Hollow Knight: Silksong has finally received a release date, much to the anticipation of its fans after many years. Read on to learn more about the game’s release history and what was shown during the developer’s Hollow Knight: Silksong Special Announcement.
Silksong Releases September 4, 2025
Announced During a Special Announcement by Team Cherry
It started with the release window announcement for Hollow Knight Silksong, made during Gamescom Opening Night Live 2025. There, Team Cherry revealed that their much-awaited—and memed on—sequel to the critically acclaimed Metroidvania, Hollow Knight, will be released within 2025. But today, they finally announced that Silksong, after a six year-long wait, will launch on September 4, 2025.
The big reveal came in a "Special Announcement" streamed by the developers on the 21st of August, and this event arrived amid renewed excitement from fan communities who have treated Silksong’s continued absence as both myth and meme.
The wait was anything but pleasant. Team Cherry remained largely silent about the game's progress, as they provided only sporadic and minimal updates. The long silence led to widespread memes, with many fans claiming the game was a myth or a victim of development hell due to budget cuts or internal conflict. However, Team Cherry credited the lengthy development not to internal woes, but rather their small team size and dedication to adding more and more to the game.
"It was always progressing," Ari Gibson, co-director of Team Cherry, told Bloomberg’s Jason Schrier. " It’s just the case that we’re a small team, and games take a lot of time. There wasn’t any big controversial moment behind it."
"You’re always working on a new idea, new item, new area, new boss," added Team Cherry co-CEO William Pellen. "That stuff’s so nice. It’s for the sake of just completing the game that we’re stopping. We could have kept going." And truth be told, if they were to continue development until 2026 or even longer, fan communities like Reddit’s r/Silksong would have completely lost their minds. I mean, they’ve already gone and "sacrificed" (a ritualistic banning) redditors to cure their "silksanity." As to whether or not it was the reason Silksong’s release date dropped today is anyone’s guess (it probably isn’t).
Silksong’s Rather Uphill Release
As mentioned, news about Silksong had been like scraps on a breadcrumb trail—barely enough to follow. For over six years, gaming communities had held its breath for it. This prolonged quietness has become a running joke, even birthing bittersweet memes among fans who relentlessly bombard gaming events with questions about the game's whereabouts. It's safe to say, you won't find a comment section without a mention of Silksong.
The flurry of updates to Silksong’s Steam database, and its appearance in a Nintendo showcase, however, provided the most tangible evidence of progress in a long time. The community noted the addition of achievements, an age rating, and even new game files. The inclusion of achievements is particularly telling, as these are typically designed around completed gameplay milestones and often require translation into multiple languages. Even more critically, a function for purchasing the game on the store or via a CD Key has been added, which could be a precursor to enabling pre-orders.
Furthermore, significant "depot changes" have been observed. For context, a depot is a logical grouping of files delivered to a customer as a single unit when a game is downloaded. The last time one of these core file delivery depots saw a change was in 2019, which was during the game’s initial announcement.
This level of backend activity after years of minimal updates gave fans hope of a release date reveal. Its timing, just ahead of major June gaming events like PlayStation’s June 2025 State of Play, Summer Game Fest 2025, and the Xbox Games Showcase, was highly suggestive, to the point that the community harbored fervent hope for the game to be shadow-dropped during the aforementioned events. Alas, like in Nintendo’s showcase, Silksong had minimal to no presence in the said events.
A tangible sign of progress beyond backend data, however, was the upcoming playable exhibit of Hollow Knight: SIlksong at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne. This exhibit will run from September 18, 2025 to February 8, 2026, and will give attendees hands-on experience on the game.
As more presentations went by, Silksong was still nowhere to be found. However, on the official Silksong Discord channel, Team Cherry's Matthew Griffin announced that the game would definitely launch "before holiday" of 2025. It wasn’t a specific release date, but it was a detail many fans latched onto for a while. Even at Gamescom 2025—arguably one of the year’s largest gaming events hosted by Geoff Keighley—there was little mention of Silksong besides a simple mention of Team Cherry’s very own Silksong Special Announcement event.
Two weeks is all that stands between now and Silksong’s September 4 release, and as this six-year saga comes to a close, Silksong "doubters" and "deniers" on r/Silksong will finally be able to remove their clown noses and dunce caps and celebrate this monumental win with the "believers." For more information about Hollow Knight: Silksong, check out our article below!
Source:
SteamDB | Hollow Knight: Silksong
SteamDB | Hollow Knight: Silksong Unknown Depot 1030301
Wario64’s Tweet About Silksong Receiving Updates on SteamDB
Matthew Griffin’s Tweet About the Game’s Existence
Bloomberg | Why ‘Silksong’ Took Seven Years to Make
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