According to Game Rant's report, a new The Wind Waker release is confirmed for October 2026, and it's arriving alongside a lineup of Zelda games that reportedly reaches surprisingly deep into the franchise's back catalog. The scope is bigger than I expected when the rumors started circulating.

Where I stand on this one isn't complicated. The Wind Waker is my favorite GameCube game. A cel-shaded Zelda got booed back in the day by people who wanted grimdark Link, and then the game came out and shut most of them up. The sailing, the expressive animation, the moment the King of Red Lions actually tells you who he is. Nothing else in the series has matched it for pure charm.

The Wind Waker itself is only part of the story, though. Per the report, the release is joined by a surprisingly broad list of Zelda games spanning much of the franchise's history, and that breadth is what catches my eye. A single remaster doesn't usually get a spread that wide. My read, and this is just me talking, is that Nintendo is treating this as a catalog play rather than a one-off nostalgia drop. The source doesn't say that, but when one release drags this much history along with it, that's what it looks like from the outside.

The obvious question is what form this Wind Waker release actually takes. We've been burned before on the ambiguity of the word "release" in Nintendo's vocabulary. The Wii U version, with its faster sailing, is still in my opinion the best way to play it, and if this new version builds on those improvements rather than the original GameCube disc, that's the right call. If it's something lazier, we'll know quickly.

October also puts it ahead of the fall pileup, which is smart scheduling for a re-release. A Wind Waker doesn't need to beat the season's blockbusters, it just needs a clear runway, and the shoulder season gives it one before the holiday crush swallows everything.

If you've never played it, fix that. Have you ever watched Link's eyes actually change when a moblin corners him in a lantern-lit fortress? All these years later, no Zelda game has matched that expressiveness, and I'll argue that with anyone, including Nina, whose FF XIV allegiances have never stopped her from agreeing with me on Wind Waker. October can't come fast enough.