If you have the Nintendo Today app installed, you woke up this morning to a notification for the sort of news you might expect to see instead in something like a Nintendo Direct. Splatoon Raiders just got its first new trailer since its initial announcement last year, and a release date of July 23, 2026 served up alongside.
Yeah, right? We really haven’t seen anything from Splatoon Raiders for almost a year, when the announcement trailer for the game similarly quietly popped up on Nintendo Today. Splatoon Raiders is a single-player-focused Splatoon game set in a new location: the Spirhalite Islands. As usual, you play as an Inkling, and team up with the members of Deep Cut (including Big Man in a mech suit, let’s GO!) to explore the islands and hunt for treasure. The trailers show you with your squadmates fighting off Salmonid foes, some familiar to Splatoon players and some brand new, across what looks to be a pretty expansive map.
What I’m here for are some of these new weapons and abilities, though. In today’s trailer we got a look at all sorts of new toys, alongside what appear to be interesting new ways to customize them. Your character is a mechanic, and thus seems to be able to upgrade weapons and mix and match abilities to get the exact combos you want. There’s one part of the trailer where the Inkling goes ham on some enemies with what looks like an ink axe attached to the back of their ink tank, another where they set up a proper sniper turret, and another bit where they seem to use an entire live shark—not the Reefslider, an actual shark—to chomp through a pile of foes. There’s also this sick shield…thing…where a bunch of ink discs start spinning around you and slice through anything that gets too close. Some of the shots show ink tanks with what look like three or four unique attachments, suggesting quite an array of possibilities, and that’s not even touching weapon attributes like increasing different kinds of attack power or speed or what-have-you.
I love Splatoon and have played all three games extensively, but I’m not the most competitive person and dropped off the multiplayer as my friends who were teaming up with me got bored. The idea of a purely single-player-focused Splatoon where I don’t have to worry so much about competing with others and can just enjoy exploding evil fish fiends into gooey blops of ink sounds fantastic.
One thing that’s perhaps a bit less apparent from this trailer is how extensive the fashion elements might be. Inklings are basically cool tentacled dress-up dolls, and while not getting to suit them up in the coolest threads around would make sense thematically (you’re on a deserted island?), it would still be a bummer. The Inklings in the trailer DO seem to wear different outfits at different points, they’re just not what I would call high fashion. Look, Nintendo, I don’t need it to make sense. Just give me some big glasses and a sick jacket to wear while I squid around.
With Yoshi and the Mysterious Book out in May, and Rhythm Heaven Groove out July 2, that…basically gets us most of the way through the summer for Nintendo? Both The Duskbloods and Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave are still waiting their turn, so with those included in 2026 I’m a pretty happy little Nintendo gremlin. Still, it just feels like Nintendo needs one more big announcement to cap off the year, especially with no new Pokémon coming this November. I guess whatever it is, if anything, you’re guaranteed to hear about it first on…Nintendo’s dedicated proprietary news app.
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