The ‘Modern Warfare 4’ open beta opens preloads for all players at 9:00 PT (18:00 SAST) on Wednesday, 26 August 2026, with the PC requirements and multiplayer content now confirmed.
Early access players got a head start, with preloading for the first beta weekend beginning at 9:00 PT (18:00 SAST) on Thursday, 20 August 2026, according to Call of Duty‘s official blog.
A beta is a public test build, released so a studio can stress its servers before the paid launch.
Anyone playing both weekends only had to download the game once. Content and progression carried over from week one to week two, so the client already sitting on a drive after the early access period stayed put and simply unlocked more of itself.
What the ‘Modern Warfare 4’ open beta asks of your rig
The minimum specification called for 12GB of memory and a graphics card in the class of a GTX 970, a GTX 1060, an RX 470 or an Intel Arc A580. Those are older midrange parts, which puts the entry bar lower than a marquee shooter usually sets it.
The recommended tier stepped up to 16GB of memory and an RTX 3060 Ti, an RX 6700 XT or an Intel Arc B580. Storage was the more interesting line, because solid-state storage was listed as a hard requirement rather than a suggestion, so a mechanical hard drive would not do.
That distinction matters. Modern shooters stream textures and map geometry off the drive while a match is running, and a spinning disk cannot feed data across fast enough, which surfaces as blurred surfaces, stutter and long waits on the loading screen.
Why Secure Boot stands between players and the beta
Call of Duty also required PC players to switch on TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot before the beta began. TPM is a small security chip built into modern motherboards, and Secure Boot is a firmware setting that blocks unsigned code from loading while a machine starts up.
Together they make it harder for cheat software to hook into the game somewhere anti-cheat tools cannot see.
Without both enabled, players could not get into the beta online at all, which turned a dusty firmware menu into the difference between playing and reading an error message.
Which modes fill the ‘Modern Warfare 4’ open beta
The beta carried core 6v6 multiplayer, the small-team format the series is built around, across a rotation of maps and modes. It also included Kill Block, a mode name new to the franchise and one of the few unknowns heading into the first weekend.
Weekend two widened the scale with Ground War: Combat Outpost, a large-scale mode that trades tight corridors for vehicles and higher player counts, and it brought Zodiac Resurgence, a new map for Call of Duty: Warzone.
Everything now points to Wednesday, 26 August 2026, a date already crowded for players, since NBA 2K27 opens its early access period in the same window. Once the download queues open to everyone, the servers meet a crowd rather than a sample, and what that weekend surfaces will shape the version that eventually ships.
