Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. Evergreens

Gamescom Opening Night Live 2025: How to watch and what to expect

Add as a preferred source on Google
The Gamescom Opening Night Live stage.
Gamescom

I’m still reeling from all the Summer Game Fest 2025 announcements, but Geoff Keighly is already gearing up to take to the stage again to kick off Gamescom with his annual Opening Night Live kickoff presentation. This is the last major gaming event for upcoming video games to show themselves off to a wide audience before The Game Awards at the end of the year, and we already know some big titles are scheduled to appear. To give you a refresher, Gamecom Opening Night Live 2024 was where we first saw Borderlands 4, plus deeper looks at Civilization 7 and Monster Hunter Wilds. Will this year be able to stack up? We can’t say for sure yet, but I can tell you how to watch it and what games you can expect to see.

When is Gamescom Opening Night Live 2025?

CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS 7 worldwide reveal at Opening Night Live kicks off @gamescom in a massive way.

Tuesday, August 19.

Streaming live everywhere at 2p ET / 11a PT / 8p CEST. pic.twitter.com/6HfSTirTze

— Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) July 14, 2025

The entire Gamescom event runs from August 20 through August 24, but Opening Night Live will get the party started early on Tuesday, August 18, at 2 pm. ET.

Recommended Videos

Geoff Keighley also confirmed at the end of July that Opening Night Live will be “2 hours of news, updates, and announcements, streaming live everywhere!” Past events also lasted around 2 hours so this year looks like it will stay within that range.

How to watch Gamescom Opening Night Live 2025

It is to be expected now that all the big gaming events will be streamed live across all major platforms, and Opening Night Live 2025 is no different. You can watch along with the rest of the world who isn’t able to be there in person on the official YouTube, Twitch, X, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok accounts.

Make sure you also keep Digital Trends open as we cover all the announcements as they happen so you don’t miss any important details.

Every confirmed announcement for Gamescom Opening Night Live 2025

The big showpiece kicking off Opening Night Live 2025 is confirmed to be Black Ops 7, but that will only be the beginning. Geoff and individual publishers have confirmed the following games will appear, but there will be way more kept hidden until the showcase itself:

  • Black Myth: Wukong
  • Lords of the Fallen 2
  • Resident Evil Requiem
  • Silent Hill f
  • Ninja Gaiden 4
  • Black Ops 7
  • Ghost of Yotei
  • World of Warcraft: Midnight
  • The Outer Worlds 2
Jesse Lennox
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Jesse Lennox covers all things gaming but has a specific interest in all things PlayStation, JRPGs, and experimental indies…
Lenovo’s $99 280Hz gaming monitor is built for the ramen-budget crowd
Lenovo is selling a 280Hz monitor for less than GTA 6 Ultimate Edition
Lenovo gaming monitor render

Fresh off launching a metallic Hall-effect keyboard and a 59g gaming mouse for flashy esports setups, Lenovo has turned its attention to gamers working with much tighter budgets. The Legion 24-1r looks made for broke college students who spent way too much on their first gaming rig and now have instant noodles doing most of the heavy lifting at dinner. It costs just 669 yuan, equivalent to around $99, yet offers a 23.8-inch IPS panel running at up to 280Hz.

Lenovo is also offering the 27-inch Legion 27-1r with the same core specifications for 789 yuan, or roughly $116. For the ramen-budget crowd chasing competitive frame rates, both look like seriously tempting deals. (via NotebookCheck)

Read more
I played Halo: Campaign Evolved, and its cinematics show what a Halo series could’ve been
Halo’s remake looks ready for Hollywood. So where is the show it deserves?
Adult, Male, Man

There is a moment early in Halo: Campaign Evolved where I stopped thinking about the remake as a game for a second. I was watching one of its newly rebuilt cutscenes. Master Chief, Captain Keyes, Cortana, the Pillar of Autumn, and the enormous scale of everything around them suddenly appeared a lot more cinematic than ever before.

I played the original Halo: Combat Evolved in the early 2000s, and in my head, this was exactly how it looked and felt. The first Halo title introduced intergalactic war to me long before Star Wars, and the cinematic tastefully adds enough minor touches that enhance Bungie's original work from decades ago.

Read more
Xbox is fixing one of the PC app’s biggest annoyances with download speed
A new Smart Download Client promises faster, more consistent download speeds for games and updates.
Xbox's logo used during the Extended Games Showcase

Waiting for a massive Game Pass download to finish could soon become a little less painful. Microsoft has begun testing a new Smart Download Client as part of the latest Xbox Insider Alpha Skip-Ahead update. The feature is designed to speed up game installs and updates by automatically connecting users to the fastest available content server. While it's currently limited to Xbox Insider testers, early reports suggest the improvements are also making their way to the Xbox PC app, potentially solving one of the platform's longest-standing frustrations.

How the Smart Download Client works

Read more