The hustle doesn’t stop and the run never ends in NBA 2K27. Chase greatness around the clock in MyCAREER, MyTEAM, and MyNBA, and make your hoop dreams a reality.

Gameplay in NBA 2K27 strives for the most balanced experience to date, introducing meaningful new offensive tools and reworked defensive systems to deliver a rewarding experience on both ends of the floor. 

Powered by ProPLAY, the game continues to push the limits of courtside authenticity by leveraging advanced machine learning capabilities. When you take the hardwood in 2K27, you’ll see heightened fidelity in animations and the real-time evolution of on-court adjustments.

As players around the league find new ways to create separation, we’re finding new ways to innovate—giving hoopers of all skill levels the ultimate playground to prove they belong.

Put The City on your back and lead a new era of MyPLAYERs fueled by basketball. Let your passion power your unique style on and off the court, team up with friends to form a Crew, and dominate the courts at The REC, Park, and beyond.

NVIDIA announced that is it releasing DLSS 5 on September 3rd, which introduces 3D-Guided Neural Rendering, a major step forward in using AI to bring real-time graphics closer than ever to Hollywood-grade photorealism.

DLSS 5 will be available starting September 3rd at 9pm Pacific Time in NBA 2K27 for all GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs and laptops, and GeForce NOW. It marks the debut of how the technology can be used by game artists to elevate visual fidelity in alignment with their creative vision.

Through a close partnership with developer Visual Concepts and publisher 2K, NVIDIA is bringing DLSS 5 3D-Guided Neural Rendering to NBA 2K27, achieving a new level of authentic sports experience for its players. With DLSS 5, you can see how light naturally passes through player ears, the natural lighting of skin, and how light catches hair, all while preserving the facial geometry scanned from real-world athletes.

“What’s great is the level of control that it gives us. We can set the overall tone and style to match our existing art direction and then really get precise where it matters most, using a per pixel uplift control mask to fine tune detail on characters. Given that we want to respect their likeness with the utmost care.” - Peter Kavic, Senior Producer - Visual Concepts

Bridging The Cinematic Gap

Since the dawn of GeForce, NVIDIA has strived to deliver the graphics horsepower required for game developers to create incredible, realistic worlds where lighting, reflections and shadows obey the laws of nature.

From programmable shaders with GeForce 3 in 2001, to CUDA with GeForce 8800 GTX in 2006, real-time ray tracing with GeForce RTX 2080 Ti in 2018, and path tracing and neural shaders with GeForce RTX 5090 in 2025, we have delivered major architectural innovations and a massive 375,000X increase in compute.

But Hollywood-level realism remains out of reach. A photoreal Hollywood VFX frame can take hours or even days to render a single frame, whereas game developers need to deliver 60-plus frames every second for a smooth experience. As a result, game developers have traditionally had to scale back their artistic vision to achieve real-time performance. Even if the developer could shoot an infinite number of rays, the rendered frame still wouldn’t be photorealistic because the scene content itself must be cut back. For example, individual hair strands are replaced by simplified geometry, and complex, multi-layered materials like skin lose their natural depth.

Rather than brute force rendering each frame or adding more details to the scene, an alternative approach to photorealism emerged: generative AI.

By learning complex lighting patterns from the physical world, generative models can produce photoreal lighting effects that traditional rendering struggles with, such as how hair glows when backlit, or how light naturally scatters through complex, multi-layered materials like human skin.

But traditional generative models are large, slow, and inherently probabilistic: when given a text prompt ten times, a standard diffusion model outputs ten completely different results. That unpredictability works for offline image creation where an artist can select their favorite result, but interactive games demand absolute pixel consistency, locked character identity, and frame-to-frame stability dependent on player input. This unpredictability is not viable for gaming, where a character’s face, or environment cannot randomly morph from one millisecond to the next.

DLSS 5 Introduces 3D-Guided Neural Rendering

First released in 2018, NVIDIA DLSS became the industry standard in using AI to boost performance, initially with Super Resolution, followed by Frame Generation and Multi-Frame Generation. Combined, today’s suite of DLSS 4.5 technologies can use AI to draw 23 out of every 24 pixels seen on the screen.

Now, DLSS is evolving beyond performance to transform visual fidelity as well. While previous DLSS technologies focused on reconstructing existing scene data to deliver higher-resolution images, additional frames, or cleaner ray-traced lighting, DLSS 5 with 3D-Guided Neural Rendering takes the next step by using AI to generate the rich lighting and material details that real-time performance constraints once forced developers to strip away, allowing them to realize their original artistic vision.

And instead of generating frames from text prompts, 3D-Guided Neural Rendering uses the game engine’s rendered frame, complete with its artist-designed geometry, textures, and lighting buffers, as an unyielding foundation. DLSS 5 becomes the final rendering stage of the graphics pipeline, infusing scenes with lifelike lighting and materials while ensuring the engine frame defines what must remain, and the artist directs what may change.

DLSS 5 takes a frame’s color and motion vectors as input to deliver lifelike lighting and materials that are deterministic, temporally stable and anchored to the game’s content

To deliver DLSS 5, we had to invent a new real-time AI model, which addressed three fundamental engineering challenges: preserving artistic intent, guaranteeing temporal stability, and achieving execution speeds in the milliseconds.

First, DLSS 5 is designed to operate deterministically, delivering consistent outputs when processing identical input frames. Grounded in the original frame crafted by artists and the game engine, the model analyzes on-screen objects, materials, spatial relationships, and light sources. It anchors directly to the rendered frame, by training to recognize engine data such as color, surface albedo, detailed lighting, and surface normals.

DLSS 5 recognizes object-level scene semantics like objects, materials, and light sources 

As a result, DLSS 5 enriches the scene with lifelike material interactions, introducing natural skin subsurface scattering, realistic light transmission through hair and foliage, and deeper contact shadows alongside global illumination.

Second, DLSS 5 delivers real-time frame-by-frame temporal stability. Unlike video generation models that operate on batch frame sequences, DLSS 5 operates on a strict one-frame-in, one-frame-out model. By leveraging motion vectors directly from the game engine, DLSS 5 ensures every generated frame is stable, eliminating visual shimmering, swimming, or temporal drift even as players move.

Third, we invented a fast, specialized AI model designed explicitly for real-time 3D rendering pipelines. This compact network interprets engine data directly from the rendered frame and leverages the powerful Tensor Cores of GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs to render complex lighting and materials in real-time. Running locally on a single GPU, it maintains smooth frame rates at up to 4K resolution.

Integration for developers is straightforward, leveraging the same NVIDIA Streamline framework already utilized across the DLSS technology suite, as well as Unreal Engine 5 plugin for Unreal Engine games. DLSS 5 operates as an optional and independent feature, giving studios flexibility to enable it alongside Super Resolution, Multi Frame Generation and Ray Reconstruction as they see fit.

By working in tandem with traditional rasterization, ray tracing, and path tracing, DLSS 5 represents the beginning of a new era where traditional game rendering and real-time neural graphics unite to bridge the cinematic gap.

DLSS 5’s Artistic Controls For Game Developers

Making an image more realistic is ultimately a creative decision, which is why DLSS 5 puts art-direction tools directly into the hands of developers. DLSS 5 empowers teams to add photoreal detail that their compute and VRAM budgets would never let them model and render explicitly. It also adds different models and controls to let them art-direct how and where it is applied. For gamers, it is a simple on or off toggle.

Let’s first look at how DLSS 5 preserves artistic intent. In this example with the ramen chef, the underlying facial proportions and geometry remain exactly as the artists designed them. When enabled, DLSS 5 enhances light responses and material detail. Ambient occlusion adds defined depth around his headband, while light transmits naturally through his ears via enhanced subsurface scattering. These subtle additions elevate the character and scene without altering his core identity.

Click here to load a fullscreen 4K comparison

Through the DLSS 5 SDK, developers have several models to choose from, with different parameter weights that produce different outputs, allowing them to pick the model that works best for their game.

This model choice can be applied to the entire game, or they can mix-and-match the models in different scenes. For example, artists can select one model for dense outdoor foliage, and another model for dramatic indoor scenes. They can also mix-and-match different models for gameplay and cutscenes, whichever fits their artistic vision.

DLSS 5 also offers Structure Intensity and Tone Intensity adjustments. Structure Intensity controls high-frequency details such as ambient occlusion, reflections, and subsurface scattering. This control enables developers to have a big lever to increase realism in their games.

With Tone Intensity, developers can control the low-frequency details such as broader lighting and color response. This allows the developer to decide to show the exact colors from the rendered frame by setting this value to zero, or increase the setting to make tonal adjustments based on the scene. Together, they let the artists decide how much enhancement is applied to the output.

Click here to load a fullscreen 4K comparison

To ensure enhancements are applied only where intended, DLSS 5 features semantic AI masking that recognizes scene objects automatically, allowing developers to boost the environmental uplift while holding back on characters, or vice versa.

Furthermore, engine-level masking allows artists to isolate specific props or asset groups, such as glassware, water droplets, or foliage, and apply custom neural lighting tweaks to specific elements of a game without altering surrounding elements.

The neural rendering result remains firmly grounded in the engine's base frame, meaning the quality of the final output scales with the fidelity of the input.

DLSS 5 noticeably elevates traditional rasterized graphics, but giving the model richer source data, like ray-traced or path-traced lighting, yields dramatically more-accurate results. In other words, the higher the quality of the foundational information provided by the game, the better the final output.

Click here to load a fullscreen 4K comparison

As we work in close partnership with studios, developer feedback continues to directly shape how we refine the technology and expand our suite of models and controls.

NBA 2K27 Available September 3rd With DLSS 5

For over 25 years, Visual Concepts has delivered NBA 2K as the most authentic sports experience in gaming. Their focus is to make the in-game experience feel as close as possible to watching a real NBA or WNBA broadcast.

Through a close partnership with Visual Concepts and 2K, we’re bringing DLSS 5 3D-Guided Neural Rendering to NBA 2K27, achieving a new level of authenticity for the player experience.

It’s available starting September 3rd at 9pm Pacific Time for GeForce RTX 50 Series PCs and laptops, and GeForce NOW Ultimate members streaming from NVIDIA-operated GeForce RTX 5080-powered gaming rigs in the cloud.

Visual Concepts uses DLSS 5 to enhance and tune NBA 2K27 to make it even more realistic. With DLSS 5, you can see how light naturally passes through player ears, the natural lighting of skin, and how light catches hair, all while preserving the facial geometry scanned from real-world athletes.

“DLSS 3D-guided neural rendering helped boost the visual quality of our materials and lighting, bringing a real jump to photorealism across the game,” said Peter Kavic, Senior Producer at Visual Concepts.

Enabling DLSS 5 delivers a noticeable upgrade for All-Star guard Cade Cunningham, with improved skin subsurface scattering providing lifelike warmth under the arena lighting, and tighter contact shadows bringing out finer detail along his neck and jersey collar, while natural light transmission elevates his hair definition, enhancing overall realism.

DLSS 5 also elevates the visual fidelity of All-NBA point guard Tyrese Haliburton. Subsurface scattering gives his face realistic warmth under the arena lights, casting precise contact shadows beneath his nose and chin. And refined ambient occlusion adds crisp shadow definition across the folds of his compression arm sleeve.

Click here to load a fullscreen 4K comparison of Tyrese Haliburton with DLSS 3D-Guided Neural Rendering

Courtside spectators and staff also gain richer lighting and material responses, with natural subsurface skin scattering and defined contact shadows that elevate the image quality of their models.

Click here to load a fullscreen 4K comparison

Using the full suite of DLSS technologies in NBA 2K27, at 4K with the Ultra Preset and ray tracing, GeForce RTX 5090 owners can play at up to 370 frames per second with DLSS 5, for the definitive experience.

At 2560x1440, GeForce RTX Series gamers can experience Ultra Preset, ray-traced, DLSS 5-enhanced NBA 2K27 at up to a super fast 590 frames per second on the GeForce RTX 5090, at up to 410 frames per second on the GeForce RTX 5080, up to 350 frames per second on the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, and up to 260 frames per second on the GeForce RTX 5070.

At 1920x1080, virtually all GeForce RTX 50 Series gamers can experience NBA 2K27 with ray tracing, using the Ultra Preset in conjunction with DLSS 5.

Combined, DLSS 5 with 3D-Guided Neural Rendering, Super Resolution, and Multi Frame Generation deliver higher frame rates and dramatically improved image quality. DLSS 5 enhances Jayson Tatum with natural skin subsurface scattering, refined facial hair lighting, and deeper contact shadows across his jersey and the basketball.

With DLSS ON, framerates are boosted to 370 FPS at 4K at Ultra Settings, with ray tracing, on a GeForce RTX 5090

To enable DLSS 5 in NBA 2K27, players will need to download a new GeForce Game Ready Driver launching on September 3rd at 9pm PT, revealing the option for DLSS Neural Rendering in-game:

• Download and install the September 3rd driver from our website or the NVIDIA app
• In-game, select “Video Settings,” and turn On “DLSS Neural Rendering”
• Configure other DLSS Super Resolution, Frame Generation, and NVIDIA Reflex options to your liking
• Toggle DLSS Neural Rendering during gameplay and replays via F9 on your keyboard

Rapid Progress & Continuous Evolution

Since the initial announcement of DLSS 5 in March, our progress has been rapid: from running on dual GeForce RTX 5090s to now a single graphics card, we’ve achieved a 5X performance gain in just six months, making DLSS 5 available for all GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs and Laptop GPUs. This milestone stems from a combination of systematic pipeline optimizations, and neural model refinements that yield both faster execution and better image quality.

Our optimization curve isn’t flattening out, and we have further optimizations in active development. We expect upcoming model updates coming in the Fall to boost performance beyond today’s baseline. Backed by over a decade of DLSS expertise, we remain committed to continuously pushing the boundaries of performance and image quality, and this is only the beginning.

DLSS 5: A New Era Of Real-Time Graphics

DLSS 5 is a breakthrough in both AI and graphics; a new level of realism for games:

• 3D-Guided & 4K Real-Time: Fully deterministic, temporally consistent neural rendering running at up to 4K on a single GeForce RTX 50 Series GPU
• Frame Is The Foundation: Trained to maintain the structural and geometric integrity of the rendered frame
• Intelligent Model: Intelligently analyzes scene objects and semantics to deliver lifelike lighting, subsurface scattering, and realistic material responses
• Granular Developer Controls: Creative controls calibrate the neural model via structure, tone, and semantic masking to rigorously maintain artist intent
• Streamlined Integration: Offers fast, easy integration for game developers via NVIDIA Streamline or Unreal Engine 5 plugin

DLSS 5 extends the rendering pipeline, rather than replacing it. It works seamlessly across the entire graphics stack by building upon our DLSS technologies (Super Resolution, Multi Frame Generation, and Ray Reconstruction), while enhancing traditional rendering methods like rasterization, ray tracing, and path tracing. Together, these innovations mark the beginning of a transformative era which blends hand-crafted rendering with neural graphics to deliver a dramatic leap in visual realism while preserving the control artists need for creative expression.

To experience DLSS 5 in NBA 2K27, get the game and download our latest GeForce Game Ready Driver on September 3rd at 9pm Pacific Time through the NVIDIA app, or play on GeForce NOW

Gameplay Enhancements in NBA 2K27:

• Creative Offensive Weapons: Thanks to ProPLAY, NBA 2K27 captures the league's most inspired offensive moves and adds another layer of creativity to the offensive bag. For the first time, players can replicate the step-through up-and-under mastered by stars like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Anthony Edwards, and Luka Dončić to generate clean separation. The new Expanded Dribbling Customization suite breaks signature dribbling packages into 29 individual, decoupled movements, letting hoopers craft endless combinations into personalized attacks. The Dynamic Layup Engine adjusts movements mid-air for unique, clean finishes, and the logic-driven Dunk Meter creates more realistic outcomes all the way to the rim.
• Reworked, Physical Defense: On the defensive end of the floor, players can now choose to contest shots more aggressively or more conservatively with improved hands-up defense mechanics. Meanwhile, advanced shot coverage feedback now displays a color-coded system that illustrates the quality of a contest and the direction it came from. An expanded Defensive Cutoff system empowers skilled defenders to match the offense’s explosive combos step-for-step, and ankle breakers are now skill-based and logic-driven for the first time. A new ball collision system backs it all up, weighing both players’ ratings to determine if contact from a cutoff or steal attempt is enough to jar the ball loose, rewarding physical, well-timed defense while still giving ball handlers a chance to recover.
• Revamped Takeover System: NBA 2K27 introduces a revamped Takeover system built around the five disciplines: Shooting, Finishing, Playmaking, Defense, and Rebounding. Each discipline can be activated individually and is tracked throughout the game with dedicated meters that rise and fall with in-game performance in that area, scaling across six tiers. Once a player maxes out the meter of a certain discipline, it will trigger the equipped Takeover Ability automatically.
• New Advanced Controls: The new Advanced Controls bring unprecedented precision and authentic, dynamic playmaking, whether performing breakdowns on the move, threading no-look passes or throwing intuitive alley-oops.
• Upgraded Rhythm Shooting: Rhythm Shooting returns with some highly anticipated upgrades for 2K27. The Shot Meter gives players a real-time visual guide to hitting the ideal Tempo with a tick mark synced to Pro Stick movement. Now, based on community feedback, successfully hitting a shot with Rhythm Shooting strictly requires greening the Timing. Additionally, Rhythm Shooting has officially expanded to the free-throw line, making the transition seamless for players who shoot with the Pro Stick.
• AI & Coaching: Improved AI logic ensures that computer-controlled teammates and opponents operate with a realistic basketball IQ, designed to read, react, and attack. A new Set AI framework coordinates offensive actions to keep elite facilitators, like Nikola Jokić, at the true hub of the offense, while new team-level gameplans adapt in real time to exploit favorable matchups. On the other end, Enhanced Matchup Switching brings more fluid, intelligent coverage.

NBA 2K27 is now available for pre-order on PS5, XBOX Series X|S, and PC, and to wish list on Nintendo Switch 2.

The three editions of the game include:

• Standard Edition - $69.99: Featuring Victor Wembanyama, the Standard Edition launches September 4, 2026, and will be available on PS5, XBOX Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.

• Deluxe Edition - $99.99: Headlined by Caitlin Clark and available on PS5, XBOX Series X|S, and PC. This edition includes 100,000 VC MyCAREER content (25x 6 Types of Skill Boosts, 25x 3 Types of Gatorade Boosts, Victor Wembanyama Jersey, Caitlin Clark Jersey, and a 2HR 2XP Coin (MyCAREER)); and MyTEAM content (Full '27: Series 1 Team Selection, Triple Threat Park Free Agent Pack, 5x '27: Series 1 Packs, and a 2HR 2XP Coin (MyTEAM)). Includes Early Access starting on August 28, 2026, up to one week before worldwide release.
• Ultra Edition - $149.99 (Limited availability through September 6, 2026): Celebrating Derrick Rose, the Ultra Edition is available on PS5, XBOX Series X|S, and PC. Includes everything in the Deluxe Edition plus an additional 35,000 VC, a Season 1 Pro Pass and the Summer Season Pass Pro Pass Bundle (Seasons 7–9 Pro Pass, releasing in Summer 2027); the Roses Oversize Hoodie in MyCAREER; Premium SKU MyTEAM Player Cards, which includes a guaranteed 98 OVR card (December 2026) and a guaranteed Invincible card  (May 2027). NBA 2K26 players who pre-order NBA 2K27 Ultra Edition on the same platform will receive a 10% discount Includes Early Access beginning August 28, 2026. 

NBA 2K27 is coming to PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC (Steam), and Nintendo Switch 2 on September 4, 2026. Deluxe Edition or Ultra Edition owners on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC won’t have to wait long as Early Access begins on Friday, August 28, 2026.