On September 8, 2022, the United Kingdom's Queen Elizabeth II died, starting a national mourning period of ten days. Rumors began to circulate that Nintendo had postponed a planned Nintendo Direct in response to the news. On September 12, the Direct was formally revealed to air worldwide the next day, although it was not livestreamed in the UK. Instead, it was published as an on-demand video on Nintendo UK's YouTube channel at a later time. This Direct featured the full title reveal for the then-untitled Sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, revealing the game's subtitle to be "Tears of the Kingdom". This lead to even more speculation that the poor timing of this subtitle being the name of one of Nintendo's most anticipated games at the time coinciding with the Queen's death was what resulted in the Direct being delayed, rather than doing so purely out of respect. It wouldn't be until October 3 for Nintendo UK to begin their own promotion of the game, long after the mourning period ended.

The game, which was formerly known as the "Sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild", began life as DLC for the original Breath of the Wild. However, producer Eiji Aonuma elected to make it a full-fledged sequel, because there were too many ideas the team wanted to include:

"When we released the DLC for Breath of the Wild, we realized that this is a great way to add more elements to the same world. But when it comes down to technical things, DLC is pretty much data--you're adding data to a preexisting title. And so when we wanted to add bigger changes, DLC is not enough, and that’s why we thought maybe a sequel would be a good fit."