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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
30days to go
30days
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.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 Q W E R T Y A S D F G Z X C V B Tab Shift Ctrl Alt Space CONTROL GROUPS ORDERS
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 or stored, and no claim is made about how Dawn of War IV itself handles your input. What it measures is your own hardware — the half you can fix yourself.

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$59.99 standard, $89.99 Commander

Steam US list prices on 27 October 2026, both 10% off while pre-orders are open: $53.99 and $80.99. Regional pricing differs.

FactionsSpace Marines, Orks, Necrons, Adeptus Mechanicus

Four factions with a campaign each and more than 70 missions in all, per Deep Silver’s game overview of 21 October. A new playable faction is planned for Year One.

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

  1. Closed Beta

    Sign-up only, 21–26 October, under NDA.

  2. Pre-load window opens

    Steam pre-load usually opens a week out; confirm on the store page before relying on it.

    In 23 days
  3. Commander Edition early unlock

    Three days ahead of the public date, with the full game rather than a trial.

    In 27 days
  4. Launch

    Public release on PC. Deep Silver has published the date but not the hour.

    In 30 days
Editions

Which edition unlocks what

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

Standard

$59.99
  • Base game on 3 December

Commander

$89.99
  • 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 with a campaign each: Space Marines, Orks, Necrons and the Adeptus Mechanicus, in their series debut
  • 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
  • More than 70 campaign missions with branching choices and co-operative play, plus Skirmish, online multiplayer on 30 maps and The Last Stand for three players
  • Year One: free updates with Crusade Mode, a Mission Editor and new maps, modes and Commanders, alongside two story expansions and a new playable faction

Not confirmed yet

  • The unlock hour — Deep Silver has published the date only; Steam's store data currently holds 16:00 UTC on 3 December, which can still change
  • 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. Steam's store data currently lists 16:00 UTC on 3 December — 08:00 PST, 11:00 EST, 16:00 in the UK, 17:00 CET — but that is not an announcement and can still change. If you hold the Commander Edition you are playing from 30 November instead, three days earlier.

Which factions are in Dawn of War IV?

Four, each with its own campaign: the Space Marines, with the Blood Ravens and the Dark Angels, the Orks, the Necrons and the Adeptus Mechanicus, who make their series debut. Deep Silver lists more than 70 campaign missions with branching choices, and a new playable faction is planned for Year One.

Is there a Dawn of War IV beta?

There was a closed beta from 21 to 26 October 2026 for players who registered and were picked, held under NDA. No open beta has been announced; Commander Edition owners play the full game from 30 November.

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.