Today is a genuinely momentous day if you happen to be a fan of the Trails franchise.
The 15th January 2026 marks the release of Trails beyond the Horizon, the latest instalment in Falcom's long-running RPG series.
But the bigger picture here is that with Horizon's arrival, the West is officially caught up with the entire property.
Indeed, this is the first time in franchise history that all of the Trails games available in Japan are also available overseas. It's taken literal decades to get to this point, but it's finally happened.
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Falcom itself is not a large company, and so beyond the original Trails in the Sky trilogy — initially released in 2004 — it struggled to localise its titles in the West.
It wasn't until 2015 that the series would be picked up again for a Western audience. Xseed Games published the first Trails of Cold Steel for PS3 and PS Vita in North America — already two years behind its Japanese release — while NIS America (rather confusingly) published it in Europe.
But it was really the remastered PS4 version of Trails of Cold Steel that established the property in the two regions, launching in 2019 via the aforementioned NIS America.
By this point, however, the West had fallen far behind the Japanese release schedule.
Fortunately, the success of Cold Steel and its direct sequel was enough to convince NIS America to push forward with plans for continued localisation.
The publisher would go on to localise Cold Steel 3, Cold Steel 4, the two Crossbell games from before the Cold Steel saga, Trails into Reverie, Daybreak, and Daybreak 2 all within the space of about four and a half years.
A herculean effort, but it paved the way for where we are now — all caught up with the most recent Trails title.
Again, this may not mean much to those unfamiliar with Falcom's storied creation, but parity with the Japanese release schedule has been a long, long, long time coming.
From our perspective — having been writing about these games for what feels like an eternity — it's a borderline surreal moment.
The next Trails game — not counting upcoming remake Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter, which has a global release anyway — is believed to be in development right now. It'll be very interesting to see when it gets announced, and whether it'll be granted a worldwide launch.
Are you a big Trails fan? How does it feel to be all caught up on the latest saga? Join Van and the gang in the comments section below.