Windows Central Insider
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 developers Infinity Ward revealed new information about the upcoming first-person shooter's dedicated third mode, DMZ, ahead of the 2026 Xbox Game Showcase, part of this year's Summer Game Fest activities.
The new mode will embrace the extraction shooter genre, adding a new set of gameplay options to the franchise's standard Campaign and Multiplayer offerings.
Four years ago, Infinity Ward released its first attempt at an extraction-genre mode with the initial DMZ Beta. The DMZ Beta launched for free as part of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2022) and Warzone 2.0 package. The Infinity Ward team described the original DMZ beta as "a crazy experiment" that "quickly became a proving ground and a test bed... through seasonal updates and live experiments."
Studio Multiplayer Creative Director for Infinity Ward, Geoff Smith, said that watching the extraction shooter genre grow, as well as data from the initial DMZ beta, helped the team to learn what resonated with players and what the mode was lacking in its earliest state.
"All that knowledge and those action items became this foundation for us as we were shaping up this new vision of DMZ from the ground up," said Smith.
Infinity Ward's new take on DMZ has been crafted with a rich story — crafted by the studio's single-player narrative team — that picks up after the events of the Campaign and ties directly into the existing Modern Warfare universe and lore.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 DMZ — Hajin
The new extraction sandbox is set in the Korean city of Hajin, an area that has been affected by a nuclear reactor meltdown, creating a demilitarized zone polluted by radiation. Players will find Hajin marked with increasingly dangerous AI threats, environmental puzzles, and narrative story missions that make the world feel more like a game within a game than just a simple third mode.
Before infil to Hajin, players begin at the DMZ's forward operating base, a hub for player progression where you can manage gear, squad up, and prepare for combat. Each player is an off-book asset working for the CIA, scouring the DMZ for military tech to capture and neutralize. But there are other rogue agents to watch out for.
DMZ's Hajin map will launch with nine distinct points of interest:
- Hajin City
- Casino
- Fallout
- Hospital
- Military Base
- Farmlands
- Prison
- Broadcast
- Town
Three different countries converge to create the DMZ map, Hajin — a South Korean exclusion that has been hit the hardest by the radiation, makes up the majority of the map, while parts of North Korea and Russia also lend themselves to the mode's stage.
Hajin creates a living world for DMZ, where players can look in the sky to see air carriers moving cargo overhead or intercept convoys moving throughout the world, but it's also a living world that is affected by dynamic weather conditions.
Some infils will drop you into a Hajin that is bright and sunny, while others can have you standing in the rain or obscure your vision with dense fog. The weather itself is not always severe; it can intensify or lighten up as your time in Hajin progresses.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 DMZ — Progression and gameplay
Before you can infiltrate Hajin, you must first choose what activities you want to experience while you're in the DMZ. Players can choose from Story Missions, Dynamic Missions, or Free Roam when loading into the zone.
Infinity Ward has shared that the story missions for the DMZ were crafted by the Modern Warfare 4 single player team and built upon the world experienced by players in the campaign. Dynamic Missions provide squads with a randomized checklist of activities to explore while in the DMZ, while Free Roam turns players loose to find their own activities.
Those who are queuing up without a full squad, but have squad fill on, will be matched with players who are queuing for the same tasks. For example, if you have a group of three and are looking to play a Story Mission while in the DMZ, the random player who is added to fill out your squad will also be someone who was searching to join for a Story Mission, minimizing the risk that your random squad mates might leave you hanging high and dry if you they don't want to play the same tasks as your group.
However, not all players in the DMZ will be performing the same mission as your squad. You may have signed up to free roam, but you may encounter other players who are attempting to complete story missions. The DMZ operates on a "Same world, same time" premise, where squads are grouped together by tasks, but the world itself is populated with players who all have a variety of goals.
Team members from Infinity Ward described the studio's philosophy for DMZ as "You push, and the world pushes back." Players will encounter various convoys and air traffic that can pose challenges for their squads, but only if they are willing to engage with them. Infinity Ward has baked in stealth mechanics that can serve as 'kill switches' for activated events, giving the player a chance to duck out from roaming encounters.
Run-ins with other players, however, are more difficult to escape. As players work their way up the food chain, earning player kills and making a name for themselves amongst the DMZ leaderboards, they may become subject to bounties. Players with bounties drop a dog tag that can be exfilled from the DMZ for a reward. Would-be bounty hunters can pay for intel on marked operators within their match, similar to how bounties of the past have played out in Call of Duty: Warzone.
Standard Call of Duty multiplayer fans might be wondering what the big deal is with having a bounty placed on you in the DMZ, and the answer to that leads us to player progression in the zone. Unlike multiplayer or resurgence modes, where spawning is free and virtually unlimited, players' progress in the DMZ is tied to operators similar to Black Ops 7's Endgame progression system.
Each operator has a set skill tree that players can unlock according to their own preferences, and players can have multiple operators in order to experience a variety of gameplay styles. Operator death in the DMZ is semi-permanent: downed operators lose their current gear within the DMZ, and after the match, the lost operator becomes MIA. Based on those operators' unlocked traits and the player's stats, a cash value is assigned to that operator that the player must pay if they want to bring them back from being MIA.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4's DMZ progression is dedicated to the DMZ mode and is not impacted by gameplay in other Call of Duty modes.
When and how to play DMZ
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is set to launch on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, Battle.Net, Steam, PlayStation 5, and the Nintendo Switch 2 on Friday, October 23, 2026. DMZ is a dedicated third-mode, and — unlike its predecessor, which released as a beta — it is not expected to be free as part of the Call of Duty: Warzone package.
Those who want to infiltrate Hajin will need to pick up Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 to do so, as the game will not be included in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass subscriptions until at least one-year post-launch.
Infinity Ward has shared a considerable amount of information about Modern Warfare 4's development since its initial reveal on May 28, with a recent dev talk going into detail about the game's audio development. We've taken the time to break down every multiplayer map and mode confirmed for Modern Warfare 4, new create-a-class and movement details, as well as give impressions on our time hands-on with the game.
For even more info about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, check out our interview with Infinity Ward ahead of the game's reveal.
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