BlizzCon 2026: What's Next For Hearthstone Battlegrounds

Published Sep 12, 2026, 11:43 PM EDT

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If you haven't been following along with BlizzCon this year, Hearthstone is about to enter uncharted territory. Not only is it getting its first class in six years with the Monk, but it's also hosting the Reign of the Black Empire expansion, which takes the narrative back thousands of years to the time of the Old Gods.

As a free update, Hearthstone is also adding a brand-new story hub called "The Journey," which aims to connect people to Hearthstone and keep them in tune with the story more than ever before. Not to mention, Battlegrounds is getting a few surprises of its own.

We talked to John McIntyre, Principal Game Designer, and Mitchell Loewen, Lead Designer of Battlegrounds, about what the future holds for the game beyond the Reign of the Black Empire.

Handling The Old Gods With Care

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The biggest change that's come to Battlegrounds with Reign of the Black Empire is the new Aberration minion type. These minions actually benefit from dying, as they can help summon your Old God to dish out additional effects.

When asked about how the team managed to capture the spirit of the Old Gods, Loewen was happy to kick things off and talk a bit about the general philosophy of Battlegrounds as we head into 2027:

Yeah, I think in general when we're working on Battlegrounds, our main goal is to try and constantly provide players with different experiences. We want to try to have as much variety from game to game as well as from season to season. That there's always something new to explore and experience. Using our most recent season as an example, we had dark gifts as a seasonal mechanic.

We had activate as a new keyword, but we also had trinkets from previous seasons that stuck around, with new trinkets to play with, and I think that was a really good opportunity to give players [different experiences]. And with BlizzCon, we've now announced a minion type that's coming to the game. It's just another way to engage with all those systems in a new context, since you'll be able to play interesting strategies using those Aberrations as well as doing something like a menagerie strategy, where you're playing different types, and it will recontextualize all the cards that are already there in the game.

Pressing further on Aberrations, I wanted to check in on how adding a new minion type was even possible, given the high level of complexity already present in the game:

We haven't done a new minion type in quite a while. The last one was Undead, which would have been March of the Lich King...and then we took a break, largely because we really like having 10 types in the game.

There's a lot of variety in the game, but with Black Empire, it felt like a really nice opportunity to hook into what's happening in the constructed mode. We're all really excited about Old Gods, so we're like, what if we brought them over to Battlegrounds?

We also got the inside scoop on how Aberrations will work, and how the Old Gods will impact each battle. The design concept for the Aberrations seems extremely ambitious, as the goal is for them to work well with a Menagerie setup, which involves using minions across a variety of types, rather than a "mono" build:

So the core keyword that comes with Aberration is its own unique keyword: Deity. So the way that one works is that, at the beginning of every game, a deity is chosen at random for the whole lobby. There are two possible deities at launch. Those being C'Thun and Y'Shaarj, and during combat, after three friendly aberrations die, your Old God will awaken and then be able to swing to try to battle in your favor.

Each Old God has its own play style and its own special effects abilities. So C'thun, for example, when it gets summoned, it will split its stack amongst all the other minions, and that can be a really powerful to power-up your board. It also creates opportunities for interesting synergies with something like Dragons. And then Y'Shaarj will re-summon your first two Abberations that died that combat, and that can be really powerful with Deathrattle synergies.

If you combine that with a Titus Rivendare, you can get extra props and need more summons, but on top of that, you can also combine that with things like Menagerie minions of all types, and you can re-summon interesting minions that way. So there's a lot of cool synergies that you can open up, regardless of which Old God you can play that fashion.

Naga Are Out (For Now), Aberrations Are In

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Since the Old God setting is such a huge deal for Warcraft as a whole (not just Hearthstone), I dug in and found out that the team connected directly with the World of Warcraft overlords, according to McIntyre: "Yeah, we did have some meetings with the World of Warcraft team. So a lot of [the process] is with artists who generate a bunch of ideas."

For those keeping track, Aberrations is an 11th minion type for Hearthstone Battlegrounds, and the team wants to keep that number at 10 for a variety of reasons. As a result, the Naga faction will be swapped out, at least temporarily.

So what happens when the Naga return? They'll potentially sport a new coat of paint, per Loewen: "Yeah, they would likely come back with changes. I am doubtful we would bring them back without any iterations. At a minimum, there would probably be things coming back to Naga, but who knows? Maybe they'll go through a more significant [change]. We'll find out whenever they do come back."

To be clear, this isn't going to be a permanent change, as Naga will come back at some point: "We're thinking this is something more seasonal. We haven't figured out an exact [timeline] yet. That's part of why we want to listen to feedback. If players want to have those big moments when they come back, we can do that. For now, they're kind of going away for a little while, but when they're starting to come back, we'll obviously [give notice]."

So far, the future of Hearthstone is bright. The new class should shake up the entire competitive meta, as there hasn't been that big of a change in quite a while. The Journey should serve as a beacon for new players who don't feel connected enough to the game. And of course, there's always Battlegrounds to play.

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