The ultra-violent car combat series Carmageddon returns in 2026. Developer 34BigThings announced Thursday that its new take on the nearly-30-year-old franchise, Carmageddon: Rogue Shift, will re-imagine the series with “modern roguelite depth and silky arcade handling,” its creators said.
“We are bringing something fresh to the franchise and the racing genre” said Giuseppe Enrico Franchi, game director of Carmageddon: Rogue Shift. “Carmageddon means explore, experiment, paint the streets red and crumple up opponents. We want our players to adapt, upgrade, and unleash destruction on zombie hordes with glee behind the wheel of a killing machine. Rogue Shift will hit with those who fondly remember the legendary series, and those who are discovering it for the first time — reignited, reinvented and more thrilling than ever.”
Carmageddon: Rogue Shift promises a roguelite campaign with branching event maps and dynamic challenges, with progression between players’ runs in “lethal underground races.” The developers at 34BigThings promise plenty of variety to keep runs interesting: 15 upgradeable vehicles, 13 weapon classes, and more than 80 perks with stackable, synergistic effects. As with previous games in the Carmageddon franchise, players will race against other opponents and take down hordes of zombies — now including supermutated boss variations — and mechanical war machines.
The original Carmageddon was released for PC platforms in 1997. The game drew (intended) controversy for allowing players to run over pedestrians, and was censored in some territories, with robots and zombies replacing the human pedestrians. Original developer Stainless Games released multiple Carmageddon games over the past three decades, including the most recent mainline entry, 2015’s Carmageddon: Reincarnation, and mobile spinoff Carmageddon: Crashers. New developer 34BigThings (part of the Embracer Group) is best known for its work on the high-speed Redout racing games.
Carmageddon: Rogue Shift is coming to Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Windows PC (via Steam and Epic Games Store), and Xbox Series X sometime in early 2026.
