The Division worth playing in 2026? For me, yes — and it’s mostly down to the world-building. Nearly a decade on, Tom Clancy’s The Division still feels ahead of its time — and if you’re here searching for whether The Division is still worth playing in 2026, this is basically my straight answer in long form. Consider this a lived-in The Division 1 review, not a nostalgia lap. Not because it invented the looter shooter, or because it’s the smoothest gunplay you’ll ever touch, but because the world-building is genuinely on another level. This is one of those rare games where you can be walking to an objective and end up stopping mid-street, not because of a firefight, but because the city itself has grabbed you by the collar.
Why Tom Clancy’s The Division still stuns
Manhattan here isn’t just “winter”. The Division Christmas setting is the hook, but it’s also the point: it turns every street into a contradiction you can feel. It’s Christmas-season winter: decorations still hanging, fairy lights still blinking in shop windows, and that unsettling sense that the city is dressed for warmth and celebration while everything underneath has collapsed. It’s a contradiction that shouldn’t work, but it absolutely does. The Division’s winter atmosphere is genuinely elite — not just pretty snowfall, but a whole mood that makes the city feel haunted and believable at the same time. The game’s whole identity is wrapped around that clash between festive normality and post-apocalyptic misery, and it’s a big reason the atmosphere still hits so hard in 2026.
On paper, the setup is simple: a virus spreads through contaminated banknotes during the chaos of Black Friday, and society falls apart fast. In practice, it’s the details that sell it. You’re not just told the city has collapsed; you’re shown it in a thousand small, quietly brutal snapshots.
Combat, loot, and the bits that still frustrate
The moment-to-moment play is classic cover-based shooting wrapped in RPG loot systems. You run missions, level up, chase better gear, and gradually shape an agent that feels more specialised and capable. When it’s working, it’s properly satisfying, not because it’s flashy, but because it has a tactical rhythm. You’re thinking about angles, spacing, cooldowns and timing. You’re not just shooting; you’re controlling space.
That said, I’m not going to pretend the genre’s weaknesses aren’t here. Enemy toughness can tip into bullet-sponge territory, especially if your gear is behind where the game expects you to be. I remember picking it up at launch and being completely taken by the visuals, then feeling genuinely deflated when I realised just how many headshots it could take to drop someone. It broke the immersion for me at the time, and I struggled to get past it on my first run.
But something shifted once I stopped trying to rush the main line (a common fault of mine) and started treating the city like the point of the experience. When you slow down, poke at side objectives, and let your build grow naturally, the grind starts to feel less like busywork and more like a reason to exist in the world. Weirdly, despite how desolate it all is, The Division has become a cosy game for me in the loosest sense of the phrase. If you’re typing The Division worth playing 2026 into Google on a cold evening, this is the exact feeling you’re hoping it still has — and for me, it does. It’s become a Christmas mainstay I dip back into most winters, even in 2025 and 2026.
And this is where The Division still genuinely shines. Manhattan is the star. Snow on the streets, steam rising from vents, neon reflecting off wet pavements, abandoned markets, boarded-up storefronts, makeshift quarantine zones and half-finished evacuation points. Even the simple act of walking through the city feels like it has intention behind it. The fact that Ubisoft built something this dense and convincing within the constraints of eighth-generation hardware still astounds me.
The big story beats are serviceable, but they’re not what you’ll rave about. The stronger storytelling is in the echoes, recordings, and environmental scenes that repeatedly stop you in your tracks. Countless times, I’ll be moving to the next objective and end up stuck for a moment, staring at a small scene the designers have built: a last-ditch aid station, an abandoned outpost, the aftermath of people trying to organise hope and failing. Oddly, it’s those scenes of collapse that give the world its ‘life’. It’s something you really have to experience to fully understand.
The Dark Zone, Survival, and the endgame pull
Then there’s the Dark Zone. Conceptually, it’s still brilliant: a tense PvPvE space where you’re never fully relaxed because the biggest threat might be the faction ahead of you, or the player who’s been lurking beside the extraction rope for ten minutes waiting to pick you off. It creates paranoia without needing jump scares, and I respect the design for that. Personally, I’ve always found it a hard mode to properly enjoy because the stress level can be sky-high. I’ve dipped in more in recent years when servers feel quieter, which takes some of the edge off and lets you appreciate what it’s trying to do.
If you’ve got access to the DLC, Survival is absolutely worth your time. It matches the winter setting perfectly: scavenging, managing scarcity, and feeling genuinely vulnerable rather than merely underpowered. Underground is also a nice change of pace, swapping the open streets for neon-lit tunnels and a different kind of claustrophobic tension.
So, is The Division worth playing in 2026?
So, does The Division still hold up in 2026 — and is The Division worth playing in 2026 if you’re coming to it fresh (or returning after years away)? For me, yes, without hesitation. Not because it’s perfect, but because it offers something very specific that very few games manage: a winter world that feels lived-in, detailed, and emotionally textured. If you want an atmosphere you can sink into, a co-op that feels great when it clicks, and world-building that still embarrasses a lot of modern releases, The Division remains a modern masterpiece in environmental design.
And if the remaster rumours ever turn out to be real, I’ll be first in the queue. Until then, I’m perfectly happy wandering through that frozen Manhattan again, lights still blinking, snow still falling, and the city still quietly showing off.
More from Retro Tech Tonic
If you’re in the mood for another sharp reminder of how much atmosphere (or sheer craftsmanship) can carry a game, these are worth a look next.
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered Review – a revisit that shows how well a classic campaign can hold up with the right treatment.
- Terminator 2D: No Fate Review – an arcade-leaning throwback that gets straight to the point and doesn’t waste your time.
- Jusant Review – the opposite energy: calm, thoughtful, and quietly absorbing when you want something slower.
External links
- Tom Clancy’s The Division (official Ubisoft page)
- Massive Entertainment – Tom Clancy’s The Division (developer project page)
- Massive Entertainment – Tom Clancy’s The Division 3 (official project page)
- Division 3 development update coverage (GamesRadar)
Note: there have been “Definitive Edition” re-release rumours doing the rounds for the 10th anniversary. Until Ubisoft announces anything official, I’m treating that as speculation rather than a confirmed product.