Some lucky souls will get hands-on with Silksong within weeks, with the Hollow Knight sequel confirmed to be playable at Gamescom 2025

An image of Hornet from Silksong engulfed with rage.

(Image credit: Team Cherry)

Mortals will have their first chance to play Hollow Knight Silksong in less than a month from now. The sequel will appear at Microsoft's Gamescom booth on August 20 and 21, and will be playable on both PC and the forthcoming ROG Xbox Ally, which will also make its hands-on debut at the convention.

Gamescom, of course, is a convention held in Cologne, Germany. Before Microsoft's announcement, the only confirmed opportunity to go hands-on with Silksong was at an Australian museum in September, where it will appear as part of the Game Worlds exhibition at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne.

That's two hands-on events happening very closely together, and it points to a possibility that many an online Silksong monomaniac may struggle to believe: that Silksong will finally release "before Holiday" this year. That's a tad vague, but we know at least that Team Cherry considers this to mean "before Christmas". The more optimistic among us might even hope that Silksong could release sometime between the Gamescom and ACMI showings.

There are certainly people putting forth that theory in the Silksong Subreddit, not to mention the Discord, both of which are taking this news with an exemplary dearth of chill. This community has been put through a lot though, and is evidently at the end of its tether. Take this recent headline from Harvey: "Silksong subreddit hallucinates an analog horror called Snosk, ritually sacrifices a mod to be their very own Hollow Knight, continues to have a normal one, nothing to see here".

Oh, and Microsoft—clearly relishing another opportunity to say Silksong, all the better to distract from the fact that it has laid off 9,000 people in 2025 alone—will also have some other stuff at its Xbox booth, including Ninja Gaiden 4, Borderlands 4, Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, and more.

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Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.

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