Nintendo says Splatoon 3 has had more players in 2026 compared to 2025
Posted on September 25, 2026 by Brian(@NE_Brian)
in News, Switch
According to Nintendo, the player count for Splatoon 3 has risen in 2026 compared to 2025.
Splatoon 3 has been around since 2022. Although there are exceptions, as a game gets older, you’d expect the amount of players to continue falling over time. However, Splatoon 3 is one of those exceptions.
Splatoon 3 director Seita Inoue revealed that bit of information in an interview with Famitsu. He believes that Splatoon 3 and Splatoon Raiders have had a positive effect on each other.
Here’s our translation of the interview excerpt:
Inoue: Also, Raiders was revealed about a year ago, and since then the number of people playing [Splatoon] 3 has increased.
Really?
Inoue: Yes. There are more people playing in 2026 than there were in 2025, so we think they have had a positive effect on each other. We plan on continuing to challenge new things while keeping the important parts of the series.
We have made it so that the game content can be enjoyed even by players first trying out the series, so we would be grateful if they would play it (Splatoon Raiders).
Aside from the announcement (and now release) of Splatoon Raiders, something else that probably helped Splatoon 3 was its Nintendo Switch 2 update. A patch released last year, which added various benefits when playing on the console including higher resolution. You can read more about that update here.
As for Splatoon Raiders, Nintendo recently confirmed that the game won’t be getting and DLC or balance updates. We have more on that here.
Translation provided by Simon Griffin and SatsumaFS on behalf of Nintendo Everything.
More: interview, Seita Inoue, Splatoon 3, top
