Blizzard announced Hearthstone: Reign of the Black Empire at BlizzCon 2026, the game’s next expansion, and dated it on stage for October 20. Nathan Lyons-Smith ran the segment as a pack opening, each piece of news arriving as a card. The first was Brenden Sewell, walking out to a card with his own face on it, typed Human, rarity golden common. The next was the expansion, rated Epic. “Well, it’s a pretty epic expansion,” Lyons-Smith said, and the trailer rolled.
The trailer shows an ochre desert city of pyramids and obelisks under a tentacled creature with one large purple eye and a cluster of smaller ones, an armored figure with glowing eyes swinging a weapon that throws lightning, a horned giant wreathed in green light, and a teal, spiked mass standing in rain beneath a glowing crown-shaped sigil, then the title card.
“For the first time in Hearthstone, we’re going tens of thousands of years into Azeroth’s past, into the battle between the Old Gods and the Titans during the Black Empire, when the Old Gods were at the peak of their power,” the presenters said. “Corruption! Madness! Tentacles! The classics!”
Assemble, the new keyword
“With Assemble, we can now merge two Hearthstone cards together to create a powerful new card.” The slide showed a “Choose One Replacement” screen: Marshland Thresher, a 3 mana 3/3 Beast printed “After you cast a spell, gain Divine Shield.”, in the centre, flanked by two replacement halves, “After you use your Hero Power, deal 5 damage to a random enemy.” and “Battlecry: Draw a 1, 2, and 3-Cost spell.”
The stage example merged Marshland Thresher with Dragonbane, and the result, shown full screen, read “After you cast a spell, deal 5 damage to a random enemy.” “Nothing bad could possibly happen with that,” the presenter said. Assemble “pulls from a curated pool of over 250 cards,” and the team expects “some pretty busted combos.” It was the only expansion card shown.
The rest of the pack
A Battlegrounds card reading “Bob believes in you” (8/8) introduced Aberrations, a new Old Gods minion type covered in its own post. Then came a card titled Journal, 2 mana, 5/1, “Now with 3700% more lore.” The overhauled journal puts each expansion’s story into the game and ties quests, achievements, and events to it. “The updated journal launches alongside the Black Empire, and over the course of the expansion it will grow alongside the story,” the team said.
New events come with it, “from deals on a mysterious black market to epic boss fights.” Tavern Brawls gain a 2v2 mode, and the segment’s last card was the Monk class for March 2027; both have their own posts. More comes in the What’s Next panel later today.
What is still unknown
Reign of the Black Empire launches October 20, 2026. The stage did not cover pre-orders, pricing, set size, or platforms, and did not mention the previously announced Cataclysm expansion, so how the two relate is unknown.