Hitman Games in Order: Every Release and Which to Buy

There are eight mainline Hitman games released between 2000 and 2021, and the correct Hitman games in order is simple until you reach the modern trilogy, where three separate releases were merged into one product. Release order and story order match almost perfectly, with one prequel-style exception in 2004. The confusing part is not the timeline, it is the store page: today a single purchase called HITMAN World of Assassination contains the last three games, and sitting right next to it is a cheap look-alike listing that contains only one of them.

This guide covers the full list, which entries still hold up, what runs on PS5 in 2026, and which listing to actually put in your basket. Live prices and price history for every entry sit on the Hitman series page.

Hitman Games in Release Order

Two spin-offs sit outside the mainline count. Hitman GO is a turn-based puzzle reworking that reached PS4 and Vita as a Definitive Edition in 2016. Hitman Sniper and the later Sniper Assassin maps are shooting-gallery modes, bundled into the modern trilogy rather than sold as full games.

IO Interactive's 007 First Light arrived on PS5 in May 2026. Same studio, same technology, but it is a James Bond origin story and not part of this timeline.

Hitman Games in Chronological (Story) Order

For this series, release order is story order with one exception. Play them as they came out and you will follow Agent 47's arc correctly.

The exception is Hitman: Contracts (2004). It is framed as a wounded 47 recalling earlier jobs from a Paris hotel room, so much of what you play is a flashback, including reworked missions from Codename 47. It still slots into its release position, because the framing only lands once you have played the first two games.

1. Hitman: Codename 47 (2000): 47 escapes the asylum and learns who made him
2. Hitman 2: Silent Assassin (2002): 47 leaves the monastery and returns to contract work
3. Hitman: Contracts (2004): a flashback retelling, plays chronologically here
4. Hitman: Blood Money (2006): the ICA is dismantled from the inside
5. Hitman: Absolution (2012): a largely self-contained personal story, lightest on series continuity
6. HITMAN (2016): the modern reboot, 47's early ICA years and the Shadow Client
7. HITMAN 2 (2018): direct continuation, the Providence conspiracy
8. HITMAN 3 / World of Assassination (2021): the conclusion of the trilogy

The 2016 reboot is a soft restart. You lose nothing by starting there, and it is where most people should begin.

HITMAN 1, 2 and 3 Became One Game

This is the part that costs people money. Here is what actually happened.

The 2016 reboot launched episodically as HITMAN, later collected as a Game of the Year Edition. HITMAN 2 followed in 2018 with a Legacy Pack: own the 2016 game and its levels could be imported into the HITMAN 2 client, running on the newer engine. HITMAN 3 repeated the trick in 2021 using Access Passes, so all three games' locations became playable inside one launcher. It worked, but it was miserable to buy into. Owners juggled separate entitlements and new players had no obvious entry point.

In January 2023, IO Interactive renamed HITMAN 3 to HITMAN World of Assassination and rebuilt the packaging. The full base product now includes the HITMAN (2016) Game of the Year content, the HITMAN 2 standard content and the HITMAN 3 content in one purchase. Existing HITMAN 3 owners were upgraded free of charge, which is why HITMAN 3 has effectively vanished as a thing you buy.

Which Version Should You Buy in 2026?

Store listings change more often than the game does, so treat this as the shape of the offer and confirm the wording on the listing in front of you.

The practical rule: buy the full HITMAN World of Assassination, not a pack and not Part One. It is the most content per pound or dollar in the series. Add the Deluxe Pack later, only if you want more maps. Because the pack is an add-on rather than a game, it discounts on its own schedule, so the Deluxe Edition bundle is not automatically cheaper. Compare all of them on the Hitman series page before committing.

Freelancer deserves its own line. It is a roguelike campaign with permadeath, a safehouse you upgrade, and procedurally assembled contracts against criminal syndicates. It arrived as a free update in 2023, it is still being patched through 2026, and it is included in the full game at no extra cost. It is not in Part One. For a lot of players it is the reason to own the game at all.

The One Thing Buyers Get Wrong

Nearly every complaint about buying Hitman traces to the same mistake: buying a listing whose name starts with the right words and ends with the wrong ones.

Part One is the trap. It sits beside the full game, it is priced far lower, it uses the same key art, and it holds roughly a sixth of the content with the best mode missing. People grab it in a sale, load it up, and find no Freelancer tab and no Dubai. There is an in-game upgrade path, but players regularly report it is awkward to surface on the storefront, and that route can cost more in total than buying the full game once.

Two seconds of prevention: read to the end of the product title, and check the description mentions HITMAN 2 and HITMAN 3 locations rather than just six locations. If a listing advertises six locations, it is Part One.

The second most common error is buying an old HITMAN 3 listing while already owning World of Assassination, or buying the Deluxe Pack when you already own the Deluxe Edition. The store will sell you either without complaint. Check your library first.

Returning Players: What Do You Already Own?

If you last played in the Access Pass era, here is what carries over.

• You owned HITMAN 3. You already own World of Assassination. The rename was applied to your existing entitlement and nothing needs buying.
• You owned HITMAN (2016), the 2016 GOTY Edition, or HITMAN 2 standard. That content sits inside the base World of Assassination package for everyone now, so the old purchase earns you nothing extra. It is not wasted, it just stopped being a differentiator.
• You owned the HITMAN 2 Expansion Pass or Gold Edition. Check this one before spending. The expansion locations went into the Deluxe Pack rather than the base game, and the matching Access Pass had to be claimed rather than handed out automatically. Open the in-game store and see whether New York and Haven Island are already unlocked.
• Your old progress. Mastery, unlocks and challenge progress carried into the unified client, so the levels you sank fifty hours into are not reset.

Are the Classic Hitman Games Worth Playing in 2026?

Mostly no, with one clear exception.

Blood Money (2006) is the exception. It is the game the 2016 reboot was built to answer: open sandbox levels, accident kills, and a notoriety system that punished sloppy work across the whole campaign. It plays well enough today that it does not feel like homework, and the HD Enhanced Collection cleans up resolution and frame rate.

Absolution (2012) is a decent game and a poor Hitman game. It traded sandboxes for linear checkpointed corridors and instinct-vision stealth. Play it for a competent 2012 stealth-action title. Skip it if you came for the puzzle-box assassinations.

Codename 47, Silent Assassin and Contracts are for historians. Codename 47 has no mid-mission saving and an aiming model from another era. Contracts has the strongest atmosphere of the three and is the shortest, so it is the least painful sample.

None of this affects the story. The modern trilogy re-establishes everything it needs about 47, the ICA and Diana Burnwood without assuming you played the PS2 games.

Which Hitman Games Play on PS5 in 2026?

HITMAN World of Assassination is the only native PS5 release in the series. It runs at high frame rates, supports the DualSense, and has a separately sold PS VR2 mode that converts the campaign to first-person VR.

The HITMAN HD Enhanced Collection covers Blood Money and Absolution at higher resolution and frame rate than the originals. It is a PS4 title, so it runs on PS5 through backwards compatibility rather than natively. This is the only route to the classic era on modern PlayStation hardware, and it is worth grabbing whenever it dips, because older back-catalogue titles are exactly the kind that quietly disappear from storefronts.

Codename 47, Silent Assassin and Contracts have no modern PlayStation release. Hitman: Blood Money Reprisal, the touch-oriented remaster, went to mobile and Nintendo Switch only, so do not wait for it on PS Store.

On PS Plus, the Extra and Premium catalogues rotate constantly and Hitman entries have come and gone. Check the live catalogue before buying, and if you are weighing a subscription against owning the game outright, run the numbers through the PS Plus calculator.

The Cheapest Way to Own the Whole Series

There is no single bundle covering all eight games, because the PS2-era titles were never brought forward. The cheapest as-complete-as-possible route on PlayStation is two purchases:

1. HITMAN World of Assassination (the full version), which covers 2016, 2018 and 2021.
2. HITMAN HD Enhanced Collection, which covers Blood Money and Absolution.

Add the Deluxe Pack third, and only once you have worked through the twenty base locations. Both core purchases discount heavily and often. World of Assassination is a fixture in the Summer, Halloween and Black Friday sales, and its lowest-ever price sits far below launch, so paying full price is a choice rather than a necessity.

Two habits save real money. First, compare the standalone add-on against the bundle every time, because the base game and the Deluxe Pack go on sale independently and the arithmetic flips depending on which is cut. Second, check other regions. Hitman pricing varies widely across the 70+ stores tracked on PlatPrices, and that gap is often larger than the discount itself. Start at /sales for live PS Store cuts, /discounts/ for the PS5 sale list, or /global-deals/ to compare regions side by side.

Hitman Trophies and the Platinum

The World of Assassination platinum is long rather than hard. It leans on mastery levels across every location, a list of challenge-specific kills, and repeated runs of the same maps with different disguises and routes. Trophy guides typically land around 40 to 50 hours at a low difficulty rating, because you can save and reload freely inside any mission and nothing is permanently missable.

The saving grace is that the grind is genuinely good. Mastery is the game teaching you its levels, so the platinum route and the fun route are the same route. Freelancer is the exception: permadeath means a bad run costs you the campaign rather than a reload, so leave those trophies for last.

For something faster to run alongside it, the quick and easy platinum list filters for short completions. The God of War games in order guide covers a series with far more approachable platinums, while Outlast games in order covers one where difficulty, not length, is the barrier.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many Hitman games are there?

There are eight mainline Hitman games: Codename 47 (2000), Silent Assassin (2002), Contracts (2004), Blood Money (2006), Absolution (2012), HITMAN (2016), HITMAN 2 (2018) and HITMAN 3 (2021). The last three are now sold together as HITMAN World of Assassination, so in practice there are six separate purchases to make and only one of them covers the whole modern trilogy.

What is the difference between Hitman 3 and World of Assassination?

They are the same game. In January 2023 IO Interactive renamed HITMAN 3 to HITMAN World of Assassination and folded the HITMAN (2016) Game of the Year content and the HITMAN 2 standard content into the base purchase. Anyone who already owned HITMAN 3 was upgraded for free, so there is no reason to buy HITMAN 3 separately today.

Do I need to play Hitman 1 and 2 before World of Assassination?

No separate purchase is needed. The full HITMAN World of Assassination package includes the levels from HITMAN (2016) and HITMAN 2, all playable inside one client with the newest engine, lighting and mechanics. You still play them in order for the story, but you buy them only once.

What is HITMAN World of Assassination Part One?

Part One is a cut-down entry listing that contains only the six HITMAN (2016) locations plus the Patient Zero bonus campaign. It does not include the HITMAN 2 or HITMAN 3 levels and it does not include the Freelancer roguelike mode. It is cheap, and it is the most common mis-purchase in the series, so read to the end of the product title before you buy.

Which Hitman games can you play on PS5?

HITMAN World of Assassination is the only native PS5 entry and it covers the 2016, 2018 and 2021 games. Blood Money and Absolution are available on PS4 through the HITMAN HD Enhanced Collection, which runs on PS5 via backwards compatibility. The three earliest games, Codename 47, Silent Assassin and Contracts, have no modern PlayStation release.

Is the Hitman platinum trophy easy?

It is long rather than hard. The World of Assassination platinum is a grind of mastery levels across roughly twenty locations plus a list of challenge-specific kills. Trophy guides generally put it around 40 to 50 hours at a low difficulty rating, because you can save and reload freely inside any mission.

One purchase covers the whole modern trilogy, so the only real decisions left are which listing you click and when you buy. Check the current price and the lowest-ever figure on the Hitman series page before you pull the trigger.