Nintendo saved the biggest reveal of its September 9 Direct for the very end, and it was a pink puffball holding a sword. Kirby and the World Beyond is a new 3D Kirby adventure built for Nintendo Switch 2, and the reveal trailer suggests it is going somewhere the series has never gone: a genuinely open world. It arrives in spring 2027 with no exact date and no price yet. Here is everything the trailer actually showed, what it means for the series, and why the premise is stranger than it first looks.
What Nintendo Showed
The trailer opens on a familiar bright, soft-edged Kirby landscape before a crack tears across the blue sky. That crack is the hook of the whole pitch. The sky is not a sky, it is a shell, and Kirby sets out with a strange new floating companion to find out what is on the other side of it.
Developed by HAL Laboratory, this is the fourteenth mainline Kirby game and only the second fully 3D entry after Kirby and the Forgotten Land in 2022. Forgotten Land was a linear, stage-based 3D platformer. World Beyond looks considerably less constrained.
Key details from the reveal:
- Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive
- Spring 2027 launch window
- Developed by HAL Laboratory
- Free-roaming exploration rather than a stage select
- A new floating companion character travels with Kirby
The Open World Question
Nintendo has not used the phrase “open world” in its own marketing, but the footage does a lot of the talking. Kirby moves across wide, connected terrain with no obvious level boundaries, and the camera pulls back far enough to show landmarks in the distance rather than the end of a corridor.
That comparison to Breath of the Wild has already been made by most of the outlets that covered the Direct, and it is not unreasonable. Forgotten Land sold extremely well and proved 3D Kirby works. The obvious next step is to take that traversal and give it somewhere bigger to go.
Copy Abilities Return
The trailer confirmed several returning Copy Abilities, including Cutter, Sword, Bomb and Parasol. Kirby still inhales enemies and takes their powers, so the core loop is intact. The wrinkle is the oversized sword Kirby carries in several shots, which looks less like a standard Copy Ability transformation and more like a dedicated piece of gear.
What Nintendo Did Not Say
The reveal was deliberately thin on specifics. There is no release date beyond “spring 2027,” no price, no word on whether the world is one continuous map or several large connected regions, and no confirmation on multiplayer. Forgotten Land had a second-player Bandana Waddle Dee mode, and Kirby games almost always support co-op in some form, but Nintendo left that alone here.
There was also no mention of the Switch 2 features the game might lean on. Given that the platform has been out for over a year now, a first-party HAL project launching in 2027 is likely to be built around the hardware rather than ported up to it.
Kirby and the World Beyond is the rare late-Direct reveal that actually justifies the slot, mostly because it looks like a real structural change for the series rather than a follow-up with new levels. The trailer’s Truman Show framing is a genuinely odd idea for a Kirby game, and it is the part most likely to hold up once the novelty of the open terrain wears off. Nintendo has until spring 2027 to fill in the blanks, and the next real update will probably come at whatever Direct lands in early 2027.
What do you think – is an open-world Kirby the right move for the series, or was Forgotten Land’s structure already the sweet spot? Come talk about it in the NerdBlocks forum.
