that affects gameplay, and the upgrade stays available. Launch makes the case for waiting stronger, not weaker. BlackCell only starts with Season 1, which still has no date, and the loyalty discount is gone. Buying Standard now and the $30 upgrade later costs exactly the same $99.99.
The 10% loyalty discount has ended
Until launch, returning players got 10% off a Vault Edition pre-order on official platform stores if they owned and had played a qualifying Call of Duty on the same platform account, from Modern Warfare (2019) through Black Ops 7. Activision Support said the discount ran “from now until launch”, so it ended when the game came out on 23 October. It never applied to the $30 upgrade. Anyone buying Vault today pays the full $99.99.
“On launch morning, 23 October, we read the prices straight from the US PlayStation Store page data and Microsoft’s catalogue: $69.99 and $99.99, with the discounted price equal to the base price on both. Steam’s US price for the Standard Edition was $69.99 with a 0% discount.”
— Virtwave editorial check, 23 October 2026
Is Modern Warfare 4 on Game Pass?
No. It launched on 23 October without Game Pass, and Activision’s 15 October post says Modern Warfare 4 “will not be included with Game Pass until Holiday 2027”, roughly a year after launch. Black Ops 6 and Black Ops 7 arrived on Game Pass on day one; that ended with Microsoft’s Game Pass changes in April 2026. Game Pass Ultimate still includes Black Ops 7, Black Ops 6 and Modern Warfare III. Once you own MW4, playing online still needs a platform subscription:
| Platform | Online multiplayer and DMZ need | Other requirements |
|---|---|---|
| Xbox Series X|S | Game Pass Essential (or higher) | Xbox Play Anywhere — one purchase covers Xbox console and Xbox app on PC |
| PS5 | PlayStation Plus | PS5 Pro Enhanced; Remote Play supported |
| Nintendo Switch 2 | Nintendo Switch Online | 1–12 players online |
| PC (Steam, Battle.net, Xbox app) | No console-style subscription | TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot switched on |
| All platforms | Internet connection for multiplayer and DMZ | An Activision account; a linked mobile phone number may be required |
Is Modern Warfare 4 out now?
What time did Modern Warfare 4 release?
What is Modern Warfare 4’s Metacritic score?
How many maps does Modern Warfare 4 have at launch?
When does Modern Warfare 4 Season 1 start?
Is Modern Warfare 4 on Game Pass?
Paying for Modern Warfare 4 with a gift card or wallet balance
Every version of MW4 is bought through a platform store, so wallet balance works everywhere. The rule that catches people is the platform lock: PlayStation balance cannot buy the Steam version, and a Steam purchase will not give you the Battle.net copy. Buy the code for the store you will actually launch the game from, in your account’s country.
| Platform | Standard ($69.99) | Vault ($99.99) | Pays with |
|---|---|---|---|
| Xbox Series X|S / Xbox app on PC | $70 Xbox card | $100 Xbox card | Microsoft account balance |
| PS5 | $70 or more PlayStation Store credit | $100 PlayStation Store credit | PlayStation wallet |
| Steam | $100 Steam card (leaves $30.01) | $100 Steam card | Steam Wallet |
| Battle.net | Two $50 Blizzard cards | Two $50 Blizzard cards | Battle.net Balance |
| Nintendo Switch 2 | $70 or more in eShop funds | $100 eShop card | Nintendo eShop funds |
The detail worth reading on any wallet code is the activation country, not the currency. On our store every card lists it — the Xbox card above says United States, so it only works on a US Microsoft account. Step-by-step redemption is in our guides to redeeming Xbox codes, redeeming a PlayStation gift card on PS5 and which Blizzard Battle.net card amount to buy. Planning to pick up COD Points for the Season 1 store as well? Our COD Points guide explains why points bought on one platform stay on that platform. And if you want the bigger picture behind the series — lifetime sales, monthly players and how much Call of Duty has earned — see our Call of Duty statistics report.
The Microsoft Store pre-order credit
This offer has closed: it covered digital editions bought from the Microsoft Store (Xbox console or Windows) before 11:59 PM ET on 22 October. If you qualified, Microsoft adds a small promotional Xbox gift card plus Dual 2XP Tokens. It turns up in Offers & credits within 35 days of launch, must be redeemed by 15 December 2026 and spent within 90 days. In the offer terms we read, it was $5 in the US, £4 in the UK, €5 in the eurozone, $5 in the UAE and 20 SAR in Saudi Arabia, limited to one per customer.
Modern Warfare 4: launch weekend checklist
- Undecided between editions? Buy Standard now. The $30 upgrade later brings it to the same $99.99, and BlackCell does nothing until Season 1.
- On PC: free 115 GB+ on an SSD, switch on TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot, install the Xbox PC app for Advanced Shader Delivery, and update your GPU driver.
- Play a few campaign missions first: they unlock eight Operators and Double XP tokens you can use in Multiplayer.
- Check Game Pass Essential, PS Plus or Nintendo Switch Online is active, or Multiplayer and DMZ will not start on console.
- Link a phone number to your Activision account — it may be required to play.
- Mark 27 October for Shipment, and expect Infected and Possession next week.
Sources & how we checked this
We first checked every date, price and requirement on 17 September 2026, re-checked it all on 21 October, and updated the post on launch morning, 23 October 2026 (around 10:30–10:45 UTC), with the launch content, the first review scores and the launch-day prices. We will check again when Season 1 is dated.
- Call of Duty — Modern Warfare 4 launch patch notes (21 October: 20 Multiplayer maps, new modes, two Prestige paths, Warzone at Season 1)
- Call of Duty blog — Ready for Launch: Multiplayer maps and modes (21 October: every launch map, Shipment on 27 October, Possession and Infected before Season 1)
- Metacritic — Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 (critic scores per platform, 23 October)
- Call of Duty blog — Campaign Early Access is live (16 October: 16 missions, completion rewards, DMZ from 20 October)
- Call of Duty blog — Modern Warfare 4 launches October 23 as a standalone release (15 October: Game Pass from Holiday 2027)
- Call of Duty blog — MW4 PC trailer, tech updates and system requirements (PC preload 15 October 9 AM PT, midnight local launch, 115 GB, Advanced Shader Delivery)
- Call of Duty blog — launch Operators, weapons and Create-a-Class (33 weapons, 33 Operators, Warzone integration in Season 1)
- Call of Duty blog — progression and Prestige (55 Multiplayer levels, 70 DMZ levels, Season 1 “shortly after launch”)
- Activision Support — Modern Warfare 4 editions (early access dates, pre-order bonuses, loyalty discount “until launch”)
- Call of Duty blog — all game editions and pre-order benefits (Vault contents, platforms)
- Steam — Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 (US price, release date, requirements, review score)
- PlayStation Store (US) — Modern Warfare 4 Vault Edition (prices, 04:00 UTC release time)
- Xbox — Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 (US prices, online requirement)
- Microsoft Store — Modern Warfare 4 pre-order offer terms (promotional gift card)
Method: we read each source directly. We pulled the release timestamps from the US PlayStation Store page data and Microsoft’s public catalogue, and read Steam’s launch-day price from its public store API and the review count from the store page. We took the Steam screenshots ourselves on 21 October and the Metacritic screenshot on 23 October, converted UTC into local times by hand, and searched the Virtwave catalogue for the game and the wallet cards linked above. Read more in our editorial policy.
Rayyan covers console and PC gaming wallets for Virtwave, with deep specialism in PlayStation Network, Xbox, Razer Gold and Steam. He has been writing about digital gaming commerce since 2020.
