Blizzard Officially Announces Diablo 5 at BlizzCon 2026

Polygon RSS Feed✍ Michael McWhertor📅 September 12, 2026⏱ 3 min read(about 5 hours ago)

Overview & Key Takeaways

Diablo 5 is in development and will be released in spring 2029, Blizzard Entertainment announced at BlizzCon 2026's opening ceremony.

It's official: The next Diablo game is coming. At BlizzCon 2026's opening ceremony on Saturday, Blizzard Entertainment confirmed that it's currently developing Diablo 5, the next mainline entry in the nearly 30-year-old Diablo franchise. For the sequel, Blizzard is bringing back the Lord of Terror himself, the original Diablo, who first terrorized heroic adventurers back in 1997.

Blizzard was even bold enough to put a release date on the franchise's next game. Diablo 5 will be released in spring 2029, Blizzard announced at BlizzCon.

First details on Diablo 5

Diablo 5 was announced with a short teaser during BlizzCon's opening ceremony. That teaser showed a horde of angels being slayed by Diablo's forces, highlighting just how grim the future of the franchise is.

The next game in the franchise will be set roughly 100 years after the events of Diablo 4, in which Mephisto, the Lord of Hatred is defeated, and it will present players with a very different scenario. In Diablo 5, Sanctuary has fallen, Diablo has definitively won the battle between good and evil, and players will enter the world in a post-apocalyptic state. Players will contend with a ruined world and grapple with a new challenge: What must you become when the world has already fallen?

More details on Diablo 5 are coming during BlizzCon's Diablo 5: Forging the Next Era panel on Sept. 12, at 1:45 p.m. PT, which promises "an early look at the world, classes and creative vision shaping the next chapter of Diablo."

The fifth mainline Diablo game will arrive about six years after the release of Diablo 4 — that is, if Blizzard sticks to its release window. Diablo 4 was announced at BlizzCon 2019, and was ultimately released in June 2023. Since then, Blizzard has released two expansions for Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred in October 2024 and Lord of Hatred in April 2026. At BlizzCon, Blizzard also announced plans to release a new playable class for Diablo 4, the Amazon, who returns after her first appearance in Diablo 2.

Blizzard did not announce platforms for Diablo 5. For Diablo 4, Blizzard developed the game for consoles and PC simultaneously, eventually releasing the hack-and-slash action RPG for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. Blizzard plans to release Diablo 4 for Nintendo Switch 2 in a package called Diablo 4 The Age of Hatred Collection that includes the base game and its two expansions.

Should Diablo 5 make its spring 2029 release window, it will represent a surprisingly fast turnaround for Blizzard. The original Diablo was released in January 1997, and Blizzard turned around a sequel in just a few years; Diablo 2 was released in June 2000. But it took Blizzard more than a decade to a follow-up with 2012's Diablo 3, and another 11 years before Diablo 4 was released. Expansions and new playable classes helped fill the gaps between mainline entries, but it appears that Blizzard is intent on delivering new franchise games faster than it has in the past.

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Everything Announced At The BlizzCon 2026 Opening Ceremony

!Game Informer News(https://gameinformer.com/sites/default/files/styles/bodydefault/public/2026/09/12/1da8a100/WOWforeverrpeack.jpg.webp) BlizzCon 2026 kicks off today, and its Opening Ceremony contain tons of news about the company's catalog of games. Whether massively multiplayer, single-player, in cards or through an open world, this was a surprisingly announcement-filled Opening Ceremony. Here's everything Blizzard announced at BlizzCon 2026. Heroes of the Storm Adds Xal'atath Though Blizzard slowed development on its crossover MOBA Heroes of the Storm a while back(https://gameinformer.com/2018/12/13/blizzard-pumps-the-brakes-on-heroes-of-the-storm), Heroes of the Storm returned today with a new update. Xal'atath, the big baddie from World of Warcraft, is taking to the field on September 28. And Blizzard teases that more could be on the way, too. Maybe Heroes of the Storm isn't on the back-burner any longer? Netflix x Diablo Emphasizing that the company is Blizzard Entertainment, an animated Diablo series was confirmed to be in development with Netflix. No details were given beyond that, but there was a tease for other properties being an option for adaptations as well. A StarCraft open-world shooter aims for 2030 The universe of StarCraft is back, this time through an open-world shooter currently dubbed StarCraft. Led by former Far Cry lead Dan Hay, the open-world shooter got a cinematic trailer showing off the vibe, which was fittingly grim. Currently, the team is targeting a 2030 launch, which feels just a bit far off, to say the least. But hey, it's nice to see StarCraft back. Overwatch Adds Doctrine To The Roster A new hero is joining the roster of Overwatch: the stylish and vampiric Doctrine. This Support arrives for a limited Hero Trial from September 12 through 14, before his official unlock in Season 5. Diablo IV Comes To Switch 2 As part of the new season of Diablo IV, dubbed the Age of Hatred, numerous announcements were made for the dungeon-crawling and looting RPG. A new season is on the way, and with it, a Switch 2 version, out on September 15. (Reports have emerged(https://bsky.app/profile/wario64.bsky.social/post/3mvdooryy2c2x) of physical copies already showing up in stores today.) Diablo V Is On The Way Diablo V has been officially revealed for spring 2029. Diablo has taken Sanctuary, and there are no towns or safe havens left, which the Diablo team says will change how you approach the game. More will be discussed at a specific Diablo V panel, but it looks like the dungeon crawl will continue unabated. Hearthstone Gets A New Expansion, And New Class Blizzard's Warcraft card game is getting a new expansion called Reign Of The Black Empire, themed around the old gods of Warcraft's universe. A new mechanic will let you piece together keywords onto a single card, mixing and matching card text to make devastating new effects. Battlegrounds will get Aberrations as well, adding some old god flavor to the auto-battler, and more lore is being dumped into the card game through the Journal. Some more experimental updates are on the way as well, including a new Tavern Brawl that allows for 2v2 Hearthstone. On top of that, Hearthstone is getting its first new class in quite some time: the Monk. Coming March 2027, the Pandaren Monk should bring some interesting new flavor to the current lineup of classes. World of Warcraft Teases Both Midnight Eclipse And The Last Titan The Worldsoul saga continues apace, as Xal'atath's schemes appear to be coming to fruition. In a new cinematic, Xal'atath gains access to the Worldsoul, which seems like a pretty bad thing for anyone living on the world. Midnight Eclipse, the next update for World of Warcraft, will presumably task players with trying to put a stop to all this. When it comes to the next expansion, The Last Titan, Blizzard plans to bring a big chapter to close while also laying the groundwork for the road ahead. We did get a brief cinematic teaser, showing very, very large beings walking through the frozen wastes. The Last Titan is aiming for 2027. Warcraft III: Reforged Gets A New Campaign Today It's been how many years since we last got a new Warcraft III campaign? The Reforged edition of Warcraft III adds Forsaken Kingdom today, a new campaign set around the fall of Lordaeron, alongside a number of quality-of-life improvements. This includes some graphical upgrades and engine stuff, too. As a Warcraft III fan, this was pretty exciting for me. And even better, it's out today! World of Warcraft Forever Arrives In November Closing out the show, World of Warcraft's Holly Longdale stepped out to announce World of Warcraft Forever, a new re-envisioning of the classic MMORPG. You'll get to explore new zones like Mount Hyjal and the Riverglades, as well as expanded original zones. New raids, dungeons, reputations, skills and talents await in a new journey to 60. Fresh combinations of races and classes will be available too, as well as a new race: the Skyborne. This massive update is set to arrive on November 4, with Beta opening on September 17. That's all for BlizzCon 2026, a surprisingly large one. There's new content out today, in the near future, and in the far-off future too.

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