BlizzCon hadn't held an opening ceremony since 2023, and Blizzard walked back into Anaheim on September 12 carrying two years of layoffs and the Xbox reset on its back. So it did the loudest thing it could: it announced the two games people have been asking about for a decade, on the same stage, back to back.
## Diablo 5: spring 2029, and Sanctuary already lost The pitch is a world where "Diablo has won." Sanctuary has fallen, and the game asks what you have to become when the world is already gone. That's the darkest premise the series has run with since the original 1996 game, and it's a deliberate reset after Diablo 4 spent three years chasing Lilith.
Three classes are confirmed. The Demon Hunter and the Monk come back from Diablo 3. The new one is the Plague Knight, a class built around infection and rot: you spread disease across the battlefield, then draw power from what you've infected. Blizzard says the sequel ships with "more classes than ever before," dungeons that are procedurally generated, and a loot system that leans toward Diablo 2 rather than 4. That last line is the one veterans will hold them to.
Release window: spring 2029. Blizzard's president said the point of announcing this early is confidence, and promised "to ship, and ship big, and ship on time." GamesRadar+ has the full ceremony log.
## What that means for Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred is the last expansion. There's no fourth one coming. Diablo 4 rolls into seasonal stories from here, starting with Season of Hell Legacy on September 15 (Deckard Cain returns, all three Prime Evils, 30th-anniversary rewards). The Amazon class, javelin and all, arrives in the first half of 2027. And the Age of Hatred Collection (base game plus both expansions) hits Switch 2 on September 15, so the handheld crowd finally gets the whole thing.
## StarCraft, but not the StarCraft you remember Sixteen years after StarCraft 2, the franchise is coming back as an open-world shooter. No RTS. You're a Dominion grunt holding the line against the returning Zerg swarm, and it's led by Dan Hay, the Far Cry producer Blizzard hired years ago. No gameplay was shown, just a cinematic. Release: 2030. Hay's line on the date: it's proof "we're serious."
That's a four-year runway on a cinematic. Same caution applies as Diablo 5. Announce early, ship on time, and we'll talk.
## The Netflix piece Diablo is getting an animated series at Netflix. No date, no studio named. Blizzard's president said Overwatch and Warcraft adaptations are "great discussions being had." After Arcane and Castlevania, the game-to-animation pipeline is the most reliable hit machine Netflix has, and Diablo's gothic-horror world fits it better than either of Blizzard's other franchises.
## World of Warcraft: Forever The Classic Plus rumor was true. WoW: Forever is a new game that lives beside Classic and Vanilla: level 60 stays the cap forever, a new race (Skybourne), new zones, new raids, over a thousand new quests, and a story set inside year one of the original game. It launches November 4. Beta opens September 17. Warcraft 3 also got its first new campaign in 23 years, Forsaken Kingdom, out the same day as the ceremony.
## The read for this show This is a single-player show first, so the honest ranking: Diablo 5 is the one that matters, and it's three springs away. StarCraft as a shooter is a curiosity until there's gameplay. The Netflix series is the near-term thing most of the audience will actually consume. And if you own a Switch 2, Diablo 4 on Tuesday is the only Blizzard item you can touch this week.
## Sources - GamesRadar+, September 12, 2026 - BlizzCon 2026: Everything announced: https://www.gamesradar.com/news/live/blizzcon-2026-everything-announced/ - GamesRadar+, September 12, 2026 - Diablo 5's first confirmed classes: Demon Hunter, Monk, and the all-new Plague Knight - PC Gamer, September 12, 2026 - Diablo 5 gameplay details from BlizzCon: more classes, procedural dungeons, Diablo 2-style loot - Kotaku, September 13, 2026 - Blizzard explains why it's revealing Diablo 5 and a new StarCraft so early