When does Diablo 3 Season 36 end and Season 37 start? It’s Kanai’s Cube-o-Rama again, beginning December 5, 2025!

Diablo 3 Season 36 holds the distinction of being the first to have a theme return for a season since the title went into maintenance mode. Yes, in Season 36, the Lords of Hell ride again, as players find superpowered gems for helm and weapons with an array of (sometimes questionable) power-ups. But all beloved themes must move on, which means it’s time for the age-old question of all seasonal players: when does this season end? Thanks to a timely blog post from Blizzard, we know Season 37: The Forbidden Archives will start Friday, December 5, 2025, ending Season 36: The Lords of Hell on Sunday, November 30, 2025.

How did we get there? The Diablo 3 team announced the title would enter maintenance mode with Season 30, where it and subsequent seasons would follow a standard quarterly schedule, accompanied by a randomly selected returning theme. And they started out consistently — Seasons 30 and 31 both ran for 12 weeks and 2 days, and Season 32 extended a bit, adding two weeks to the runtime to account for both a PTR period and the launch of Diablo 4’s first expansion, Vessel of Hatred.

However, the 2025 seasonal schedule hit some speed bumps along the way. Season 33 accidentally ended two weeks early. That was resolved (with a few hiccups to the player experience), but then Blizzard shifted the original start date of Season 34 back a week, announcing the change just two days before it was scheduled to launch. Admittedly, it was a well-timed shift, as the original start date hit the same week as Diablo 4’s new season. It also provided some additional cleanup time for lingering account issues after the early stop.

But then Season 34 ran for four months, resulting in community confusion. Season 35 appears to have put things back on track, running for exactly 13 weeks and 2 days (roughly a quarter of the year). Season 36 almost continues this trend of a normalized schedule, falling just shy at 11 weeks and 2 days.

Season 36 was also the first theme to hit its third cycle — the Lords of Hell theme has run in Seasons 25, 30, and now 36. The trend seems to be continuing with Season 37’s Forbidden Archives. Does this mean the pool of repeatable themes only has six options: Lords of Hell (Soul Shard gems), Forbidden Archives (Kanai’s Cube-o-Rama), Ethereal Memory (Ethereal weapons), Shades of the Nephalem (shadow clones/fourth cube slot), Light’s Calling (Angelic Crucibles), and the Eternal Conflict (Pandemonium buffs)? That’s relatively small for a recurring cycle.

Yes, I recognize some past themes have already been integrated into the base game, namely Season 23’s Follower system revamp, Season 26’s Echoing Nightmares, Season 28’s Altar of Rites, and Season 29’s Visions of Enmity. But we haven’t seen Season 21’s Trial of the Tempests, 18’s Season of the Triune, 17’s Season of Nightmares, 16’s Season of Grandeur, 15’s Boon of the Horadrim, or 14’s Season of Greed. Arguably, these are not “strong” themes as far as encouraging player engagement, but they have shown in the past that they can combine these — for example, activating extra goblins or double Horadric caches during other seasons. Why not do so for future seasons as well, increasing the possible combinations available in your pool?

For now, it’s time to wrap up Season 36 this weekend with the turkey if you’re in the United States. Season 36 will end on November 30, and Season 37 will start on December 7. See you in Sanctuary!