Naughty Dog Claims Last of Us Canon While Intergalactic Waits

Naughty Dog studio head Neil Druckmann said on September 28, 2026, that two new Last of Us projects are in very early stages. Both will expand the canon past Part I and Part II, he wrote, in a letter that also kept Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet offstage until a full reveal in 2027.

He did not call the projects games, name a platform, or attach a year. The note closed Last of Us Day, answered a question the studio has ducked since June 2020, and then asked fans to wait.

A Letter That Confirms Stories, Not a Date

Last of Us Day falls on September 26, the in-world date of the outbreak. Two days later Druckmann posted a studio note that treated the fan holiday as a Q&A. The first question was the one that follows the franchise around: will there or won’t there be more stories in The Last of Us?

He tied the answer to talks that started after the Grounded II making-of documentary, which Naughty Dog posted on February 2, 2024, beside a patch for The Last of Us Part II Remastered. In that film he had floated “probably one more chapter.” The new letter raises the count without naming the chapter.

We have a couple of very exciting new projects in very early stages, so we can’t say much about them at this point. I will tell you that both projects will expand the canon of The Last of Us beyond Part I and Part II. The world of The Last of Us means a great deal to us, and we wouldn’t return to it unless we had something meaningful to say. We believe these stories are worth telling.

Neil Druckmann, studio head, Naughty Dog blog, September 28, 2026

The franchise account posted the same note, which is the whole announcement. There is no trailer, no logo, and no working title under the quote.

The Last of Us Day 2026 Ends With an Update From Neil Druckmann: https://t.co/Tpg0UbDKyc pic.twitter.com/OZRxhLqiOa

— The Last of Us (@thelastofus) September 28, 2026

The letter also thanks people who gave during the day’s stream. Naughty Dog said the run raised $11,000 and counting for AbleGamers. That is the only hard figure in a post otherwise built from hedges. “Very early stages” is doing the heavy work. So is the refusal, in the same breath, to say what form the work takes.

Read as a ship watch, the note is thin. Read as a claim, it is not. Druckmann put both projects will expand the canon on the record, which rules out another remaster pass and any story that merely retells Part I or Part II. He also used “projects,” a word that covers a game, a show, a film, or a smaller narrative job inside the same studio. Naughty Dog makes games. That does not make the word a release date.

Naughty Dog Took the Canon Back in Early September

The September 28 letter is the second half of a statement Druckmann started on September 3. In an interview that day he said he had no hand in shaping HBO’s third season of The Last of Us, and that Naughty Dog had no creative role in its direction either. He could not speak to how production was going, he said, because he was not in the room.

He left the show in 2025 to write and direct Intergalactic and to run the studio as head of creative. Craig Mazin remains as showrunner. Season 3 is in production for a 2027 premiere and is set to cover the second half of Part II, with Kaitlyn Dever’s Abby at the center. For two seasons Druckmann had co-written and directed. The third season is Mazin’s.

The line that matters sat next to that exit. “It’s important for us to note that as the creator of the games, Naughty Dog is still the steward of this IP,” Druckmann said, “and even though this might be the end of this adaptation, we’re not done with The Last of Us. There’s a couple projects in the works that, when the time is right, I’m very excited to talk about.”

Twenty-five days later, Last of Us Day became that time, and “a couple projects” became two canon jobs in very early stages. The TV story can end. The games company is announcing, in public, that the world still belongs to Santa Monica. Steward is a legal-sounding word for a simple move: when the most watched version of Joel and Ellie is about to finish without its authors, the authors file a claim on what comes after.

That claim is the news. A Part III greenlight would have named a sequel, a lead, and a machine. This letter names a duty.

What “Expand the Canon” Does Not Name

People heard Part III anyway. “Beyond Part I and Part II” is easy to read as a third numbered game, and it may yet be one. The same clause also fits two stories that leave Ellie and Joel on the shelf and still count as canon. Druckmann’s own test is narrower than a sequel number. He said the studio would not return unless it had something meaningful to say, which is a writing test, not a product one.

WHAT THE LETTER LEAVES OUT

• The form: He never calls the two jobs games, a series, a film, or a book.
• The sequel number: Part III is not in the letter, and neither is a named spin-off.
• The leads: No Ellie, Abby, Dina, or new lead is attached to either project.
• The machines: No PlayStation 5 or later hardware is named for this work.
• The year: The only date in the letter belongs to Intergalactic, not to Last of Us.

The gap is the point of the wording. If either track were a locked Part III with a lead already in performance capture, “very early stages” would be a strange way to describe it. If one track is a smaller story and the other is a later numbered game, the letter still holds. The honest read is that Naughty Dog has two Last of Us files open and has not decided, or will not say, what sits in them.

That is why the Part III decode feels good and proves little. It also why the joke that more Last of Us is a threat, not a gift, keeps coming back. Part II still splits the room. A letter that promises “meaningful” new stories is, to that camp, a warning dressed as comfort. The text supports both readings because it refuses the one noun that would settle them.

Quiet Until 2027, Then Intergalactic

The second question in the letter was the one PlayStation owners have been asking since the first Intergalactic trailer. Druckmann wrote that the team debuted the game almost two years ago, which points at the December 2024 reveal, and that the studio will stay quiet for the rest of 2026. In 2027, he said, that changes, and Naughty Dog will fully reveal Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.

PlayStation’s own page still lists the game for PS5 with a release date to be confirmed. It puts players in the role of Jordan A. Mun, a bounty hunter stranded on the planet Sempiria, who has to become the first person in over 600 years to leave its orbit. The page says the game has been in the works since 2020, the same year Part II shipped, and that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are writing the score. Tati Gabrielle is the performance-capture lead. Troy Baker, speaking as the game sat off a recent State of Play, said it is testing the bounds of what Naughty Dog can do.

Late August 2026 brought a wrap on the film shoot. A full reveal in 2027 is still not a ship window. It is a promise to show the thing after a year of saying almost nothing.

NAUGHTY DOG’S PUBLIC PIPELINE

Stack those rows and the letter’s order of operations is plain. Intergalactic has eaten six years already and still has not had a proper show. The two Last of Us files are new enough that Druckmann will not describe them. Season 3 of the show, which the studio is not writing, will reach viewers in the same year the sci-fi game finally steps on stage. Any Last of Us game built from a “very early” start sits behind that pile.

Naughty Dog Already Killed One Extra Last of Us Game

This is not the first time the studio opened a second Last of Us track and then had to choose. On December 14, 2023, Naughty Dog said it would stop development on that game it had been calling The Last of Us Online, the standalone follow-up to Factions. The multiplayer team had been in pre-production since Part II. The studio said the gameplay got refined and satisfying, then the scope of live support became clear.

To ship and feed Online, Naughty Dog wrote, it would have had to put all its resources behind post-launch content for years, which would have hit future single-player games. The choice, as the studio framed it, was to become a live-service shop or to keep making the single-player stories that built its name. It picked the second path. In the same post it said it already had more than one ambitious, brand new single-player game in the works.

One of those games is Intergalactic. The other has never been named. That unnamed single-player job, if it is still alive, is older than the two Last of Us projects Druckmann just called very early. Two brand-new Last of Us files in 2026 cannot be the same objects as games that were already in motion in 2023 unless the studio is rewriting history. The simpler read is that Santa Monica now has Intergalactic, at least one other long-running single-player game, and two fresh Last of Us stories on top.

The Online kill is the warning label on that stack. Naughty Dog has already learned, in public, that a second Last of Us product can grow until it threatens the game the studio actually wants to finish. “Very early” is how a shop that remembers that day talks when it is not ready to staff a sequel.

The Same Year the TV Adaptation Ends

HBO’s third season is slated for 2027, the same year Intergalactic is due to be shown in full. Mazin is making it without Naughty Dog in the writers’ room. The games company will spend that year introducing a new world, not a new Ellie year. The Last of Us on television can close as a finished adaptation of Part I and Part II. The Last of Us at Naughty Dog is being described as a world with more canon left in it, just not on a clock anyone can see.

FROM PART II TO THE LETTER

1. June 19, 2020: The Last of Us Part II ships, the last original Naughty Dog game to reach stores.
2. December 14, 2023: The studio cancels The Last of Us Online rather than become a live-service shop.
3. February 2, 2024: Grounded II arrives, and talks about more Last of Us stories start, per Druckmann.
4. December 2024: Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet debuts; PlayStation lists it for PS5 with no date.
5. 2025: Druckmann leaves the HBO series to write and direct Intergalactic and to run the studio.
6. September 3, 2026: He calls Naughty Dog the steward of the IP and teases a couple of projects.
7. September 28, 2026: The Last of Us Day letter names two canon projects in very early stages and parks Intergalactic until 2027.

Part II Remastered did arrive on January 19, 2024, and a Part I remake exists, but those are not new stories. The original-game gap still starts in June 2020. Six years on, the studio’s next public date is a 2027 look at a bounty hunter on Sempiria, not a firefly in Boston.

The letter of September 28 does one job well. It says The Last of Us is not finished at the company that made it, and it says that in the same week HBO is filming an ending the company did not write. The next date on Naughty Dog’s own calendar is still the Intergalactic reveal in 2027. Until that show happens, the two new Last of Us stories stay what Druckmann called them: early, unnamed, and not yet a sequel anyone can schedule.