New Year, new Resident Evil. As we wade into the depths of 2026, one of the first major video game releases of the year, Resident Evil: Requiem, the ninth entry in the three-decade-old franchise, has finally arrived.
First announced during the Summer Game Fest 2025, this entry promises a fresh take on the horror classic, balancing jump scares and action as it brings players back to an iconic location from its lore. As we get ready for its highly anticipated release date, The Omega has prepared a recap of the events leading up to this point so gamers and fans alike are well-prepared for when Requiem drops in February.
Origins of the Bio-hazard (1919-1960s)
The year is 1919. In Eastern Europe, a biologist and cult leader known as Mother Miranda loses her daughter to the Spanish Flu. As Miranda searches for a way to resurrect her daughter, she discovers a Megamycete mould, a fungal super-organism capable of storing memories and mutating life. This mould grants Miranda regenerative abilities, allowing her to unnaturally extend her life.
The Umbrella Corporation Philosophy is Born (1951 to 1969)
By 1951, Miranda’s research attracted the attention of a wealthy aristocrat, Oswald E. Spencer. Inspired by Miranda’s work with the Megamycete, Spencer becomes obsessed with the idea of forced human evolution, believing humanity could, and should, be reshaped through biological experimentation. Spencer’s relationship with Miranda would go on to influence the main philosophy of the enigmatic Umbrella Corporation (one of the series’ prime antagonists) and was the first falling domino in the coming years of global bio-terrorism.
Years after meeting with Miranda, Spencer teams up with James Marcus, a high-class virologist who would later create the T-Virus (the biological weapon used to create zombie-like abominations), and Edward Ashford, an aristocratic scientist and the co-founder of Umbrella’s research legacy, as they discover the Progenitor Virus (the precursor to the T-Virus) from a rare African flower which has the gruesome effect of causing cellular mutation, killing its hosts while granting the survivors enhanced strength, regeneration, and evolutionary traits. In 1968, Spencer officially creates the Umbrella Corporation, basing the logo on Miranda’s village symbol. The corporation disguises itself as a pharmaceutical development company, while it secretly researches bioweapons for military use and illegal human experimentation.
Umbrella’s Crimes and Key Survivors (1970 to 2000)
Project Wesker
During the 1970s, Umbrella’s experiments begin, and quickly take a dark turn into human trafficking. The corporation begins to kidnap children, subjecting them to extreme biological experiments, with the goal of creating superhuman beings capable of surviving incredibly advanced viral infections. Most of the subjects die in the process, except for one: Albert Wesker.
Wesker not only survives but is granted enhanced abilities and physiology, making him Umbrella’s greatest success and most dangerous creation. The perfect mix of superhuman abilities, intelligence and independence. Eventually, Wesker would turn against Umbrella itself.
The T-Virus
Umbrella’s secret experiments continued, with its scientists conducting human experiments and virus testing to create a controllable bioweapon. Using their experience and research with fungal and viral infections, the corporation develops the T-Virus, a biological weapon made to ‘enhance’ life. However, the experiment backfires with uncontrollable results. The virus was unstable, reanimating the dead and even mutating the living into grotesque monsters. This was the foundation for the mass “zombification” that would later consume an entire city.
Raccoon City
As Umbrella’s research and influence grew, so did the corporation’s ambitions. In 1988, utilizing a massive underground lab hidden below the streets of a supposedly normal Midwestern town known as Raccoon City, Umbrella scientist William Birkin develops the G-Virus, a mutated, more potent version of the T-Virus bio-weapon. This new virus focuses on rapid mutation and self-preservation, turning its victims into uncontrollable monsters.
About a decade after Birkin develops the G-Virus, catastrophe strikes. On May 11, 1998, the T-Virus is accidentally released, completely consuming Raccoon City, creating mass hysteria and unleashing an unstoppable zombie outbreak. In response, the government sends an elite police special operations squad, the Special Tactics And Rescue Service (S.T.A.R.), led by series protagonists Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine, to investigate and expose Umbrella’s crimes.
Meanwhile, Leon S. Kennedy, a rookie cop, is on his way for his first day on the job as the breakout begins. Soon, Kennedy encounters Claire, Chris Redfield’s sister, who is heading towards the city in search of her brother. Together, they survive the night and eventually escape Raccoon City before its destruction at the United States government’s behest, which sought to contain the outbreak.
The Fall of Umbrella and Rise of Bioterrorism (2003-2013)
Umbrella’s Collapse
By the early 2000s, Umbrella’s secrets could no longer be kept under wraps, and the corporation’s secrets are finally exposed, completely eradicating any trust the public had in them. With a mountain of evidence on their illegal experiments and global bio-hazard incidents, Umbrella goes bankrupt in 2003.
However, this was not the end. Following the company’s demise, Umbrella’s research was released worldwide, sold off or stolen by rival organizations, governments and black-market dealers, ensuring the evil corporation’s work would live on through others.
Wesker’s Endgame
Even after Umbrella’s downfall, its idea lived on through Albert Wesker. Believing humanity could only survive through ‘evolution,’ Wesker pursued the same idea, but this time on a global scale. In 2009, six years after Umbrella’s collapse, Wesker attempted to unleash a newer, more terrifying bio-weapon capable of reshaping the human race. Wesker’s plans, however, are thwarted by Chris Redfield, finally closing the chapter on Umbrella’s original legacy.
Global Outbreaks
With Umbrella gone and Wesker defeated, the world did not just continue unscathed. Bioweapons had already escaped into the global market, shifting from theoretical experiments into tools of war and terrorism. Governments and corporations began conducting their own research in secret, trying to weaponize what Umbrella had left behind. Outbreaks were no longer accidents, but ongoing global threats.
The Mould Returns (2017-2021)
Resident Evil 7
RE7 introduces players to a new character, Ethan Winters, a husband desperately looking for his wife, Mia, after her disappearance. His search leads to an abandoned home in Dulvey, Louisiana, where he encounters Eveline, a mould-based bio-weapon.
Here it is revealed that mould can store memories and control hosts. Ethan fights to rescue Mia and is killed in the process; however, he is ‘resurrected’ through the mould infection, and is able to live on as himself and escape with his wife.
Resident Evil: Village
Three years later, Ethan Winters and Mia have a daughter, Rose, and are now living in an unnamed village in Eastern Europe, placed there by the Bio-terrorism Security Assessment Alliance (BSAA). Soon, Rose is kidnapped by the BSAA, led by the returning Chris Redfield, who claims that Mother Miranda has infiltrated the Winters’ home and posed as Mia. Ethan, filled with anger and confusion, sets off to rescue his daughter and learn the truth.
Winters’ quest leads him to Romania, where Mother Miranda plans to resurrect her daughter using the young child as her new host. Sacrificing himself, Winters destroys the Megamycete, saving Rose.
Resident Evil Requiem
Along with the reintroduction of a franchise favourite character, Leon S. Kennedy, Requiem also debuts a new character, FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft, a woman with deep roots in the Resident Evil lore.
Their stories intertwine as they return to the place where it all started: Raccoon City. Requiem marks the franchise’s first time revisiting the iconic location since its destruction back in 1998.
Ashcroft, a focused and determined FBI agent, is not without her demons. Following her mother’s death, she becomes a shell of the person she once was. In Requiem, Ashcroft is assigned to investigate a mysterious death in an abandoned hotel. There, she encounters monsters that not even her greatest nightmare could have created.
Ashcroft soon joins forces with the legendary Kennedy, who returns to the series with his sense of justice and incredible athletic skills intact. As one of the survivors of the Raccoon City incident and a hero who helped quash numerous outbreaks throughout the years, Leon is now a seasoned agent fighting bio-terrorism, who is tasked with investigating a number of murders happening all around the Midwest.Resident Evil: Requiem launched on Feb. 27 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC (Steam/Epic Games Store) and the Nintendo Switch 2.