Call of Duty NEXT has had a date since July 20. As of today it has a time. Activision's official stream page for the showcase and the official Call of Duty account both put it at August 21, 9AM PT. That matters more than a normal showcase time slot, because this year the Modern Warfare 4 Early Access Beta kicks off immediately after the broadcast rather than on a separate schedule. The show is the starting gun.
Confirmed. The August 21 9AM PT start time comes straight from Activision's own Call of Duty NEXT stream page and the official Call of Duty account, and the beta schedule around it comes from the official July 20 Call of Duty blog. What is official is the show time. The exact minute the beta queue opens is not, because Activision has tied the beta to the end of the broadcast without publishing a runtime.
What is on the schedule
- Call of Duty NEXT August 21 at 9AM PT on the official Call of Duty channels. Live gameplay, a multiplayer content briefing, developer talk, and new reveals ahead of the beta.
- Early Access Beta August 21 through August 25, for players who pre-ordered, on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC. It opens straight after the NEXT broadcast.
- Open Beta August 28 through September 1, open to everyone on every platform including Nintendo Switch 2. No pre-order needed.
- Search and Destroy Named by Activision as a playable beta mode, alongside the new Kill Block mode and the Training Mobility Course.
- Weapons As many as 19 weapons across the beta, plus Perks, Tacticals, Lethals, Field Upgrades, and Killstreaks.
Why Hardcore SnD cares
Two beta weekends are the entire public runway before October 23. Everything your team is going to believe about MW4 gunplay, footstep audio, and map geometry gets formed in that window, and Search is a one-life mode, so the reps are expensive. A published start time turns that from a vague weekend plan into a calendar entry: pick the stack, clear the morning, be queued when the show ends instead of finding out about it from a clip.
- Squad planning 9AM PT is noon Eastern and 5PM in the UK. The Early Access weekend is short and pre-order gated, so decide now who is actually getting in.
- First-day reps The earliest lobbies give the cleanest read on time-to-kill, audio, and how Search plays before the meta hardens and everyone copies the same loadout.
- Warmup discipline Treat weekend one as scrim prep rather than a camo grind. Callouts, angles, and loadout notes are what survive into October.
Your team's MW4 book gets written across two beta weekends, or it does not get written.
What is not pinned down yet
9AM PT is when the broadcast starts, not when the beta opens. Activision has said the Early Access Beta begins immediately after NEXT ends, and it has not published a runtime for the show or a standalone beta unlock time. Plan to be free from 9AM PT and treat the actual queue time as an estimate until Activision posts one. The mode list carries the same caveat: Search and Destroy is named, but nothing official has detailed Hardcore availability, team sizes, or the beta map rotation, so do not build a practice plan around a playlist menu nobody has seen.
Modern Warfare 4 pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 open on August 26, which lands between the two beta weekends. Switch 2 players do not need a pre-order to join the Open Beta on August 28.