The next Hearthstone expansion is Reign of the Black Empire, releasing October 20

As expected from their recent teasers on social media, the new Hearthstone expansion will take us back to cosmos-spanning adventures: Reign of the Black Empire will bring the Old Gods back to Hearthstone — again — but this time, things seem more serious. We’re going back in time, seeing how the Titans were battling the Old Gods during the period when they were at the highest point of their power, the so-called “Black Empire,” effectively ruling over Azeroth. The cinematic can give you a pretty good idea of what that battle looked like — and it’s great to see all of the Old Gods in their complete forms and full might. All our favorite Old Gods are there — Yogg, C’thun, N’Zoth, and friends, taking on those Titanic bad guys.

This expansion comes with an exciting new keyword: Assemble will allow players to combine two cards into one by taking parts of their card text. You could take “Whenever you cast a spell” from one card and “deal 5 damage to a random enemy” from another card, creating a brand-new, custom card that you can use. That sounds insanely fun and insanely broken, but according to the developers, it’s not an absolutely free-for-all: Assemble can pick from “a curated pool of over 250 cards.” So there are some precautions being taken against balance issues that could absolutely break the game.

We don’t have many more details yet, but we do know that Reign of the Black Empire releases in just over a month, on October 20. The theme looks fantastic, and the new keyword sounds very exciting, so this is certainly one to look forward to. We’ll keep watching BlizzCon 2026, and we’ll be back with more details as they arrive!