Ember Lab Delays Kena: Scars of Kosmora to 2027 for Extra Polish

Ember Lab said on 1 oktober 2026, that Kena: Scars of Kosmora will now release in 2027, moving the sequel off the 2026 launch window it announced in February. The studio shared the new date in a PlayStation Blog post co-written by game writer Thomas Varga and chief operating officer Josh Grier, published alongside a new overview of the game’s story and world.

Varga and Grier wrote that the studio has spent the months since its February announcement trailer working to finish the game. The pair said Ember Lab wants to deliver a top-notch game that surpasses the quality it reached with its 2021 debut, Kena: Bridge of Spirits, on a far larger scale.

“To do that we need just a bit more time,” they wrote, adding that the later date gives the team the time to polish the expanded experience it wants players to have.

The Story and World of Kosmora

In the overview published with the announcement, the studio describes Scars of Kosmora as, like the first game, a linear adventure built around its characters, but with a scope it calls broader and deeper than Bridge of Spirits, and a world with much to offer players who venture off the beaten path.

The overview traces Kena’s history as a Spirit Guide, a role that pairs combat with spiritual healing. In this world, when the dead cannot move on peacefully, their pain takes dangerous form and infects the environment, and Spirit Guides fight that Corruption to resolve it. Despite her progress, Kena is beginning to see her limits: her work has focused on spirits of the dead, and she has not yet explored how Spirit Guiding can serve the living. She has also spent her career helping others through their pain without always facing her own. Her childhood friend Orfio believes the mysterious island of Kosmora holds the answers both of them have been seeking, and Kena travels to the island to meet him, hoping to learn more about her own history and what lies ahead for her as a Spirit Guide.

According to the overview, Kosmora’s ancient Spirit Guides developed their own approach built around the four elements and the island’s Alchemystic Temples. Four interconnected cultures once thrived there, each with a guiding element that powered its society, until a mysterious cataclysm destroyed one of them. Since then, the elements’ old spiritual meaning has been buried in Kosmora’s distant past, even though a guiding element still shapes how each surviving culture lives. The temples are a major part of the game, described as dungeon experiences that test players’ skills and pay off with transformative rewards that push Kena’s adventure forward.

The overview also covers the island’s present. Kosmora is home to multiple living cultures with their own histories, values, and struggles, and Kena’s mission draws out how that past collides with the people of each region, requiring her to apply her experience while adapting to new situations and personalities.

The overview also highlights a new way of crossing the larger world: a crystalline canine companion woven into both the gameplay and the origin of the island. The ancient spirit acts as her mount, helps in combat whether Kena is riding or on foot, and assists in solving Alchemystic puzzles.

First Revealed in February

Ember Lab first announced the sequel in a PlayStation Blog post published 12 februari 2026, which set a 2026 launch on PlayStation 5 and PC and described the game as an expansion of the action, adventure, and combat of the studio’s award-winning debut. In that post, Grier wrote that Kena returns as an older, renowned Spirit Guide, traveling to Kosmora in search of answers to a lifelong affliction. On the island, a powerful spirit fractures her staff, an object that serves as a Spirit Guide’s identity and their means of helping and communing with spirits and, in Kena’s case, was also keeping her alive. To survive, she must take up Kosmora’s forgotten form of Spirit Guiding, an Alchemy-driven discipline for wielding elemental power.

Elemental spirit companions accompany the player and grow over the course of the journey, with new powers unlocking as their bond grows, and each spirit belongs to a different element and links to other spirits found across the world. At the time, Grier said the studio had revealed only one spirit and was saving more for later. He said the sequel’s new combat skills, elemental infusions, and Spirit Companion abilities will be essential to its toughest encounters and boss fights, and that corrupted souls will still need cleansing along the way. On the partnership behind the project, he wrote: “Partnering with PlayStation Studios has empowered us to craft an even larger world – one built with an emphasis on tightly designed regions, deliberate progression, and a strong sense of adventure.”

Ember Lab’s official game page describes an accomplished Spirit Guide traveling to Kosmora to find a cure for her affliction and to reconnect with an old friend. There, a powerful corruption fractures her staff, and because she needs it to survive, she must accept the island’s forgotten and dangerous approach to Spirit Guiding. Along the way she discovers and nurtures spirit companions, harnessing their powers to overcome puzzles and enemies with new elemental abilities. The page lists PlayStation 5 and PC as platforms.

Varga and Grier closed the October 1 post by thanking players for their patience and support, describing the additional time as what the studio needs to evolve Kena’s journey into the experience it wants to deliver. The game releases in 2027 on PlayStation 5 in physical and digital editions and on PC as a digital release, and it is available to wishlist.