Survivor Series: WarGames (2026)

Background

Survivor Series is an annual professional wrestling event produced every November by WWE since 1987, generally held the week of Thanksgiving. The second longest running pay-per-view (PPV) event in history (behind WWE's WrestleMania), it is one of the promotion's five biggest events of the year, along with WrestleMania, SummerSlam, Royal Rumble, and Money in the Bank, referred to as the "Big Five".^[1][2] From 1987 to 2021, the event was characterized by having Survivor Series matches, which were tag team elimination matches that typically featured teams of four or five wrestlers against each other.^[3] In 2022, the event was rebranded as "Survivor Series: WarGames" and instead of Survivor Series matches, the annual event became based around the WarGames match, a type of steel cage match where two teams face each other in a roofless cage that surrounds two rings placed side by side and the teams typically feature four to five wrestlers each but is decided by one fall instead of eliminating all opponents. WWE's developmental brand NXT previously held an annual WarGames event from 2017 to 2021 before the match became a part of Survivor Series.^[4]

Announced on July 13, 2026, the 40th Survivor Series, and fifth annual as WarGames, was scheduled for Saturday, November 28, 2026, at Daikin Park in Houston, Texas. It will be the second consecutive Survivor Series event to be held in a stadium, and it will be held for wrestlers from the promotion's Raw and SmackDown brand divisions. Houston previously hosted Survivor Series at the Toyota Center in 2017, and Daikin Park, then known as Minute Maid Park, previously hosted the 2020 Royal Rumble. Tickets went on sale on August 7.^[5]

In addition to airing on traditional PPV worldwide, Survivor Series: WarGames will be available to livestream on ESPN's direct-to-consumer streaming service in the United States, Netflix in most international markets, SuperSport in Sub-Saharan Africa, and Abema in Japan.^[6]

Storylines

The event will involve matches that result from scripted storylines. Results are predetermined by WWE's writers on the Raw and SmackDown brands,^[7][8] while storylines are produced on WWE's weekly television shows, Monday Night Raw and Friday Night SmackDown.^[9]