At the beginning of 2024, Johanna Faries succeeded Mike Ybarra as President of Blizzard. She has now spoken about the company’s future and the focus of its upcoming games.
What is Blizzard planning for 2026 and beyond? Under Johanna Faries’ leadership, Blizzard aims to focus on its existing franchises to tap into their untapped potential.
We have iconic brands, and in many ways, they still have a lot of room to grow. So let’s focus on the cards we hold. That doesn’t mean we won’t explore new places and territories, but right now we are concentrating on all the iconic potential that we still have in the tank at Blizzard.
Johanna Faries in an interview with Bloomberg
What brands are they? Since the studio’s founding as Silicon & Synapse in 1991, many different games have been released, but Blizzard has mainly represented three universes since the mid to late 1990s:
- Warcraft
- StarCraft
- Diablo
With Overwatch, Blizzard introduced the first new Blizzard brand in 18 years in 2016. Other releases like Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone also clearly revolve around Blizzard’s core IPs.
WoW Midnight will likely be a highlight for many fans in 2026:
Movies about Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo?
What is Blizzard specifically planning? Johanna Faries reveals a few more details in the interview. The goal is to have at least one or two really big releases in each calendar year. Additionally, they want to find a good balance between new games and fresh content for their various live services.
The President emphasizes that currently, work is being done on every brand in the Blizzard portfolio (including StarCraft, for which the last major release was already 10 years ago with StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void) and that in the coming 5 years, they also want to implement things related to these universes that are not about games.
The vision I share is that we want to be the best gaming and entertainment company in the world, not just the best gaming company. I would put Blizzard’s brands up against any entertainment company. That’s a great starting position, as many different entertainment companies are very interested in how linear media could look for our portfolio. We have the right people for this. We have many former Hollywood folks at Blizzard, so they know exactly how to navigate there.
Johanna Faries in an interview with Bloomberg
Johanna Faries also emphasizes that Blizzard is considered a jewel within Team Xbox and that Blizzard management has the freedom and main responsibility for upcoming projects as long as they prove to Microsoft that everything is running smoothly within the company.
What games, movies, or series would you like to see from Blizzard? By the way, there was already a sign of life from the StarCraft universe in April 2025, but the report at the time likely did not align with the wishes of many Western fans: A new game for StarCraft comes from one of the biggest MMORPG developers, but not from Blizzard
