Persona 6 teaser trailer suggests a darker direction for the series

Nearly 10 years after the release of Persona 5, the next entry in the series, Persona 6, has finally been announced by developer Atlus. There’s not yet a release date, and the game will come to both PlayStation and Xbox consoles, marking a shift for the Shin Megami Tensei subseries that has largely been a PlayStation exclusive. Atlus announced the news during Sunday’s Xbox showcase. We saw very little footage of the game, but it’s great to know after all this time that it actually exists.

The trailer shows a bunch of headstones in a graveyard, with a headless statue at the center. A man’s hand reaches toward the statue, and as he touches it, he sees colorful flashes of what appears to be blood pumping through a person’s veins. It’s all very much like the Nine Inch Nails Closer video, or the scene in Twilight: Breaking Dawn where Bella transforms into a vampire. The teaser seems to be a callback to the series’ gritty, mature earlier days, and a far cry from the high school hijinks that have been more common in the recent installments of the series.

Then again, there could be a graveyard near a high school in the Persona universe. After all, in Persona 3, the main party’s entire high school transformed into a 100-story dungeon full of monsters in the middle of the night. Supernatural things are afoot here!

​​​​​​​

While we didn’t get a detailed look at the Persona 6 protagonist or setting, we did get confirmation that the game’s primary color is indeed green, which has long been rumored. The three previous games in the series have all had a distinct color coding, with Persona 3 being blue, Persona 4 being yellow, and Persona 5 being red. (I was personally hoping for purple, but this is fine too.)

2026 marks the 30th anniversary of the Persona series, and publisher Sega had previously teased that it would be a very celebratory year, leading fans to speculate about a potential new game announcement. Since the international release of Persona 5 in 2017, the series has become more popular than ever before, particularly after the warm reception of the extended Persona 5 Royal in 2019 and the remake Persona 3 Reload in 2024.

2026 is shaping up to be a banner year for Persona fans. Not only is there now Persona 6 to look forward to, but Persona 4 Revival, a remake of the 2008 game, is also slated for release later this year. It’s unclear if Atlus has any more tricks up its sleeve when it comes to surprising players during Persona’s anniversary year, but with this latest announcement, there’s certainly a lot to celebrate.