Call of Duty may head to Nintendo Switch sooner than expected

The Nintendo Switch could get its first Call of Duty game in a matter of months, but Activision may end up releasing two COD games on Switch in 2026.

Call of Duty may head to Nintendo Switch sooner than expected
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Senior Gaming Editor
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TL;DR: Activision may release Call of Duty on Nintendo Switch sooner than expected, likely starting with Black Ops 7 on Switch 2. Following Microsoft's 10-year deal to expand Call of Duty to Nintendo platforms, multiple titles could launch in 2026, increasing accessibility for millions of gamers.

Activision could release Call of Duty on Nintendo Switch sooner than expected, but it remains unclear which platform the game will drop onto--the Switch 1, Switch 2, or both?

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Back in 2023, Microsoft signed a legally-binding 10-year deal to release new Call of Duty games onto Nintendo platforms. The landmark deal was part of Microsoft's efforts to assuage regulators' worries that the $35 billion Call of Duty franchise wouldn't be made exclusive to Xbox--Microsoft made similar arrangements with NVIDIA and Sony.

Since then, three Call of Duty games have released, and none of them have appeared on the Switch. Apparently, that's going to change soon. According to Windows Central's Jez Corden, the first COD game planned for Switch is almost finished and could release in just a few months. This is an extremely interesting development that could hint at multiple Call of Duty games coming to the Switch in 2026.

The first game is expected to be Call of Duty Black Ops 7, and it's believed to launch on the Switch 2.

We don't know what's in the contract that Microsoft made with Nintendo, but the company has expressed publicly its willingness to launch new Call of Duty games on other platforms day and date with full content parity.

However, in order to fulfill Microsoft's pledge that it made in 2023, where the company claimed that the merger would bring Call of Duty to 150 million more gamers, Microsoft would have to also release the first Call of Duty game onto the Switch 1 platform as well.

This could mean that two Call of Duty games could come to Nintendo systems in 2026; Black Ops 7, potentially on both Switch 1 and Switch 2, and then the mainline yearly game that's set for 2026 as well.