Castlevania: Belmont's Curse

Castlevania: Belmont's Curse is a 2D action-exploration game developed by Evil Empire with advisory support from Motion Twin and published by Konami. It launches on October 15, 2026. The game is set in Paris in 1499, twenty-three years after the events of Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, and stars Rose Belmont, the daughter of Trevor Belmont and Sypha Belnades.

Konami describes the genre as 2D Action-Exploration. Rose explores a single large connected city rather than a set of discrete stages, opens shortcuts and gated routes as she gains abilities, and seals the bosses she defeats into the tarot deck her mother left her. This is a premium single-player game with no microtransactions, no battle pass and no live-service component in any published material.

Quick Facts

Setting and Story

Paris burns as monstrous creatures pour out of the shadows and the moon turns blood red. A letter from the Bishop reaches Trevor Belmont, and he and his daughter travel down the River Seine in answer. They arrive on the docks of the burning city and are separated almost immediately. Trevor goes after the clergy; Rose is left to work through the city itself.

The Bishop's letter addresses Trevor as the last of House Belmont, a line the game answers directly when Rose is told that he is not the last Belmont any more. Trevor steps back early in the story because Rose is already an experienced hunter, which the team has described as a deliberate choice to show two generations of the family working at the same time rather than one handing over to the next.

Rose carries Dracula's curse in her right arm, a red mark that creeps from her elbow to her hand. She also carries guilt over her mother, who was struck by that curse and died shortly after Rose was born. See Setting and Locations for the places the game confirms, and Characters for the rest of the cast.

Gameplay

Rose fights with melee weapons drawn from seven families, and uses her whip for movement as much as for damage. Konami's own copy asks players to crack the whip and move around like a trapeze artist. Anchors placed through the city let her swing across gaps, and any enemy can be used as a grapple point.

The signature system is the Arcana. Each boss Rose defeats is sealed into one of her tarot cards, which then grants a spell and a special action. Only one card can be equipped at a time. Cards are improved by completing Works of Mercy, in-world objectives that pay out points, which then buy a Blessing for that card.

Structure

The opening runs from the docks through the streets and sewers of Paris. Three bosses hold three keys, and those keys open one large gate into the Catacombs. A three-hour hands-on build shown to press in July 2026 covered exactly that stretch and ended on opening the gate; the team has said the build is also the opening of the finished game.

Creative director Emmanuel Nouaille has said that everything changes once the player reaches the castle, and that the game's structure shifts at that point. Konami has named six bosses plus Dracula and adds that more appear. A figure of fifteen bosses in the base game has circulated from preview coverage, but Konami has not published a total. See Bosses.

What the Game Is Not

Evil Empire ran long-term development on Dead Cells, and the studios previously built the Return to Castlevania add-on for it, which has led to repeated questions about whether this game inherits that structure. It does not, and Konami has answered the question directly and on the record. Asked in its own developer interview whether Belmont's Curse would be a roguelike, the answer given was that it would not. Konami's head of communications for its American branch, Tommy Williams, put the same point in writing, calling it a 2D action-exploration game where players freely explore large hand-built maps and stating plainly that it is not a roguelike or a rogue-lite. There is no permadeath and no procedural generation.

The team has also confirmed that no generative AI was used on either side of the collaboration. Details of how the project started are on Development History.

Franchise Position

Konami has presented the game as a 40th-anniversary title, with the series reaching that anniversary in September 2026, and as the first new mainline entry since 2014. In its Japanese announcement Konami described Belmont's Curse as the first of its 40th-anniversary projects and said further plans would be announced later. That is a statement about the series, not an announcement of post-launch content for this game; nothing has been announced about downloadable content, and there is no roadmap.

Rose is an original character created for this game. One of Konami's trailers closes on her line: "I am Rose Belmont, and I will hunt the night."

Konami announced the game's English voice cast on August 24, 2026 with a fifth trailer built around it, casting Abby Trott as Rose and Graham McTavish as Dracula; the full list is on Characters. The game was playable at gamescom 2026 in Cologne, which ran from August 26 to 30; press coverage called it the first time the public could play it, and Konami's own announcement called it a hands-on experience. What that build contained has not been published. On September 3, 2026, Konami featured the game again during its KONAMI PRESS START broadcast and released a new trailer, the Bloody Tears Trailer, showing new story moments, characters, and bosses ahead of the October 15 launch.