Everything announced in the BlizzCon 2026 Opening Ceremony

30 minutes to go

Good afternoon slash evening! How are you all doing? There’s a little under 30 minutes to go until the show begins. Let the excitement build.

Dale says: Lost Vikings Remake when?

Ah, gosh! Fond memories of playing this at a neighbour’s house many years ago before Blizzard was the household gaming name it is today.

Dale says: A Starcraft MMO would make a lot of sense. Three factions, each with important figures in the lore, plenty of unit archetypes to make up classes. It would lend itself really well to pvp as well, capturing points to requisition vehicles.

A StarCraft MMO? Goodness! I believe this is broadly what Blizzard was trying to make with Titan – a sci-fi MMO. That was salvaged and became Overwatch of course. I don’t think Blizzard will make another MMO again. They are, and always will be, a colossal investment and I don’t think it’d ever cannibalise World of Warcraft by doing it.

Kremlik says: Interestingly the ‘Classic+’ rumours have evolved into it’s NOT like OSRS (which is Vanilla with new content) but they’re intending on going further back to the RTS age and retelling those stories in MMO form.

I’m ‘expecting’ them to drop payed for classes into D2 and D4 again (without new content), but my eyes are firmly on whatever Starcraft game we end up getting – if it’s actually a RTS I’ll be surprised (the game done ‘in-house’ not the Nexon one – that one is more likely to be the RTS)

Oh, interesting. So Classic Plus becomes a Classic take on the stories from the Warcraft 1-3 game – is that what you mean?

It defintely makes more sense of the Nexon involvement if Nexon is taking this MMO spin-off and Blizzard is doing the StarCraft co-op game in-house, although I still find a non-mulitplayer game a bemusing concept for Blizzard, certainly given as multiplayer is one of its founding mantras. Multiplayer in a ‘more than co-op’ sense. But perhaps that’s deemed as enough?

We are currently seeing some strange goings-on on the BlizzCon stage. I think that’s Darin de Paul dressed up as a waiter there, the voice of Reinhardt in Overwatch. It certainly looks like him. Some people are dealing huge tarot cards on a table, while a keyboard and violin are playing possibly the nicest stream hold-music we’ve ever had.

I say he’s dressed up as a waiter: he has a white tuxedo on. He’s more of a very smart person dressed for dinner than the waiter.

De Paul appears now to be knighting someone, albeit with the edge of the blade rather than the flat bit. Darin, Darin.

Former Eurogamerer Chris Bratt, who now co-runs People Make Games, is at BlizzCon this year, primarily to follow the Blizzard workers union, but he’s also at the show.

First thing the Blizzcon attendees see as they join the queue for this year’s show.

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— Chris Bratt (@chrisbratt.bsky.social) 12 September 2026 at 17:33

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We were invited to the show, incidentally, but couldn’t make it this year.

We’re approaching the five-minutes-to-go mark. I visited Blizzard campus earlier this year before the relaunch of Overwatch, and Blizzard president Johanna Faries made a big point of inviting everyone BlizzCon and making it sound like some big things were going to happen there. This was before Microsoft’s restructuring of course. But still: I hope for some big things to happen.

Matt Mercer has snuck onto the feed! He’s stealing something from the table and generally being sneaky.

Mercer being the voice actor for Overwatch’s Cassidy of course, and a central figure in super-mega-popular role-play group Critical Role.

Dale says: I was going through my old comics the other day and therw were some adverts for the Justice League fighting game that Blizzard make back in the 90s. I’ve never played it, but apparently it wasn’t great.

Goodness me! I had completely glossed over that. Interesting to think of a time before Warcraft, isn’t it?

The show begins

One minute to go and the music has ramped up considerably. A clock ticks down to the beginning. It’s nice for a show to be a live in-person thing, isn’t?

Get ready, here we go.

The camera feed takes us inside the Anaheim Convention Centre, the clock ticks down, the crowd cheers. A Diablo video plays. Perhaps Diablo is opening the show? There’s a lot of screens.

Ah, now Overwatch, so we’re montaging. Drums bang. It’s a very heroic opening.

Now StarCraft? It is StarCraft. So Blizzard is talking about it again, then. That’s a good sign.

HearthStone now – don’t forget HearthStone. Lovely production values on that stage, I must say. Lots of big lights, four huge screens. A HUGE cheer for World of Warcraft when it eventually makes it on the screen. Shows the pulling power of WoW still. The whole thing was built on WoW, really.

Johanna Faries – Blizzard president – takes the stage.

She greets the crowd. The crowd roars. “Unbelievable energy in here.”

“And the long and winding roads that have read us to today. What a special moment for all of us.” Is it?

She’s thanking everyone for being there. And people tuning in. “It’s ddeply moving to look out and see what I see, and be together in this particular way.” It’s her first time on this stage. It’s nice to see her on this stage.

MarcusJ says: No Rock N Roll Racing in the montage.

Ha!

She’s quite emotional. That’s nice to see. She’s got wonderfully sparkly boots on. She looks a bit like she could be in the Wizard of Oz.

A big speeach for her. She says she hopes this weekend is going to serve as an “oasis” for people attending. “A place for us to connect and reconnect.” And probably buy loads of really expensive merchandise.

An attempt to endeer herself to the crowd I suppose. She’s referencing that it’s been a while since the last BlizzCon. This one took a lot of work – blood, sweat, and tears.

“I love you.” She says to her team mates. It’s a very impassioned speech. I’m sure it has been a hard year with the Microsoft restructuring in the background, though I’m not sure how affected Blizzard has been by it.

Blizzard president Johanna Faries gives an impassioned opening speech

This weekend is “jam-packed with goodness” she says. There’s so much going on at Blizzard now that they couldn’t fit it into this weekend if they tried. A first announcement is coming up.

Heroes of the Storm is returning?

She is pleased to share something from the “nexus” of our hearts. Heroes of the Storm spotted on screen. But what exactly is this?

We see a janitor zombie clearing up. We see Arthas doing Arthas stuff. There’s the WoW Midnight baddie. Oh okay, Xal’atath is coming to Heroes and you can play her this weekend.

“To all the HOTS players out there, I see you.” She thanks people for “carrying the torch”. They may have another new hero on the way in the future?

Netflix is making an animated Diablo series

She’s moving onto multimedia partnerships now. The words Netflix and Diablo flash up.

They’re in development on a new animated series for Diablo with Netflix. I think this had been rumoured in the past. “And Diablo, I promise, is just the beginning, to our Overwatch community, to our Warcraft community, and who knows, perhaps even some of our other universes.” There are discussions being had. “I can’t spill the beans just yet.”

Dale says: They’re bringing back Heroes of the Storm? Unexpected.

Right? I thought it had disappeared too. But the way she was talking about it, it sounded like it was still around and they were just adding new heroes to it. Otherwise why not say they were bringing it back? I’m a bit confused.

Dan Hay is coming on stage now. This must be the StarCraft reveal. He used to work on Far Cry at Ubisoft and he’s the person said to be in charge of the new StarCraft shooter.

Blizzard announces it’s new StarCraft open-world shooter

He’s talking about how he saw a Blizzard trailer and it made him want to apply to work at the company so he applied to do just that. He was turned down. I guess this was at the start of his career. “Dreams don’t die, dreams don’t fade. Dreams are patient. Dreams wait.”

So he waited and 25 years later it sounds like he got his shot. The wait had better be worth it, Dan!

His phone rang, it was Blizzard, and “this time, there was an opportunity” to assemble a team to carry the legacy of one of Blizzard’s most beloved games. The team stand up in the hall and everyone claps them.

“A team built with one purpose. A team built with one goal. To return to a universe forged in interstellar war.”

An open-world shooter where everything is earned… They’re here to “reignite” this universe. “We are here to make StarCraft!”

Ooh, goosebumps.

StarCraft returns 2030 – that’s a long way away

A gravelly voice of a general giving a speech to his troops. A montage of troops training, one in particular, going through the ranks, earning their stripes, earning their mech suit. It’s CGI.

We see them training with a rifle in a hallway, shooting targets. They’re welding their suit. It’s big and red. In they go.

A drop ship flies to an alien planet and they prepare with their troop to jump out. It’s a rousing trailer.

Out they step and there are huge floating aliens ahead of them. The zerg advances, guns blare. A visor goes down. The fighter is lost. Oh! He died, his blood sludges through the drain. That’s a nice twist.

We see their badge picked up off the floor and thrown with all the others. Presumably it’s a meat grinder as more and more troops come through.

The game is simply called StarCraft.

No other details about this StarCraft shooter just yet. Overwatch director Aaron Keller comes onto the stage in an incredible Overwatch jacket.

He’s reminding us that Blizzard is releasing 10 new heroes this year for Overwatch. I think 8 of them have been added so far. We’re going to see a new one now.

We’re in the icy map of Watchpoint Gibraltar and watching an animation. A big character comes in who looks a bit like Doomfist and seems to fight like him too. Oh, it is Doomfist, it seems. Doomfist lays waste to the soldiers in his way.

There’s Reaper. There’s Sombra. There’s Widowmaker.

Doomfist was ousted as Talon leader recently so presumably they’re trying to reinstate him.

Malek86 says: I just can’t really get hyped about cinematic trailers anymore, since they are basically just announcements, and we already know those news unless they somehow manage to keep the lid on the project until trailer day (and let’s face it, whenever does that happen nowadays?).

I hear you. It was a nice trailer, and I liked how it ended, but I still no next to nothing about the game. And it’s so far away!

MarcusJ says: When it said 2030, I assumed that was when it was set. For a second.

Right!

On the screen, we’re seeing more animated Overwatch shennanigans. I’ve lost track. They’re fighting a large mech and Doomfist punches it and takes it down. It’s very heroic. Are they here to get someone out of storage I wonder?

Ooh! Someone slim is coming out! Someone tall with white dreads and long fingernails. They put some tech on and immediately they’re armoured. They’re a sort of techno vampire, and now they’re younger again, too. They’ve got a cain, though, and seem to control dark bat-like powers.

New Overwatch hero Doctrine revealed, a techno support vampire

Ben Bell and Miranda Moyer from the Overwatch team come out.

Doctrine, I think this new character is called. Support hero with a sceptre who can rush through battle shrouded in darkness and their drones can speed enemies up. They have an infuse ability that transforms their next ability. Oh they are a vampire! They have have mechanical bats.

Doctrine – I’m not sure on the spelling – comes next month. Doctrine is playable at BlizzCon now. Doctrine’s Hero Trial will start for all players as soon as the opening ceremony concludes.

Roadhog is getting a rework! He’s going to be able to help out his team. And Sombra is becoming a support!

It sounded like there’s a new map coming in Season 5 next month as well, and some other things I glossed over slightly because I was hunting for the StarCraft trailer – which I found!

They’re doing a live Overwatch TTRPG on stage tomorrow, which has been written by Matt Mercer – so that’s why he’s there! It’s a one of a kind story built just for this weekend.

Overwatch’s Aaron Keller is talking about Overwatch merch – including his flashy jacket – helping the Make a Wish foundation. Ben Bell is saying this has been the biggest year in Overwatch history. I think he’s the exec producer.

Keller is sneaking in a plug for the big new announcement in Feb. A new story, a “fresh set of heroes”. “We are aiming for peak Overwatch.” Some new systems mentioned.

Dale says: One thought – with Starcraft being in 2030, and Xbox recently saying Blizzard is Xbox’s most profitable studio, could this give us an idea of when Microsoft is thinking of launching the next Xbox? I don’t think it l’ll be quite that late, but with the delayed start to this gen due to the pandemic, the slower progress of graphics tech, and the hellscape of AI and what it’s done to tech pricing and is likely to do for the next couple years at least, I imagine that next-gen consoles could be getting pushed bacl a lot further than what was originally expected.

I’d say it was well within the bounds of possibility it’ll be a Project Helix game.

We’re moving onto Diablo now, by the looks of things. A Switch 2 announcement?

A montage of all the games, and people cheering – presumably for the game – is flashing by on screen.

This is the 30th anniversary year of Diablo, of course.

Tiffany Wat and Brent Gibson from the Diablo team come onto the stage.

Wat says she’s been to every single BlizzCon event, which is impressive. They’re doing a “Horde” and “Alliance” callout now. Wat asks the audience if anyone else has been to every BlizzCon, and a couple of people answer. Probably not the response she was after, but I’m not surprised – it’s an expensive endeavour!

Deckard Cain returns to Diablo 4 in triple-prime-evil season launching next week

They’re flexing their Diablo histories, and they sound like they’ve been playing the series for years.

Since 1996 more than 130 million players have played a Diablo game, apparently. That’s quite a lot. Reinforcing the Diablo Netflix animated series announcement.

Oh “surprise” mentioned! And the screens go crackers like something is going to happen. But… it doesn’t.

“We love a good surprise,” Gibson says. He’s referencing bringing the Warlock to three Diablo games at once, which was impressive. In a few days – on 15th September – Season of Hell Legacies, I think he says, launches, celebrating 30 years of Diablo.

Decard Cain is returning.

Diablo 4 Switch 2 confirmed – and it’s out next week!

We’ll face all three prime evils – Bael, Mephisto and Diablo – and choose which evil we want to embrace. This choice will reshape the game around us.

We’re also getting new loot themed around the history of Diablo. It sounds cool but also slightly anticlimactic if that’s the surprise they had for us.

“Mooooving on.” Oh, cow level?

Diablo’s Joe Shely comes on stage with a Switch 2!

He’s officially announcing that the D4 Age of Hatred Collection is coming to Switch 2 on 15th September alongside the Season of Hell’s Legacy.

Spawn’s Todd McFarlane is at the show because Spawn is coming to Diablo Immortal.

The Amazon class is coming to Diablo 4

The Amazon class from Diablo 2 is coming to Diablo 4! This is the class that’s from Skovos.

The Amazon will wield the bow but also a brand new weapon for Diablo 4: the javelin. The Amazon “class pack” will arrive first-half of 2027. So it’s paid DLC.

There’s another announcement. They’re also ready to look beyond the Age of Hatred. We’re going to see the next era.

Shely: “For 30 years, Sanctuary has stood on the edge of oblivion.” Heroes have always pushed it back. “Until now.”

Cinematic time.

Blizzard announces Diablo 5!

Holy shit that was an announcement for Diablo 5! It’s coming in spring 2029.

For the first time, we won’t be fighting to stop Diablo from taking control of the world, because he will have already taken it. We will be fighting in a fallen world. There’s a panel later at BlizzCon where they’ll be detailing the evolution more.

Good grief I have to catch my breath after that.

Nathan Lyons-Smith from the HearthStone team comes on stage to give us a breather. Brendan Sewell from the HearthStone team is there too.

We’re getting a trailer for a new expansion.

Dale says: There seemed a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the crowd with that Diablo V announcement. More… confusion? Does this mean we’re not getting another D 4 expansion?

That’s a very good question. I would assume not.

HearthStone’s getting a new expansion in October based around Old Gods

Distracted a little there. This next expansion goes back in Warcraft history to the fight between the old gods that shaped Azeroth to begin with. There might be some juicy lore in this.

Reign of the Black Empire it’s called, and it’s got a new Assemble keyword that lets you merge two cards together. It pulls from a pool of more than 250 cards.

The expansion launches 20th October.

Rogueywon says: I thought the second expansion had pretty much wrapped up Diablo 4? The story felt done.

Yeah, so I guess the thinking was do we do a new storyline or jump to a new game? It does seem like a swift jump though. There were 11 years between Diablo 3 and Diablo 4.

Tavern Brawls are getting bigger. 2v2 HearthStone! That’s a nice idea.

One more announcement. It’s a pandaren – we see them in a trailer. They’re doing Kung-fu panda stuff. Ooh the monk is arriving as a new class in HearthStone in March 2027.

Flexibility is apparently a key monk selling point. Oh and that’s all we get to know.

They’re recapping now and getting ready to hand this segment over, presumably to World of Warcraft. A Classic Plus announcement coming?

World of Warcraft boss Holly Longdale comes out, dressed in a wonderful WOW-like cosplay gown! Very fetching.

She asks if there are any WoW players out there and the audience goes bananas. The Alliance scream was louder, I’m sorry to say.

“We’re going to light a fire that’s going to burn for decades, and it starts today,” she says. “We’re about to launch a kickass year of Warcraft.” We’re starting with the Worldsoul Saga, and here’s Ion Hazzikostas to tell us about it.

Midnight Eclipse is the next big WoW patch

A recap on how Midnight has gone, and how they’ve stayed tightlipped about where the story is going. And it sounds like now they can talk about it. We’re at the mid-point of the Worldsoul Saga story.

For a while, the narrative has been about moving chess pieces into place, getting ready for the endgame, and they’re just about done with that now. Now it’s “all gas, no brakes”. The next major content for Midnight is Eclipse. Patch 12.2.

Xa’latath now hovers above her objective and “it’s about time we confront her directly”. Her objective is… Stormwind? We see a city gates on screen. I’m not familiar with stinking Alliance lands but that looks like a major city.

Those doors sure look like Stormwind to me. Xa’latath rocks up and says for the dates to open. A big holographic protector guards the door. Oh, it’s a titan, it seems. She sends her shadowy power against it. The doors break open and in she goes. Okay, it’s not Stormwind, it’s somewhere a giant glowing orb is. The Worldsoul, presumably.

Ruh roh. I don’t think that’s good for anyone.

Reference to the next expansion The Last Titan. But they can’t get into it without spoiling things to come in Midnight. Hazzikostas is talking about The Last Titan being the culmination of 20 years of work and how it’ll bring the latest chapter of World of Warcraft to an end. It’ll be interesting to see how they can top it after that. Or whether they’ll do something else with WoW.

Early next year, they’ll share more information, after Eclipse. But we’re getting a glimpse.

A snowy tundra. A glowing tower. This feels very Lich Kingy. The ground is shaking as something colossal approaches. Something so big we can’t see it all in one. It’s a giant robot thing with laser guns on its shoulders.

The Last Titan is coming in 2027.

Warcraft 3 is getting a new campaign for the first time in decades

“We are putting the war back in Warcraft,” says Longdale. She intros the Warcraft 3 team. Is this going to be the thing that was rumoured?

A trailer plays showing two armies clashing. Humans versus orcs, as always, it seems. But then a floating necropolis arrives and the trailer cuts to black.

WarCraft 3 Reforged: Forsaken Kingdom. It’s a new campaign for Warcraft 3!

We’re going to experience the fall of Lodaeron and how the Undercity became what it did.

The new Warcraft 3 campaign is out today!

It’s got more than 30 hours of gameplay, a trailer tells us. There’s a Definitive Edition graphical update being applied to Warcraft 3 Reforged as well. You can select bigger groups of units now, the map editor is being improved.

It’s a shadow-drop! The new campaign launches today.

“And we ain’t done yet,” Longdale sales.

“It’s time to talk about something new. Maybe address some of the rumours out there.

“What if we take vanilla and really plus it up?!”

This must be Classic Plus!

Classic Plus is World of Warcraft Forever!

On screen we’re seeing the classic WoW intro cinematic with the dwarf on the snowy mountain. But a wisp flies near by. This is a remade cinematic, it looks like. They follow it in a different direction – that’s pertinent.

Blizzard presents… We see a large field before them. The dwarf picks a golden flower. The bear rolls on the ground. Is this supposed to denote a graphican do-over for the whole world?

The Dalaran globe – it opens! There’s a city inside.

The wisp dives down into it. There’s an undead character in there. The dwarf confronts it. The battle.

The wisp flies back out to the world tree. The dwarf follows it to it. There are huge remains of titans there, it looks like. The dwarf bows to the wisp.

We zoom out and see more wide shots of the world as a hand reaches out.

Now the globe.

World of Warcraft: Forever

We don’t have long to experience it because… It launches in seven weeks, on 4th November. Not quite a shadow drop. A clock ticks down on screen. Beta starts this Thursday.

Forever is “your new permanent home”. “It’s a new beginning that never ends.” They’re giving us another way to play WoW. Not console?

Instead of one big heroic story, we’ll carve our own path, apparently. I don’t know what that means. There’s no rush here, it’s the journey that counts. Again, I’m not sure what that means.

There’s going to be a lot to discover. It sounds like it might be a mobile version? She’s talking vaguely.

“This is a new opportunity to get back to…” the heart of what makes MMOs “so damn special”, Longdale says. Yes but what is it!

She’s still skirting around describing exactly what it is other than talking about it superlatively. We’re seeing a trailer!

We fly over the sea, above a forest. Orgrimmar… We’re seeing snapshots of areas around Azeroth. It looks like World of Warcraft.

New zones. Mount Hyjal. Zephras Isle. Riverglades. Expanded original zones. New dungeons. New raids. 10 and 20 player raids. New skills and talents. New race and class combinations. New playable race – the Skyborne. New battleground Darkspear something or other. 1000 new quests. New items and rewards. New professions content. New reptutations. Account-wide perks. SD/HD character toggle. Updated world visuals.

So it’s an expanded version of World of Warcraft, remastered and enhanced. Cool!

WoW Forever is an expanded and remastered version of vanilla WoW, that’ll lock at level 60

It’s essentially year one of vanilla WoW. “But the future is untold. We may see stories that could have happened, and some that didn’t happen at all.” So it might expand in different ways.

It’s going to stay at level 60 “indefinitely”. “We don’t want to race ahead and leave our accomplishments, our gear, and our friends behind. That said, we will progress in other ways and get updates as we go.” They say it’s all based on what they’ve been hearing from the audience.

The crowd is chanting Holly’s name. I think this must be where the opening ceremony is going to end. It’s been a great show! Those are some big announcements. Overwatch was actually the relative low point for once.

This is were opening ceremony ends, Longdale says. She’s been great on stage. “And now, it’s time to play! Have an absolutely badass BlizzCon!” She fumbles her words and it’s very endearing. And that’s it! What a show.

That’s it for our live coverage tonight. Thanks for joining us!