It’s always nice when a dictator opens his doors to the world and offers them a glimpse of his tropical paradise isn’t it? Today El Presidente has done just that with a small tease of the upcoming Tropico 7 with a gameplay trailer, and the tease has this writer excited.
For those of you unfamiliar, the Tropico series is a long running city building game where you rule your tropical paradise with an iron fist. For as much as it is about building up the island, it’s about balancing the politics as well. From making sure the worlds superpowers don’t invade you, to ensuring your people are just happy enough to keep you voted in as Presidente.
El Presidente has been doing such a good job of keeping people happy that he has now been ruling for 25 years! That’s right the first Tropico game came out all the way back in 2001 and El Presidente has been in charge ever since. With Kalypso celebrating both the company and games 25th anniversary this year, it is only fitting that Tropico is back for 2026.
Since being announced at Gamescom 2025 last August, we haven’t seen too much of Tropico 7. They ran a closed beta for the first couple weeks of April, but have largely remained radio silent until today.
While the trailer is short at under a minute, it shows off everything that makes Tropico one of the premier city building/management games in the world today. The islands are gorgeous and the detail of the buildings have improved drastically since Tropico 6 (which looked great to begin with).
The big focus for the new trailer was showing off the new terraforming mechanics. You could always do terraforming in the previous Tropico games, but developer Realmforge Studios is taking it to a whole new level, allowing players to literally move mountains if they choose.
This will significantly alter the way you can build up your island as you will have the freedom to expand as you want.
We also got to see a very brief glance at the fact that for the first time we will be able to head inside El Presidente’s palace and negotiate with other factions and world leaders. This is an exciting new feature to Tropico as it brings the inner politics to a new level. I’m very excited to see what they do with this when the game releases later this year.
Also for those looking for even more Tropico, Kalypso recently release the first Tropico 7 dev-log diary detailing some of the many new improvements in the game. Its worth checking out for sure.
Key Features
- Lead your nation to new heights: Tropico 7 tells El Presidente’s continuous success story across 5 campaign maps – starring himself, Penultimo and a new nemesis: Victoria Guerra.
- More is more: Archipelagos, with the biggest islands ever in the series, await your rule, expanded with 10 extra scenarios, more than 20 sandbox maps, and endless possibilities with a random map generator.
- Move mountains – literally: Erase them, create beaches, or even create entirely new islands! The new terraforming feature brings your megalomaniac dreams to life. Start that mammoth project – NOW!
- Bollocks uhm… Politics: Navigate the snares and pits of internal politics, when you summon the different factions to your council, a new way to meet them face to face while you pulverize their dreams – or use them for a BIG DEAL to your own advantage.
- Make the world your playground: Elections, election speeches and a vast portfolio of edicts depending on your political standing spice up your daily rule while you juggle foreign affairs and occasionally steal… uhm relocate a landmark to revel in its benefits.
- Built to prosper: Strategically place buildings to make use of synergy effects, keep citizen satisfaction high, and fill any unused plots of land with beautiful parks in a freely customized size.
- Generalissimo No. 1: Eliminate those pesky rebels and fend off foreign threats with a reworked military system enabling more direct control of your military units.
- Always judge a book by its cover: Customize the appearance of your palace and El Presidente with new and creative options.
Tropico 7 is currently expected to release sometime in 2026 for Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5 and PC. It will be a day 1 Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass game as well.
