Dawn of War IV reaches 1 million Steam wishlists ahead of launch

One million Steam wishlists is not a soft number for a long-dormant Warhammer 40,000 RTS. It tells you Dawn of War IV is arriving with real visibility, real curiosity, and a built-in crowd that is already waiting to see whether this reboot of the series can land with the old guard and pull in new blood.

The official Dawn of War IV account marked the milestone ahead of the game’s September 17, 2026 launch on PC, with Commander Edition buyers set to start early access on September 14. Deep Silver and KING Art Games have spent the campaign leaning hard into what fans actually want from a Dawn of War return: mass-battle combat, base-building, and an expanded Sync Kill system that promises the kind of brutal finishers the series always did best when it was firing on all cylinders.

That first full reveal came at gamescom Opening Night Live 2025, and the messaging since then has been aimed squarely at strategy fans who remember what made the original games stick. The Steam store page lists four distinct factions, more than 70 campaign missions, and modes including Last Stand, Skirmish, and multiplayer. It also confirms the Adeptus Mechanicus will appear in Dawn of War for the first time, which is exactly the sort of roster change that gets 40k players thinking about army identity, lore, and whether a new tabletop obsession is about to creep into their pile of shame.

Warhammer Community has also pushed the fact that the new trailer takes the fight back to Kronus, the planet central to earlier Dawn of War stories. That matters because Dawn of War was never just about spectacle; it was always about a specific corner of the setting that PC players came to know almost as well as their codex shelves. The launch announcement at Warhammer Skulls 2026 added pre-orders, edition details, a year-one expansion roadmap, and a launch discount on Steam, all signs that the publisher is treating this as more than a nostalgia play.

For 40k fans, the wishlist count is the sharpest indicator yet that Dawn of War IV is not sneaking back in quietly. It is coming in with enough demand to matter, and enough momentum to make Kronus feel like a place the wider Warhammer scene may start caring about again.