God of War Laufey Has a Date, and Santa Monica Confirmed Kratos Is Coming Back After It

Laufey is the first mainline entry in the series where Kratos is not the protagonist. You play as Faye, the Norse warrior also known as Laufey the Just, Kratos's wife and the mother of Atreus. If you have played the 2018 reboot, you know her mainly by her absence: she dies before that game begins, and her final wishes set its entire journey in motion. Laufey rewinds the clock to tell her story directly, long before she ever met Kratos.

Santa Monica frames Faye as a legendary warrior and leader whose mark on the Nine Realms predates the Kratos saga entirely. The adventure reaches into a place the studio calls the Everywhen, described as the birthplace and endpoint to which all magic returns. Deborah Ann Woll reprises Faye, joined by companions Phranque, voiced by Jack Quaid, and Rue, voiced by Perlina Lau. It is a deliberate reset of who a God of War game can be about, sold on a character the existing games treated as a ghost.

The second half of the announcement is the part that reframes everything. Barlog confirmed that after Laufey, a new God of War starring Kratos is in the works, and that it connects directly to the events of Faye's game. In other words, Laufey is not a one-off detour. It is being positioned as setup, a prequel whose threads the studio intends to pull forward into another Kratos-led entry.

The caveats matter. Santa Monica shared no plot details, no setting, no platforms, and no release window for that Kratos game. It exists as a confirmation and a promise, nothing more. But confirming it now, on the same stage as Laufey's date, is a choice. It tells anyone worried that a Kratos-free God of War signals the end of an era that the studio sees Laufey as a bridge, not a goodbye.

For years the question hanging over God of War was where it could go after Ragnarok closed out the Norse arc. Handing the lead to Faye and then immediately lining up Kratos's return is Santa Monica's answer: expand the universe sideways into its own history, then come back to the man everyone knows. February 16, 2027 is now a fixed point on the PS5 calendar, and it doubles as the opening move of a two-game plan.

We have not played Laufey, so this is not a verdict on whether a God of War built around a new lead holds up over a full campaign. What is confirmed is the shape of it: a PS5 exclusive, dated, starring the one character the series always kept offscreen, with a Kratos sequel already waiting behind it. For a franchise that could have coasted on its formula, that is a genuinely bold way to spend the next two years.