Blizzard officially reveals a new Diablo game and a StarCraft shooter...coming in 2029 and 2030

Hi there! A rare weekend post from me, as Blizzard Entertainment is kicking off BlizzCon 2026, a celebration of all things from across its universes. The storied studio has been through a lot over the last few years, and there were a few fairly big announcements from the opening ceremony worth paying attention to.

Even if the biggest of the bunch are really, really far out.

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A barrage of announcements, across games and TV

For BlizzCon's opening ceremony on Saturday, Blizzard Entertainment president Johanna Faries took to the stage to announce an animated series for Diablo, in partnership with Netflix.

While she didn't offer many other details, she did give some not-so-cryptic hints that adaptations were also in the works for some of Blizzard's other franchises.

"Diablo is just the beginning. To our Overwatch community, to our Warcraft community...there are great discussions being had," she said.

Next, Blizzard's Dan Hay showed up to introduce the long-rumored StarCraft shooter, taking another stab at translating the company's iconic science-fiction real-time strategy series to combat that's "down in the mud."

Simply titled "StarCraft" for now, a cinematic trailer showed a training montage of Dominion marines, propagandized and full of valor, only for them to be brutally overwhelmed and slaughtered mere moments after making contact with the Zerg swarm.

Whatever exact form this shooter takes, it won't be arriving anytime soon, with an announced release window of 2030.

While Blizzard also showed off a number of updates for other games, including Overwatch reworks and new characters — Sombra is a support now, while a vampire-themed hero named Doctrine is joining the roster — Diablo again returned to take one of the bigger headlines.

Diablo 4 is coming to Nintendo Switch 2 later in the year, with an Amazon class coming first half of 2027, and the next big game coming a couple of years after that.

Diablo 5 is coming in Spring 2029, with a quick teaser trailer showing a world where Sanctuary has already fallen and the Lord of Terror reigns unchallenged.

Despite the new direction for the next far-off StarCraft game, Blizzard took a moment to remember its real-time strategy roots, announcing an entirely-new expansion for Warcraft 3: Reforged. Titled Forsaken Kingdom, this adds a brand-new campaign and is launching today.

World of Warcraft players have a smorgasbord to look forward to, with the next expansion for the online role-playing game, The Last Titan, still on the way. For anyone craving a more classic experience but still wanting new things to do, Blizzard is launching World of Warcraft: Forever in November.

Ultimately though, most importantly, all of this happening against a backdrop of hard work from the employees at Blizzard, who recently fought tooth and nail to ratify a union contract, not just for one particular team but for all the unions across the studio.

This contract, years in the making, provides major protections and guidelines around AI usage, as well as 14 months of recall rights, which allow employees that have been laid off to be pulled into another department's open positions.

There's a lot that's still uncertain regarding Blizzard and the future of Xbox as a whole. But at the moment, these announcements come on the back of a heavily unionized, galvanized studio. That's worth taking a moment to appreciate.