New Resident Evil Requiem Trailer Reveals The Return Of Leon Kennedy

Capcom has released a new trailer for Resident Evil Requiem.

The trailer starts with footage of Grace Ashcroft investigating a man named Victor. Victor came from Umbrella, and is identified as a person of interest in a crime investigation.

While the trailer demonstrates Grace Ashcroft’s survival horror gameplay, it ends with the reappearance of Leon Kennedy. As Grace meets Leon, it appears that we switch between the two characters.

Leon is depicted shooting zombies down, as well as using a chainsaw to drive one down. With Leon’s return, we also see that the game will also feature the action gameplay introduced in Resident Evil 4.

Finally, the trailer shows us a single moment where the game is also identified as RE9, with the q in Requiem doubling as the number 9.

This Was All Foreseen (Or Leaked In Rumors)

Rumors about Resident Evil Requiem have been going for months, and a lot of them were just confirmed tonight. So now we do know that this game really is Resident Evil 9. Capcom was also successful in hiding Leon’s return.

Specifically, we found out a few days earlier that Resident Evil Requiem would be appearing in this year’s The Game Awards, and that Leon S. Kennedy would be revealed.

But now that the dust has settled, we do have to think about what this means for the game.

Do Resident Evil Fans Really Want This?

Don’t listen to the hypemen saying that this will all be great. We would be right to question what this means for Resident Evil Requiem‘s game design.

There has been a split between the Resident Evil fandom that is literally generational. The first generation of Resident Evil games defined survival horror and its conventions.

However, the game would slowly lean to action game design, to the point that Resident Evil 5 was a straightforward action game.

Capcom started to lean back into some survival horror elements in Resident Evil Revelations 2. But in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Capcom made a hard shift to modern survival horror game design.

Capcom has muddled in between Resident Evil‘s survival horror and action elements throughout the franchise’s existence. This new choice to split adventure and survival modes under Grace, and action segments to Leon, is another grand experiment.

Still, for now we can’t deny how great it is to see Leon comeback since Resident Evil 6. It’s been over a decade, and we’re happy for fans to see a familiar face return.

Resident Evil Requiem is releasing on February 27, 2026 for Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows. It is now available to pre-order here. You can watch the official trailer below.