After its surprise re-release this year, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 remains one of the 10 best-selling games of 2026 in the United States, more than 13 years after Treyarch originally launched the shooter. Sales charts show that, even against this year’s biggest new releases, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is seriously holding its own.
Activision unexpectedly brought Black Ops and Black Ops 2 to modern PlayStation hardware in July 2026, and they were immediate hits. Neither re-release received a major remastering treatment, but instead were relatively straightforward ports of games that hadn’t been playable natively on PlayStation since the PS3 era. However, that didn’t stop players from showing up in huge numbers. Black Ops 2 became the best-selling game in the US during July by dollar sales and immediately jumped near the top of Circana’s annual chart. Three months later, the surprising part now isn’t that nostalgia produced one enormous month, but that Black Ops 2 has stayed among 2026’s biggest games long after that initial rush.
Black Ops 2 Is Refusing to Leave the 2026 Sales Charts
According to Circana’s latest year-to-date rankings, Black Ops 2 is currently the sixth best-selling game of 2026 in the United States, based on tracked physical and full-game digital dollar sales through October 3. It currently only trails 2026 mega hits like NBA 2K27, Resident Evil Requiem, 007 First Light, MLB The Show 26, and Crimson Desert, while sitting ahead of Forza Horizon 6, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, and Pokemon Pokopia. That said, these digital sales numbers for Black Ops 2 are projected rather than directly reported, but its staying power remains remarkable. A 2012 shooter outselling most of 2026’s actual 2026 games may have been a funny tidbit in July, but seeing it still in sixth place in October makes the comeback considerably harder to dismiss as a nostalgia-fueled weekend.
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Image via Activision -
Image via Activision -
Image via Activision, Treyarch
It’s easy to see why Black Ops 2 still carries that kind of weight. Treyarch’s sequel arrived during what many longtime Call of Duty players consider the franchise’s golden era, pairing an ambitious campaign with branching choices and multiple endings, the flexible Pick 10 multiplayer system, and a Zombies lineup that eventually included maps like Mob of the Dead, Buried, and Origins. A few fans complained about the price, the old DLC structure, and other limitations, but millions of players seemingly wanted Black Ops 2 largely as they remembered it, and Activision delivered just that.
Black Ops 2 also re-released at a particularly interesting time for Call of Duty as a whole. Recent entries have remained massive, but the franchise has shown signs of losing the automatic dominance it once enjoyed, with Black Ops 7 being a critical and commercial low point, while the re-releases of Black Ops and Black Ops 2 provided a sizable summer sales boost. That creates an interesting situation where two minimally altered games from 2010 and 2012 have become some of Call of Duty‘s biggest commercial stories of 2026, rather than the newest game leading the charge.
Looking forward, the next sales chart test for the franchise is already here. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 launched on October 23, meaning it isn’t included in Circana’s latest annual ranking and should substantially reshape the chart once October sales are counted. It now has a chance to remind everyone why new Call of Duty releases once routinely dominated year-end sales lists, though GTA 6 will soon provide unusually fierce competition for the franchise. Black Ops 2 may eventually fall out of the top 10 as those holiday releases arrive, but lasting this long is already an impressive achievement for a 13-year-old game.
- Released
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November 13, 2012
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, Use of Drugs
- Engine
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