Are we getting The Last of Us Part 3? That still depends on whether Naughty Dog wants to return to the series. The studio has already confirmed it has more than one ambitious single-player game in the works, and Neil Druckmann has spent the last couple of years saying just enough to keep the rumors alive.
That said, this is still a game that hasn’t been officially announced. There’s no title card, no trailer, no leaked screenshots, and no release window. What we do have is a mix of official comments, educated guesses, and fresh fan speculation after Druckmann recently shared old The Last of Us sketches on Instagram.
The Last of Us Part 3 release date speculation
If The Last of Us Part 3 does happen, you should probably settle in for a wait.
The biggest reason is that Naughty Dog already has another major game out in the open. At The Game Awards 2024, the studio officially revealed Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, which instantly became the clearest sign of where its public-facing attention is going.
Even before that, Naughty Dog revealed that in 2023, it had “more than one ambitious, brand new single-player game” in development after it announced the cancellation of The Last of Us Online. That line was important then, and it still matters now, because it confirmed the studio was not betting everything on just one new project.
Unfortunately, that does not automatically make The Last of Us Part 3 the second project. But there is some room for it. And over time, that room has only gotten more interesting. In Grounded II, the making-of documentary bundled with The Last of Us Part II Remastered, Druckmann said that for years he had struggled to find a concept for a third game, but that had recently changed.
He said he didn’t have a full story yet, but did have a concept that felt exciting and had a throughline connecting all three entries, adding that it felt like there was “probably one more chapter” to this story. That remains one of the strongest reasons fans still believe a third game is on the table.
Of course, Druckmann has also pumped the brakes since then. In a March 2025 interview cited by multiple gaming outlets, he told fans not to “bet on” there being more The Last of Us, adding that this could be it. That quote matters because it keeps expectations in check. It suggests that even if ideas for Part 3 exist, that doesn’t mean the game is locked in, deep in production, or anywhere close to being shown.
There is also some newer studio-context fuel feeding the rumor mill. GamesRadar recently highlighted comments from former Naughty Dog game director Vinit Agarwal, who said he moved on to another project after The Last of Us Online was canceled — and that this was not Druckmann’s Intergalactic. Again, that is not confirmation of Part 3, but it does support the idea that Naughty Dog has been juggling another meaningful project for a while.
Put all of that together, and the safest release window guess is still “not soon.” Even with an optimistic assumption, the third instalment isn’t arriving till at least 2027 or later. Between Intergalactic, Naughty Dog’s famously long development cycles, and the complete lack of an announcement, The Last of Us Part 3 looks more like a next-generation release than anything close on the horizon.
The Last of Us Part 3 platforms
PlayStation seems like the only safe assumption as of right now.
Whenever The Last of Us Part 3 arrives, it is almost certainly going to launch on PlayStation hardware first. That much feels obvious. This is one of Sony’s crown-jewel series, and Naughty Dog remains one of PlayStation Studios’ most important developers. The only real question is whether the game lands as a late PS5 release, a cross-generation game, or something that ends up leaning harder into Sony’s next console entirely.
But while the previous two entries in the franchise got a PC release (eventually), The Last of Us Part 3 might take a different, more exclusive approach. Just last month, rumors claim that Sony is planning to return to its classic ways by restricting its first-party games like the God of War and The Last of Us to the PlayStation once again.
Trailers
There is still no trailer for The Last of Us Part 3. No teaser, no cinematic reveal, no logo animation, nothing.
That part has not changed, and it is important not to dress it up. The closest thing fans have to reveal material is still a handful of comments from Druckmann and some studio-level breadcrumbs. Naughty Dog’s December 2023 statement about its future projects is one of those breadcrumbs. The Grounded II documentary is another. Beyond that, everything else is interpretation.
The newest bit of trailer-adjacent “news” is the Instagram post that sent fans into theory mode. Druckmann shared old sketches from a 2003 game pitch centered on a man, his surrogate daughter, and a trek across a broken America. In the caption, he reflected on the long journey the series has taken and said he was grateful for every part of it, “especially the few stops that remain on the road ahead.” This final line did a lot of heavy lifting for fans hungry for Part 3 news.
Still, that is exactly the kind of wording that can mean a lot or absolutely nothing. It could be a genuine wink toward the future of the franchise. It could be Druckmann speaking broadly about the HBO show, Naughty Dog’s future, or his own career. It could just be a dramatic caption on an old piece of art. Fans are not wrong to read into it, but it would be a stretch to call it evidence on the same level as an interview or studio statement.
Gameplay
This is one section that doesn’t really need a dramatic rethink.
If The Last of Us Part 3 becomes real, it will almost certainly build on the stealth-heavy survival-action formula the series already owns. That means tight resources, ugly close-range combat, tense enemy encounters, and the kind of cinematic presentation Naughty Dog has spent years refining. There’s no good reason to think a third game would throw all of that out and suddenly become something radically different.
What would probably change is the scale. Part II already pushed things into larger combat arenas, smarter enemy behavior, and more flexible encounter design. A third game would likely keep moving in that direction. More reactive AI, bigger environments, new infected variants, and a little more player freedom all feel like safe guesses, even if they’re still just guesses.
So where does that leave Part 3?
In basically the same place as before—only slightly more interesting.
The Last of Us Part 3 is still unannounced. That hasn’t changed. But the latest chatter hasn’t come out of nowhere either. Druckmann’s late-March post added a fresh reason for fans to start spiraling again, and the newer talk around Naughty Dog’s other in-development project keeps the “there’s more happening behind the scenes” theory alive. Add in Naughty Dog’s own 2023 statement about multiple single-player games, and it becomes pretty hard to dismiss the sequel conversation entirely.
That said, this still isn’t one of those situations where you should start expecting a reveal any minute now. There’s too much guesswork, too much reading between the lines, and not enough concrete material yet.
So the best answer for now is also the least exciting one: The Last of Us Part 3 may be real, but Naughty Dog clearly isn’t in a hurry to prove it.
