Resident Evil Requiem Story Explained: Plot Summary and Ending

Resident Evil Requiem came out on 27 February 2026 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC. It's the ninth main game, directed by Koshi Nakanishi of Resident Evil 7, and it's set in October 2026, 28 years after Raccoon City was destroyed. Two leads share it: a new heroine, the FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft, and Leon S. Kennedy, who goes back to the city where his career began. This page covers the whole plot and both endings, so it has full spoilers. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Before the story begins#

Leon and Sherry Birkin both lived through the 1998 outbreak that ended with the US government destroying Raccoon City, which Resident Evil 2 covers. By 2026 both work for the government's Division of Security Operations, Leon in the field and Sherry as his handler. (Resident Evil Requiem; Resident Evil 2)

Grace's history is the other half. She is the daughter of Alyssa Ashcroft, an investigative journalist who raised her. In 2018 Alyssa was murdered at the Wrenwood Hotel, near Raccoon City, and Grace never learned why. She grew up to become an FBI intelligence analyst. (Resident Evil Requiem)

The Wrenwood Hotel#

In October 2026 Grace was looking into a run of strange deaths across the country, and several of the victims had survived Raccoon City. When another body turned up at the derelict Wrenwood Hotel, the place her mother died, she was sent to inspect it. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Inside, she recovered a data disc Alyssa had left behind. Then she was attacked and taken by Dr. Victor Gideon, a former Umbrella scientist who had been searching for her. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Leon in Wrenwood#

Leon was working the same string of deaths, and he was already sick. Arriving in Wrenwood, he saw Gideon, who infected people in the streets with the t-Virus and set off an outbreak that covered his escape with Grace. Sherry helped Leon track Gideon to the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center outside town. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Rhodes Hill#

Grace woke in Rhodes Hill strapped to a table. She got free and was hunted through the wards by a giant mutant known as the Girl, which could only be held off with light. Leon reached the centre as Gideon turned its staff and patients with a mutated strain of the t-Virus, then sealed the building, splitting the two of them up. Leon handed Grace his revolver, the Requiem, before they were separated. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Grace went on alone. In the guard office cells she found Emily, a blind young girl who had been held and experimented on, and the two helped each other through the building and its basement, Emily reading braille that Grace couldn't. Leon and Grace both learned that Gideon was obsessed with something called Elpis, a creation of Oswell E. Spencer, and that Grace was somehow the key to it. (Resident Evil Requiem)

In the courtyard a pilot, Harry Reed, offered a way out by helicopter if Grace could find the key, which she took from a private lab hidden beneath the courtyard. The escape went wrong, and Emily was gravely wounded. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Grace finally killed the Girl by opening a roof hatch and flooding her with daylight, but came back to find Emily mutating into a monster, and Leon shot her. Devastated, Grace gave Leon back his gun and left Rhodes Hill with Gideon and his patron Zeno, a representative of the shadow group the Connections, who promised her answers about Elpis. Leon, meanwhile, was getting worse. Files on Gideon's work put a name to his illness, Raccoon City Syndrome: t-Virus left dormant in the survivors of 1998, now killing them. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Back to Raccoon City#

Leon and Sherry tracked Grace, Gideon and Zeno to the quarantined ruins of Raccoon City. Inside the walls Leon found a BSAA camp, blew open a sealed gate and took a motorcycle from the camp towards the city centre. Gideon came after him on the way, and Leon left him for dead. (Resident Evil Requiem)

He reached the old Raccoon City Police Department, where Zeno had got there first. Inside, Zeno was telling Grace what he believed Elpis to be: Spencer's ultimate weapon, a contagious mind-control virus hidden under the city. He claimed the Connections had arranged the 1998 missile strike to keep Elpis buried, not to stop the infection. He also told her that Emily was one of many clones of Grace, made in Spencer's experiments to move his mind into a new body, and that Grace was the one success. Leon was attacked by a Tyrant, the same model that stalked the station in 1998, and had to run. (Resident Evil Requiem)

ARK#

Leon fought and beat the Tyrant outside the station, then went to the ruins of the Raccoon City Orphanage, which hid the way down to ARK, a former Umbrella lab beneath the city. Zeno believed Grace knew the password to Elpis, which was protected by a fail-safe that would destroy it if the wrong word was entered. Leon fought through Connections soldiers and their commander and got Grace away from Zeno, but his illness was worsening and the two were separated. (Resident Evil Requiem)

In ARK, Grace finally played her mother's disc. It held interviews Alyssa had recorded with Spencer, old and regretful about what his work had done. It also showed that Gideon and Zeno were wrong: Grace was not a clone and had nothing to do with the experiments. She was a foundling Spencer had taken in as a baby and entrusted to Alyssa. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Leon and Grace met up again and faced Zeno at the Elpis terminal. The console asked one question: what does the creator desire? (Resident Evil Requiem)

The ending explained#

Destroy Elpis. Grace entered "Destruction", and ARK began to destroy itself. Leon stayed to hold off Zeno so Grace could get out, and in this ending Zeno kills him as they fall into the depths of the facility. Grace escapes alone. There is no final boss and no post-credits scene. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Release Elpis. Grace remembered her mother and Spencer's regret and entered "Hope". Zeno, sure Elpis was a weapon, injected himself, and it stripped away his enhanced abilities. Elpis was an antiviral that could neutralise viral weapons, including the Progenitor virus family. It was Spencer's attempt at atonement. (Resident Evil Requiem)

Grace used Elpis to cure Leon. Gideon then returned, having survived, beheaded Zeno and said he would use Elpis to throw the world into chaos. He set ARK to self-destruct and mutated into a Nemesis-like monster, and Leon killed him. In this ending Leon and Grace are rescued by the BSAA's Hound Wolf unit, sent by Chris Redfield. Emily, it turned out, was not dead: she was found alive at Rhodes Hill as the cocoon around her came apart. (Resident Evil Requiem)

In the epilogue of this ending, Sherry has been cured, Grace has cured and adopted Emily, and Grace is back at her FBI desk with photos of her mother and Emily. In the post-credits scene, soldiers from an unidentified faction wipe out the BSAA troops left in ARK and take whatever they came for. (Resident Evil Requiem)

The title is the point. Elpis is Greek for hope, and releasing it ends the curse Raccoon City left on its survivors. Grace's real story matters too: she was never Spencer's reborn mind, just a girl her mother raised, carrying something better forward. The Connections, the group behind Eveline in Resident Evil 7, are still out there, and who took what from ARK is left open. (Resident Evil Requiem)

What it sets up#

Requiem closes the long arc of Raccoon City's survivors and points the series at the Connections. For the night Leon and Sherry first escaped the city, see the Resident Evil 2 story. The previous main game is the Resident Evil Village story, and the Resident Evil timeline puts 2026 in context with everything before it. (Resident Evil Requiem; Resident Evil 2)