Real-time strategy · KING Art

No WASD to come home to. Your hand covers the whole board.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV arrives on 3 December 2026 for PC — delayed from September — with the Commander Edition playing three days early from 30 November. An RTS asks the one thing no shooter does: a hand that holds no movement key and instead reaches the whole keyboard, thousands of times a match. The command board on this page watches that hand and times the loop an RTS is actually made of.

Countdown in your time zoneDawn of War IV launches in

75days to go

75days

00hours

00minutes

00seconds

first regionlast region

Midnight arrives region by region, over roughly a day.

Launch moment: midnight local time on Thursday, December 3, 2026. Deep Silver has not published a clock time for the public unlock, only the date — so the countdown above is set to midnight where you are, and the table below shows how far a date without a stated time can stretch. Commander Edition buyers are already playing from 30 November.

Command board

What your left hand does in twenty seconds

A strategy game is one loop repeated for forty minutes: pick a group, give it an order, go back. The board watches that loop on your keyboard and paints where your hand actually lives — including the answer most players do not want, which is that they never pressed a number at all.

APM now—

Peak—

Group → order—

Group presses0

Keys used—

Board is off. Arm it, then play your opening for twenty seconds.

Arm the board and run the first twenty seconds of your usual opening on the keyboard alone. Group → order is the time between a control-group number and the order that follows it — the loop an RTS is actually made of. Escape switches the board off. KING Art has not published Dawn of War IV's default bindings; these are the keys the genre uses, measured on your hardware.

Runs entirely in this tab. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored, and no claim is made about how Dawn of War IV itself will handle your input — the game is not out. What it measures is your own hardware, which is the half you can fix before launch day.

Unlock time

When Dawn of War IV unlocks where you are

Midnight arrives in one zone after another, so the same release date spans about 21 hours end to end. Every row unlocks at 00:00 on its own clock.
Where	Unlocks at	After the first zone
New ZealandPacific/Auckland	00:00 local	first
Australia (east)Australia/Sydney	00:00 local	2 h later
Japan & KoreaAsia/Tokyo	00:00 local	4 h later
PhilippinesAsia/Manila	00:00 local	5 h later
IndiaAsia/Kolkata	00:00 local	7 h 30 m later
MoscowEurope/Moscow	00:00 local	10 h later
Central EuropeEurope/Berlin	00:00 local	12 h later
UKEurope/London	00:00 local	13 h later
BrazilAmerica/Sao Paulo	00:00 local	16 h later
US EasternAmerica/New York	00:00 local	18 h later
US PacificAmerica/Los Angeles	00:00 local	21 h later

This one unlocks at midnight local time, so the date is Thursday, 3 December 2026 wherever you are but the moment is not. That is also the one case where changing your console or store region does something: a zone that has already passed midnight is already playing.

Key facts

What is confirmed about Dawn of War IV

PlatformsPC

Release3 December 2026

Delayed from 17 September 2026 by KING Art for optimisation and polish. Deep Silver has published the date but not the hour.

Early unlock30 November, three days

The Commander Edition plays three days before the public date. It is the full game, not a trial.

PlatformsPC only

No console version announced. The Steam listing declares no controller support, which for an RTS is expected rather than an omission.

Price$44.99 standard, $67.49 Commander

Steam list prices at 16 September 2026, both discounted 10% while pre-orders are open. Regional pricing differs.

FactionsFour at launch, including the Adeptus Astartes

As stated on the store page. The full roster and any post-launch factions are not confirmed.

What the input has to doReach, not hold

An RTS hand is not anchored on WASD. It covers the number row, the letters and the modifiers, and the bind that fails is the one furthest from where the hand rests.

Timeline

Dates that matter

Nov 26, 2026
Pre-load window opens
Steam pre-load usually opens a week out; confirm on the store page before relying on it.
In 68 days
Nov 30, 2026
Commander Edition early unlock
Three days ahead of the public date, with the full game rather than a trial.
In 72 days
Dec 3, 2026
Launch
Public release on PC. Deep Silver has published the date but not the hour.
In 75 days

Editions

Which edition unlocks what

Prices are US list prices where the publisher has stated them; regional pricing differs.

Standard

$44.99

Base game on 3 December

Commander

$67.49

Base game with a three-day early unlock from 30 November
Year 1 Expansion

Confirmed

PC on 3 December 2026, delayed from 17 September
A three-day early unlock with the Commander Edition, from 30 November
Four playable factions at launch, including the Adeptus Astartes
Developed by KING Art, published by Deep Silver
A return to the series' RTS structure rather than the squad focus of Dawn of War III

Not confirmed yet

The unlock hour — Deep Silver has published the date only
The default hotkey layout, and whether grid keys are offered
Whether control groups and camera bookmarks are freely rebindable
Any controller support
Modifier behaviour for queueing and formation commands

Get ready

Launch checklist

Everything here runs in the browser and takes minutes, so the first hour with the game is spent playing.

Map what your hand actually reachesAn RTS hand covers three rows and the modifiers without an anchor key to return to. Find the binds that are a stretch before a match teaches you the hard way.Test the modifier combinationsCtrl, Shift and Alt plus a number is the shape of every control group, and it is exactly the shape a keyboard matrix refuses. Better to learn that now than mid-push.Check your click sustainAn RTS is a clicking game for hours at a time. Measure the rate you can hold rather than the rate you can spike.Rule out a double-clicking switchA bouncing switch in an RTS is a second order you never gave — a unit that walks off, a building queued twice.

Quick answers

When does Dawn of War IV unlock where I am?

On 3 December 2026 — Deep Silver has published the date but not the hour, so the countdown here is set to midnight where you are and the table shows how far apart the first and last regions sit on a date with no stated time. If you hold the Commander Edition you are playing from 30 November instead, three days earlier.

Why does an RTS need input testing at all?

Because the hand does something no shooter asks of it. There is no WASD anchor to return to, so the hand covers the number row, the letters and the modifiers continuously, and the bind that fails is the one furthest from where it rests. Add Ctrl or Shift for a control group and you are also asking the keyboard for three simultaneous keys, which is where a matrix limit appears.

Is there controller support?

The Steam listing declares none, and for an RTS that is the expected answer rather than a gap. This page will not claim otherwise until the store page does.

Will you publish the default hotkeys?

On the Controls Library, once they are published and can be verified against the shipped game. A guessed hotkey table for an RTS is worse than none, because it is the kind of page people copy from.

What should I test before launch night?

Reach across the whole board, the modifier chords your control groups will use, your sustained click rate and whether any switch is double-firing. All four are measured on this site and none of them need the game.