Final Fantasy VII‘s Tifa Lockhart will be Street Fighter 6‘s latest guest character. The RPG martial arts powerhouse is joining as part of the Capcom fighting game’s year 4 slate of new characters. She’ll even be arriving with a unique magic system to augment her move set.
“Tifa is a character loved by players all around the world,” Final Fantasy VII director Naoki Hamaguchi said on stage during her Summer Game Fest reveal. “That’s exactly why this was done to bring to life a Tifa who truly fights within the world of Street Fighter 6.”
According to the fighting game’s director, Takayuki Nakayama, the Avalanche member will be arriving with her Materia powers “reimagined as a new gameplay system. “Everything from her design to movement has been rebuilt as Tifa the Street Fighter,” he said.
Here’s the reveal teaser. It doesn’t show Tifa’s character model or what she looks like in action. Those bits will be revealed later on, Nakayma said.
Street Fighter 6‘s year 4 roster expansion will start getting added to the game this summer. The other characters are World Tour protagonist Bosch and two fighters who are completely new to the series: Yasmine and Arjun. Yasmine will be introduced on August 3, followed by Arjun in the fall, Tifa in “early” 2027, and Bosch later on that spring.
This isn’t the first time Tifa has appeared in a fighting game. Back during the PS1-era, both her and Cloud appeared in Ehrgeiz. Since then, Cloud has appeared in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and both Noctis (FFXV) and Clive (FFXVI) appeared in the Tekken franchise. In fact, Tekken 8 fans have been begging to have Tifa added to the Bandai Namco fighter for years.
“We all know she is attractive and I understand that,” Tekken creator Katsuhiro Harada said back in 2024. “But as yet we have not decided anything about guest characters etc.” He has since left to start-up his own studio. “Harada quit Tekken because he couldn’t get Tifa,” joked one Tekken fan on the subreddit after today’s announcement.