The Most Wishlisted Games on Steam Are Mostly Games You Can’t Buy… For Now
Steam’s top-20 wishlist chart for November 2026 contains twenty games. Six of them have an actual day on the calendar. Ten have no date whatsoever – six listed as to be announced, four as the even vaguer “coming soon.” Three have only a year. One has a quarter. And of the six with a real date, exactly one releases in 2026 at all.
That is a strange thing for a popularity chart to be. The most-wishlisted list is usually read as a preview of what is coming, and it is closer to a monument to waiting – a ranking of anticipation that has nowhere to go, topped by a Valve game with no release date that has held first place for a long stretch.
So this is organised by how real each date is rather than by rank. Then the actual mechanics of how a game climbs this chart, the other November wishlist chart that gets confused with this one, and what the numbers genuinely cannot tell you.
The Full Top 20 of Most Wishlisted Games on Steam (Early November 2026)
| # | Title | Developer | Publisher | Release | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Deadlock | Valve | Valve | To be announced | – |
| 2 | Dear Passengers | FLEXUS | FLEXUS | 2026 | ↑1 |
| 3 | Light No Fire | Hello Games | Hello Games | To be announced | ↓1 |
| 4 | Fable | Playground Games | Xbox Game Studios | 23 Feb 2027 | – |
| 5 | Blight: Survival | Haenir Studio | Behaviour Interactive | To be announced | – |
| 6 | Total War: WARHAMMER 40,000 | Creative Assembly | SEGA | To be announced | ↑1 |
| 7 | Resident Evil Veronica | Capcom | Capcom | 2027 | ↑2 |
| 8 | Kingmakers | Redemption Road | tinyBuild | Coming soon | – |
| 9 | Witchbrook | Chucklefish, Robotality | Chucklefish | 28 Jan 2027 | ↑1 |
| 10 | ILL | Team Clout | Team Clout | 2027 | ↑1 |
| 11 | ARK 2 | Studio Wildcard, Grove Street Games | Studio Wildcard | To be announced | ↑1 |
| 12 | Soulframe | Digital Extremes | Digital Extremes | Coming soon | ↑1 |
| 13 | METRO 2039 | 4A Games | Deep Silver | 4 Feb 2027 | ↑2 |
| 14 | Unrecord | DRAMA | DRAMA | To be announced | – |
| 15 | The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past | CD Projekt Red, Fool’s Theory, Yigsoft | CD Projekt Red | Coming soon | ↑3 |
| 16 | Persona 4 Revival | ATLUS | SEGA | 17 Feb 2027 | – |
| 17 | Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV | KING Art | Deep Silver | 3 Dec 2026 | – |
| 18 | The Expanse: Osiris Reborn | Owlcat Games | Owlcat Games | Q2 2027 | NEW |
| 19 | Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis | Crystal Dynamics, Flying Wild Hog | Amazon Game Studios | 12 Feb 2027 | NEW |
| 20 | Tides of Annihilation | Eclipse Glow Games | Eclipse Glow Games | Coming soon | ↓1 |
Sorted by How Real the Date Is
Here is the same list reorganised around the only question that matters if you are deciding what to actually wait for:
- Tier one, a firm day (6 games): Dawn of War IV on December 3, Witchbrook on January 28, METRO 2039 on February 4, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis on February 12, Persona 4 Revival on February 17, Fable on February 23.
- Tier two, a quarter (1 game): The Expanse: Osiris Reborn, Q2 2027.
- Tier three, a year and nothing more (3 games): Dear Passengers in 2026, Resident Evil Veronica and ILL in 2027.
- Tier four, “coming soon” (4 games): Kingmakers, Soulframe, The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past, Tides of Annihilation. On Steam, this phrase carries no commitment at all.
- Tier five, to be announced (6 games): Deadlock, Light No Fire, Blight: Survival, Total War: WARHAMMER 40,000, ARK 2, Unrecord.
Half the chart sits in tiers four and five. The number one game on Steam’s wishlist chart is in tier five, and so is the number three.
The Most Wishlisted Games on Steam You Can Actually Play Soon
The tier-one list has a shape worth pointing out, because it is extraordinary. Only Dawn of War IV arrives in 2026, on December 3 – KING Art’s real-time strategy game, the first Dawn of War not made by Relic, with Commander Edition buyers getting in three days early on November 30.
Then nothing until late January, and then this:
- January 28 – Witchbrook, the magic-school life sim a decade in the making.
- February 4 – METRO 2039 from 4A Games.
- February 12 – Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis.
- February 17 – Persona 4 Revival.
- February 23 – Fable from Playground Games.
Four of the chart’s dated releases land within eleven days of February 2027, and five inside four weeks. That is a pile-up, and it is the single most actionable thing on this page: if you are budgeting, February 2027 is going to be expensive, and some of those dates will probably move because publishers rarely enjoy sharing a fortnight with four other major launches.
How Dear Passengers Got to Number Two?
The month’s headline movement is a game nobody had heard of in June overtaking Hello Games.
Dear Passengers, from the Kyiv studio FLEXUS, premiered its trailer on July 14, 2026. It gained around 700,000 wishlists in 36 hours, passed 1.5 million within days, and hit number 12 on this chart inside a week. It has now climbed to number two, pushing Light No Fire down to third.
The game is a co-op comedy set in the world’s worst airline, where one player flies while the others serve passengers and manage turbulence, bird strikes and dangerous cargo. It also arrived with two controversies: player names in the trailer drew criticism as Jeffrey Epstein references, with a passenger appearing modelled on Donald Trump – the developer condemned Epstein’s actions and said all characters are fictional – and a job listing mentioning generative AI prompted speculation about AI-made assets, which FLEXUS attributed to an old posting tied to mobile projects and has since revised.
Neither episode slowed the wishlists down, which is itself a data point about how this chart works.
The other movers this month:
- The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past climbed three places to 15, the biggest jump on the board.
- Resident Evil Veronica rose two to 7, and METRO 2039 rose two to 13.
- The Expanse: Osiris Reborn and Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis are new entries at 18 and 19.
- Phantom Blade Zero and over the hill both left the chart after October, having moved from anticipated to released.
That last line explains most chart movement in this category. Games do not usually fall off the wishlist chart because interest collapsed. They fall off because they came out.
How a Game Actually Climbs This Chart
Analytical estimates based on Gamalytic data give a reasonably clear picture of the mechanics, and it is not what most people assume. The top 100 wishlisted games hold roughly 93 million wishlists between them, averaging about 933,000 each – with indie and AAA titles running remarkably close, around 910,000 and 955,000 respectively.
What moves those numbers is announcements, and the venue matters enormously.
| Where the Announcement Lands | Average 30-Day Wishlist Gain |
|---|---|
| The Game Awards | +418,000 |
| Summer Game Fest | +248,000 |
| Steam Next Fest | +190,000 |
| YouTube | +175,000 |
| A playable demo | +91,000 |
| Gamescom | +79,000 |
A Game Awards slot is worth more than five Gamescom appearances on this measure, which is worth remembering with the ceremony coming on December 10.
Three further findings sharpen the picture:
- An average announcement adds about 220,000 wishlists in 30 days, against roughly 140,000 for an average non-announcement beat.
- Breakout announcements – a little over half of indie titles – average +322,000, which is about a third of that game’s entire lifetime wishlist total. One trailer, one third of the game’s anticipation, permanently.
- Thirty-day video views and thirty-day wishlist growth correlate at 0.83, which is tight enough to say that on this chart, views essentially are wishlists.
And the finding that explains the undated problem: titles announced before 2025 hold about 70% of indie wishlists on the chart. Wishlists accumulate and never expire. A game announced in 2022 has had four years to collect them, and a game with no release date has no event that converts them into sales and removes it from the list.
That is why Deadlock sits at number one with nothing to sell. The chart rewards longevity of anticipation, and an undated game is anticipation with no end date.
Worth stating plainly: those figures are analytical estimates rather than numbers published by Steam or by developers, and Steam’s own chart is ordinal – it gives you an order, not counts.
The Other November Chart
Here is where almost everyone searching this gets confused, because there are two legitimate answers to “the most wishlisted games on Steam,” and they share no entries.
The chart above is the overall top 20 – every unreleased game on the store, ranked. The other chart is the most-wishlisted games releasing this month, and for November 2026 it looks completely different:
- ArcheAge Chronicles – November 4, an MMORPG entering early access and expanding gradually after launch.
- DREADMOOR – November 9, a post-apocalyptic fishing adventure in early access with one major region and an original story.
- Warhammer Survivors – November 10, a Vampire Survivors-shaped game with Warhammer 40,000 and Age of Sigmar characters.
- Cozy Game Restoration – November 5, a simulator about bringing old cartridges back to life.
- Loftia – November 3, cozy multiplayer about building a sustainable future.
- Find The Needle – November 6, a needle-in-a-haystack search simulator.
- Casualties: Unknown – November 9, cave exploration as one of a thousand test subjects.
- Arkheron – November 27, team PvP where items swing battles mid-match.
- Trees Hate You – November 16, in which forest trees try to kill you.
- Football Manager 27 – November 10.
Nothing on that list appears on the other one. These are two different questions with two different answers, and a headline saying “Steam’s most wishlisted game” could legitimately mean either Deadlock or ArcheAge Chronicles depending on which chart the writer was reading.
The practical difference: the overall chart tells you what PC players want in the abstract, often for years. The release-month chart tells you what is about to actually exist. If you want something to play in November, only one of those two lists is useful.
What the Most Wishlisted Games on Steam Chart Does Not Tell You
Four honest limits, because this chart gets over-read constantly.
- A wishlist is not a preorder and not a purchase. It costs nothing, commits nothing, and never expires. A person can hold a wishlist for four years and then not buy the game.
- Steam’s chart has no public numbers. It publishes an order. Every absolute figure quoted anywhere, including in this article, comes from third-party estimation rather than from Valve.
- Old announcements dominate. With pre-2025 titles holding roughly 70% of indie wishlists on the chart, position reflects how long a game has been anticipated at least as much as how much it is anticipated.
- A high position can mean a stalled project. The chart cannot distinguish between a game that is nearly finished and a game that has been quietly undated for years, which is precisely why ten of the top twenty have no date.
One extra note for anyone tracking the chart: Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis carries an AI-generated content disclosure on its Steam listing, which is the sort of detail worth knowing before a wishlist turns into a purchase in February.
FAQ
What is the most wishlisted game on Steam right now?
Deadlock, Valve’s own title, holds the top spot on the overall November 2026 chart, with no release date announced. On the separate chart of games releasing this month, ArcheAge Chronicles leads.
How many of the top 20 have release dates?
Six have a firm day: Dawn of War IV on December 3, Witchbrook on January 28, METRO 2039 on February 4, Tomb Raider on February 12, Persona 4 Revival on February 17 and Fable on February 23. Ten have no date at all.
Which top-20 game comes out soonest?
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV on December 3, 2026 – the only dated entry arriving this year.
What changed on the chart this month?
Dear Passengers rose to second, overtaking Light No Fire. Songs of the Past climbed three places to 15. The Expanse: Osiris Reborn and Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis entered the list, while Phantom Blade Zero and over the hill left it after releasing.
How do games gain wishlists fastest?
Through announcements at major shows. A Game Awards beat averages about 418,000 wishlists in 30 days, against 248,000 for Summer Game Fest, 190,000 for Steam Next Fest and 79,000 for Gamescom.
Does Steam publish wishlist counts?
No. Steam’s chart is a ranking only. Absolute wishlist figures come from third-party analytics estimates rather than Valve.
Why does a game with no release date sit at number one?
Wishlists accumulate and never expire, and nothing removes an undated game from the chart. Releasing is what takes a game off the list, so the longer a project stays unreleased, the longer it keeps climbing.
A Chart That Measures Patience
Deadlock has no date. Light No Fire has no date. Blight: Survival, Total War: WARHAMMER 40,000, ARK 2 and Unrecord have no dates. Four more say “coming soon,” which on Steam means nothing in particular. Add that up and half the most-wanted games on the world’s biggest PC storefront are things nobody can tell you when they will play.
Which is not a scandal. It is what happens when a free, permanent, zero-commitment button meets an industry that announces games years before finishing them. Anticipation compounds. Release dates do not.
The genuinely useful reading of this chart, then, is the small tier-one list – one game in December, then five squeezed into four weeks of early 2027, four of them inside eleven days of February. That is your actual calendar. Everything above it is a measure of hope.
And if you want the chart to look different next month, watch December 10. A Game Awards slot moves more wishlists than any other event in the calendar, and there are plenty of undated games up there that could badly do with one.
Sorted your February budget yet? Share this, bookmark it, and go prune a wishlist you have been carrying since 2022 – it is allowed. If creative or commercial collaboration brought you here, the BandurArt team is one message away.
