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Total War: Warhammer 40,000 launches with four confirmed playable factions. Each faction has its own identity, visual language, and strategic character, offering meaningfully different experiences across both the turn-based Campaign and the real-time battles.
Confirmed Launch Factions
Faction | Type | Playstyle |
|---|---|---|
Imperial | Elite and few in number; each warrior is immensely powerful. Quality over quantity. | |
Xenos | Vast, brutal hordes driven by the WAAAGH!, capable of fielding colossal war engines such as the Stompa. | |
Xenos | Fragile and deadly glass cannon; psychic precision and elegant weaponry. Rewards careful, precise tactical decisions over brute force. | |
Imperial | Massed ranks of human soldiers and heavy armour; humanity's largest fighting force, winning through sheer numbers and combined arms. |
Confirmed Named Characters
Creative Assembly has confirmed three named characters so far, all tied to the war for Armageddon that the game opens with. In each case the studio has confirmed the character is in the game without stating whether they are a playable lord, an opponent, or both:
Commissar Yarrick will appear in the game, fighting for the Astra Militarum, the legendary commissar who defended Armageddon against the Orks.
Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka will appear in the game, fighting for the Orks, the warboss whose invasions of Armageddon are among the setting's best-known campaigns.
Nazdreg Ug Urdgrub will appear in the game, a Bad Moons warboss described as one of the key characters the player will battle with and against, featuring heavily in the early narrative around Armageddon.
No named character has been announced for the Space Marines or the Aeldari. Both factions support the custom commander system, as every faction does, and the Space Marine custom Force Commander is the one Creative Assembly has shown in detail. The studio has also said that its emphasis is on factions rather than individual characters: the framing it uses is that players identify with a chapter rather than with a single commander, which is a deliberate departure from how named lords worked in the studio's fantasy strategy games.
Sub-Factions and Warlords
Each launch faction features both renowned named sub-factions and warlords from established Warhammer 40,000 lore, and fully custom warbands assembled by the player. The Ultramarines are the only sub-faction named so far, and Nazdreg's Bad Moons allegiance is the only Ork clan named. Beyond those, specific chapters, regiments, clans and craftworlds have not been confirmed yet, and are expected to be revealed throughout 2026 as Creative Assembly continues the marketing campaign.
Sub-Factions at Launch
Creative Assembly has confirmed the structure of the launch roster: four main factions, and two playable sub-factions inside each one, for eight playable sub-factions in total. The Ultramarines are confirmed as one of the two Space Marine sub-factions; the second has not been announced, and neither has any sub-faction for the other three races.
Colour presets are a separate thing from sub-factions. Presets for chapters such as the Ultramarines and the Salamanders let a player dress a custom force in a recognisable scheme even where that chapter is not implemented as a playable sub-faction. The studio has said preset coverage at launch is being prioritised for the factions tied to the fighting around Armageddon.
Army Customisation
Every faction supports deep army customisation across colours, iconography, wargear, names, traits, and tactical abilities. Creative Assembly has described this as tabletop-style freedom and as a first for the Total War series. Players can build armies that reflect their own aesthetic choices within the visual and thematic identity of each faction, while still drawing on lore-grounded warlords and unit archetypes.
The developers have described what that customisation reaches. A player can choose pattern types, set the left and right sides of a model to different colours, recolour individual armour pieces such as a pauldron or a kneecap, and apply decals across the whole faction. Every race supports it: a Space Marine player builds a successor chapter, an Ork player builds a clan, an Astra Militarum player builds a regiment. The team has said that players testing the game spend a long time in this part of it, and that the point is a faction that is recognisably the player's own rather than a preset picked from a list.
Chaos Space Marines at Launch
Chaos Space Marines are not among the four launch factions. The official FAQ answers the question directly: the Chaos Space Marines are not in the game at launch, but they are absolutely part of the studio's plans at some point, along with all the other iconic factions from the setting. That is a statement of intent rather than a scheduled addition, and no date or ordering has been given. The studio has confirmed an intent to expand the faction roster over time rather than gate Chaos behind a pre-order bonus.
Future Faction Additions
The development team has framed Total War: Warhammer 40,000 as the start of a long-running project that will grow into a sprawling galactic battlefield, packed with iconic heroes, fearsome war machines, and richly realised worlds. Specific post-launch faction additions beyond the eventual Chaos arrival have not been announced.
The studio has also set out how it intends to deliver that growth. Rather than following the game with numbered sequels, Creative Assembly has said future content merges directly into this one title, with new sectors added to the existing theatre so the galaxy expands over time. On that model there is no separate combined-map release to wait for, because every addition lands in the same game. No content schedule has been published.