Last week’s Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred reveal at The Game Awards was the start of big announcements and news to come, Blizzard Entertainment president Johanna Faries said in a recent interview.
Speaking with Variety, Faries said that the new expansion reveal for Diablo 4 is being thought of at the company “as a kickstart to this huge 2026 for Blizzard, all up,” including its other main flagship franchises in Overwatch and World of Warcraft for the publisher’s 35th anniversary.
“If you’re a Blizzard fan or you’re curious about any of our major franchises, the teams are cooking on major swings,” Faries said. “And I think we just have a tremendous amount of pride in what’s going to come forward, not just at BlizzCon, but even in the run up to BlizzCon here. So all hands on deck, but it’s a very exciting time.”
The anticipated return of BlizzCon is coming in September and will be the first iteration of the in-person fan event since 2023 that will aim to put an exclamation point on releases like Lord of Hatred, World of Warcraft: Midnight, and the 10th anniversary of Overwatch, while also likely announcing what comes next.
“We really think about, what would speak to our fans?” Faries said of BlizzCon. “What do they want to see? What’s bread and butter expectation? What are the surprises that we can bring? How do we expand the scope of what BlizzCon can be? And I think that docks to part of the vision that we talk about a lot, that we want to continue to aspire to be the best gaming and entertainment company in the world. And BlizzCon in ’26 hopefully puts us in a position to really reflect that ambition in a bigger way. So I have total confidence that the teams are going to come very, very big, both with the heart and soul of what I think our core-most fans long for in a BlizzCon, but also bringing some very new things to the table.”
For WoW, the Midnight expansion will launch in March, followed by Diablo’s DLC in April. Overwatch 2, meanwhile, will likely undergo another large-scale update similar to what happened earlier this year when the game introduced Perks and the new Stadium mode. But as it is also the 10th birthday of the first game, some surprises are expected.
Faries says that 2026 will see Blizzard “investing in this iconic IP that we have across our entire portfolio, and really thinking about modernizing it, surprising and delighting our fans, being beholden to legacy where it matters, but also really doing some fresh takes that really put us into the next decade or three decades, now that we’re 35 years old, that put us at the industry dominance level that we always aspire to be at.”
BlizzCon’s early bird tickets sold out quickly last month, and with the company “gearing up for what we hope to be the biggest year yet,” in Faries’ words, it’s easy to see why.
