BlizzCon 2026 went all in: Diablo V, an open-world StarCraft shooter, WoW Forever and a surprise Warcraft III campaign

BlizzCon 2026 did not ease back into the old routine.

Blizzard used its return to Anaheim to map out an unusually large stretch of its future. Some of the announcements become playable this week. World of Warcraft: Forever arrives in November. Diablo's next class comes in 2027.

Then the calendar gets silly.

Diablo V is targeting 2029. The new StarCraft is targeting 2030.

Diablo V starts in a world where Diablo already won

The biggest new game reveal was also remarkably direct. Diablo V is officially in development for Spring 2029, and Blizzard is abandoning the usual premise of stopping the apocalypse before it happens.

Sanctuary has already fallen.

Diablo won.

That leaves the next generation of heroes operating without the familiar safe towns and protected spaces that normally break up a Diablo journey. Blizzard's development panel described a far more comprehensively ruined Sanctuary, set roughly a century after Diablo IV.

Procedural generation will again play a role in dungeons and the overworld, while Blizzard says the game is being designed with more playable classes than previous entries. Spring 2029 remains far enough away that those systems can still change substantially.

StarCraft is back, just not as an RTS

The other enormous reveal belongs to a franchise Blizzard has left dormant for far too long.

STARCRAFT is an open-world shooter set in the Koprulu Sector and is currently targeting Spring 2030.

For anyone waiting for StarCraft III, that sentence probably requires a second reading.

Moving away from real-time strategy is a major change for a series that helped define competitive RTS design. It also revives an idea Blizzard has repeatedly pursued without shipping: StarCraft has a long history of canceled action projects, from Ghost to the later Ares prototype.

This attempt has at least made it onto a BlizzCon stage with an announced release year. After such a long absence, even 2030 now counts as a destination.

World of Warcraft now officially has a third timeline to maintain

World of Warcraft: Forever is much closer. Its beta starts September 17 and the full experience launches November 4.

Blizzard describes Forever as a permanent third form of World of Warcraft alongside Modern and Classic. It returns to original-era Azeroth and keeps the level cap at 60, but it does not simply preserve Vanilla exactly as it was.

There are three new zones, more than 1,000 quests, nine dungeons, two raids and the new neutral Skyborne race. New stories and updates will continue to expand that version of Azeroth horizontally.

In practical terms, Blizzard has finally built an official answer to the long-running “Classic+” idea: keep the structure and scale of old WoW, then develop a different future for it.

Warcraft III suddenly has a new campaign

The timeline starts even earlier with Warcraft III: Reforged – Forsaken Kingdom, which Blizzard launched during BlizzCon rather than merely announcing for later.

Forsaken Kingdom follows Lordaeron's fallen population as the Forsaken break free of the Scourge, establish themselves in the Undercity and move toward the period depicted in World of Warcraft: Forever.

It includes a prologue, three campaign chapters and a neutral Forsaken Paladin hero. Blizzard calls it Warcraft III's first new story in more than two decades.

A Definitive Edition update accompanies it with graphical and performance improvements and further work on the World Editor.

Warcraft III: Reforged launched in 2020 as one of Blizzard's most heavily criticized releases. Six years later, it is receiving entirely new campaign content. That was not an obvious entry on anyone's 2026 bingo card.

Diablo IV still has work to do before 2029

Announcing a numbered sequel could have made Diablo IV feel immediately obsolete. Blizzard spent part of its presentation making the opposite case.

Season of Hell's Legacy launches September 15 for Diablo's 30th anniversary. Diablo, Baal and Mephisto return as part of the seasonal storyline, with the lost soul of Deckard Cain guiding players through it.

Diablo IV also reaches Nintendo Switch 2 on the same day through the Age of Hatred Collection.

The Amazon follows in the first half of 2027 as Diablo IV's first class pack. Blizzard is building the returning class around four broad archetypes — Champion, Skirmisher, Ranger and Commander — with bows and javelins among her signature weapons.

What is not coming is another major Diablo IV expansion, at least under the current plan. Seasonal storytelling will instead help bridge the century separating Diablo IV from Diablo V.

Overwatch, Hearthstone and even Heroes of the Storm got something

The rest of Blizzard's portfolio did not sit quietly.

Overwatch is adding Doctrine, a vampire-inspired Support hero with bat-like drones, alongside major Sombra and Roadhog reworks and the Watchpoint: Grimsvötn map.

Hearthstone's Reign of the Black Empire expansion launches October 20 with the new Assemble keyword. The Monk follows in March 2027 as Hearthstone's first new playable class in six years.

And Heroes of the Storm is receiving Xal'atath, available on the PTR September 14 before joining the live roster September 28.

Yes, Heroes of the Storm received a new hero announcement at BlizzCon in 2026.

Blizzard is deliberately showing games years too early

That may be the broader story behind the ceremony. Blizzard did not simply announce what it plans to ship over the next few months. It showed the shape of its catalogue well into the next decade.

President Johanna Faries has defended the unusually long lead times as a way of demonstrating confidence in Blizzard's biggest future bets. That puts the company against a wider industry movement toward shorter reveal-to-release cycles.

Players now have a strange timeline to work with. Forsaken Kingdom is playable today. Diablo IV changes again on September 15. WoW Forever starts in November.

Diablo V waits in 2029.

StarCraft is somewhere beyond that, holding a gun.