Although he’ll make at least one more appearance at the Tekken World Tour Finals next month
After decades under the same leadership, Tekken is now entering a brand new era moving into 2026.
It appears that longtime Tekken Director Katsuhiro Harada is officially gone from Bandai Namco.
If you were to look at Harada’s X account now, he updated his About section seemingly confirming his retirement from the company he spent most of his life at.
It now reads “Former Game Director and Chief Producer specializing in action and fighting games. Spent 31 years working on the TEKKEN series. Previously served as General Manager of original IP game projects at BNE & BNS.”
but his X handle is still @Harada_TEKKEN for the time being.
Harada previously announced his sudden departure from Bandai Namco earlier this month, and while he said he was leaving at the end of 2025, the holiday season likely means his work for the studio was already complete.
As for the next steps in his life journey, Harada still took part in Famitsu and 4Gamer’s annual New Year’s developer messages.
“I still have a lot of things I’m thinking about, and I hope to be able to share my goals with everyone in the near future,” said Harada via Famitsu as translated by our own Nicholas ‘MajinTenshinhan’ Taylor.
“At the end of January and start of February there’s the Tekken World Tour Final, which I was asked by my former employers to attend, so I’ll be showing my face there! That’s probably going to be my last Tekken-related appearance? Thank you for these 31 years!
“After battling for 31 years, it’s no surprise that I’m starting to consider retirement so I’d like to carve my future path at my own discretion, so I’ll be continuing in a manner that’s appropriate given my age.”
“After battling for 31 years, it’s no surprise that I’m starting to consider retirement so I’d like to carve my future path at my own discretion”
On what he’s looking forward to in the new year, Harada simply said, “For 2026, I’m mostly just looking to do something fun, haha.”
He offered a similar message to 4Gamer as well that we’ve translated too.
“I’m sure that many of you are already aware, but I will be leaving Bandai Namco here at the end of 2025,” said Harada. “So with that in mind, for 2026… I have noooothing planned! Haha!”
So it sounds like the 55-year-old is not yet ready to fully retire, but still hasn’t made up his mind as to what comes next for him (or at least that he wants to share publicly).
Perhaps he’ll open up a new game studio like former Capcom Director Hideaki Itsuno did, or maybe he’ll try his hand at something outside of video games.
The reigns of Tekken have now officially been handed over to Director Kohei ‘Nakatsu’ Ikeda and Producer Michael Murray with Bandai Namco reaffirming their support for Tekken 8 moving forward.
Both leads have worked with Tekken for a long time now, so it’s not like the series being handed over to newbies who don’t know what to do with a fighting game.
That being said, however, Tekken 8 already did start off its second year in a rough spot with its big Season 2 update lambasted by the community.
This forced the developer to pivot and release multiple additional patches to try and course correct, so the team will have a lot to prove moving into Season 3 without their main figurehead.
Even if you take issue with how the last three Tekken titles were handled in certain regards, Harada’s impact and fervent support of the series and fighting games as a whole cannot be understated or disputed.
The man personally attended more fighting game events than potentially any person in the world and interacted with the community more than any developer too, which will certainly be missed.
And Harada will be forever preserved in his works going all the way back to being the original voice actors for Marshall Law, Yoshimitsu and more.
Thank you for 31 years of Tekken, @Harada_TEKKEN ! #TEKKEN #harada #heihachi pic.twitter.com/GkSfSuh7nP
— BaiHu27 (Commissions Open) (@ByakkoArt) December 30, 2025
He also played a big role in organizing the Japanese fighting game developer roundtable events, which brought together teams from across different companies to discuss their genre amongst themselves and the audience while also pushing forward ideas like the importance of rollback netcode and cross-platform play.
We and everyone in the FGC extend our appreciation to the man who dedicated most of his life to fighting games. We hope to still see you and your sunglasses around sometimes in the future. Thank you for everything Harada-san.
Image source: Bandai Namco.