Something wicked this way comes, and maybe something stealthy. Assassin’s Creed Codename Hexe is one of the next upcoming Ubisoft games on the horizon after Black Flag Resynched, and if the latest leaks turn out to be true, it might be the game I’ve dreamt of for a decade.
According to a "prominent" Ubisoft insider on Reddit, Hexe will allegedly be set in the medieval German town of Würzberg. It's an incredibly ambitious move, if true, possibly delivering the first single-location RPG the franchise has ever seen. 2023's Assassin's Creed Mirage gave us a taste of classic city-stealth Creed back in action, something I adored about Unity and Syndicate and mourned the loss of when Ubisoft widened its scope for the RPGs entries shortly after. With massive renditions of ancient Egypt, a Viking Britain, and the Greek islands during the Peloponnesian War, these games still amount to some of the best third-person RPGs ever – but sprawl leaves no shadow to hide in.
Hexe has an incredible opportunity to splice those two worlds together, iterating upon not only Ubisoft's intentions for the franchise going forward (and what the publisher will look like from hereon out), but how it will use a little genre-blending witchcraft to finally make this series feel like itself again.
Toil and trouble
Assassin's Creed Codename Hexe is on my Wildcard Wishlist of games I'm desperate to see at SGF 2026
I don't usually put too much stock into the rumor mill. Hell, those Resident Evil 9 leaks reeked from the start, and I only hurt myself by entertaining them. But the truth is that Ubisoft needs to do something bold right now, and cross-breeding its two Creed genres for something fresh makes perfect sense for the publisher – especially right now.
It's been a rough 12 months for Ubisoft. In a move to course-correct from a period of declining stock price, a massive company-wide restructuring announced in January 2026 saw a number of internal studios closed, games canceled mid-development (RIP Prince of Persia remake), and the grouping of specific IPS under new "creative houses" built around specific purposes. Its latest earnings call simply pointed out the writing on the wall: as Ubisoft's "targeted premium games," there's a lot of pressure on games like Assassin's Creed to lead the charge toward growth.
That means even with Black Flag Resynched on the horizon, Ubisoft is still prioritizing its internal affairs. The earnings call stipulates that we can expect a "softer release slate" from Ubisoft in the next year, according to CEO Yves Guillemot, with "disappointing short-term financial performance" due to ongoing restructuring costs. The payoff will be "a significantly bigger content pipeline" from 2027 through 2029, with games from major brands "including Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and Ghost Recon" to benefit from this more fiscally-conservative period.
While that seems to give us a rough release window for the upcoming Assassin's Creed game, it also proves that there's much more riding on Hexe than the viability of the game alone; Ubisoft needs it to land if it wants to prove that all this in-house cleanup was actually worth the short-term losses.
Brick by brick
I don't mind waiting for something that might actually bring Assassin's Creed to daring new heights
A city (or town, in this case) RPG sounds like an excellent play in that regard. Ever since Assassin's Creed Valhalla's terrifying size and scope intimidated many from ever finishing it, each subsequent Creed has felt tighter in its presentation. Mirage, while not an RPG, presents a large, dynamic city with small outcroppings and hamlets to explore, and Assassin's Creed Shadows presents a slice of Sengoku-period Japan instead of the whole territory.
It speaks to Ubisoft's ongoing mild identity crisis in relation to Assassin's Creed's future. It's impossible to please everyone, and finding the perfect one-size-fits-all Creed RPG has felt like its ever-growing Everest. Shadows felt like a marked turning point in itself, not only in relation to more assassin-heavy gameplay and smaller, more focused world map, but in how it incorporates plenty of classic iconography alongside novel ones. Shinobi Naoe using an actual hidden blade, for example, instead of Kassandra and Alexios' broken spearheads.
The Hexe leaks seem to take that nod back to the series' roots to the next level. Alleged protagonist Anika is said to be a descendent of the Auditore family, and the game might even feature a long-awaited cameo from master assassin Ezio himself as a ghost of sorts. That might sound far-flung at first, but for a game supposedly set during the European witch trials, I'm expecting more than a taste of the arcane in Hexe anyway. The leaker also cites "blood pacts and poison", ritual sites and circles, and “tree-to-tree branch jumping” (welcome back Naoe) among story and gameplay features.
There's still quite some time before the 2027-29 period Ubisoft has offered in terms of a vague release window, but already, I'm feeling hopeful. I don't mind waiting for something that might actually bring Assassin's Creed to daring new heights on Ubisoft's quest to make serious bank from the stealth franchise, and if those heights happen to involve invoking the devil and killing some witch-hunters, consider my hidden blade as whetted as my appetite.
Check out the best Assassin's Creed games for the ultimate stealth-action adventure
