Blizzard Prices BlizzCon 2026’s Comeback After a Two-Year Gap

Blizzard Entertainment turned on its Battle.net storefront this week for five separate BlizzCon 2026 bundles, charging up to $29.99 a game for mounts, skins and card packs. The bundles cover World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Diablo IV, Diablo Immortal and Hearthstone, and they disappear from the shop on September 28, two weeks after BlizzCon itself opens in Anaheim on September 12.

It is the first real transaction in a comeback three years in the making. BlizzCon skipped both 2024 and 2025, the longest gap in the show’s 21-year history outside the pandemic, while Microsoft’s gaming division cut thousands of jobs and lost two of Blizzard’s most senior leaders. The digital bundles are the opening bid on whether nostalgia still sells at roughly the price it did eight years ago.

Five Games, Five Price Tags

The per-game bundles break down by franchise, and the price gap between them is small but consistent. World of Warcraft, Overwatch and Diablo IV each cost $29.99. Diablo Immortal and Hearthstone, Blizzard’s two free-to-play-first titles, cost $24.99. A $49.99 Ultimate Collection folds in every item from all five bundles, plus extras not sold on their own.

Players who already bought a BlizzCon 2026 Pass get the Ultimate Collection automatically, with no extra charge added to their ticket.

How to Grab the Two Free Items Before the Deadline

Two rewards need no purchase at all. Blizzard is giving away a Heroes of the Storm Fix It Gear Head Thrall armor and a StarCraft II 15-day co-op experience boost to anyone who visits the shop, ticket or no ticket, bundle or no bundle.

• Open the Battle.net shop on desktop or through the Battle.net launcher and find the BlizzCon 2026 section.
• Claim the free Thrall armor and the StarCraft II co-op boost first, since neither one requires a purchase.
• Compare the individual bundle prices against the $49.99 Ultimate Collection before buying more than one game’s worth of items.
• Check whether a BlizzCon 2026 Pass has already been purchased on the account, since Pass holders get the Ultimate Collection by default.
• Confirm each bundle is applied to the correct game account, since the items only work for the specific title they were made for.

Everything on that list, paid or free, comes off the Battle.net shop on September 28. Blizzard has given no indication that any of it comes back.

BlizzCon’s Longest Break in Two Decades

“BlizzCon is back!” Blizzard wrote in the post confirming the show’s return to Anaheim, calling it “the ultimate celebration of our games and the community that unites us.” The relief in that line makes more sense once the gap it is papering over gets laid out.

1. 2020: Cancelled outright as the pandemic shut down live events.
2. 2021: Replaced by a free, online-only BlizzConline, with no in-person show at all.
3. 2022: Skipped again while Activision Blizzard faced workplace-abuse lawsuits.
4. 2023: Returned in person in Anaheim on November 3 and 4, weeks after Microsoft closed its $69 billion purchase of the company, though the show did not sell out, a first in its history.
5. 2024 and 2025: Skipped both years as Microsoft folded Activision Blizzard, King and ZeniMax into one gaming division.
6. 2026: Returns to Anaheim on September 12 and 13, with the digital bundles going on sale first.

Blizzard president Johanna Faries discussed the comeback in more detail during a panel at SXSW, an appearance moderated by television host Conan O’Brien, according to Variety’s report on the announcement. The event’s official site had already asked fans needing accessibility accommodations to file requests by July 10, a sign the physical show is well into planning even with two months still to go.

Layoffs and Exits Filled the Empty Years

The wait was not quiet. Microsoft closed its $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard in October 2023, then cut 1,900 jobs, about 8% of its 22,000-person gaming workforce, in January 2024. Blizzard president Mike Ybarra and Blizzard co-founder and chief design officer Allen Adham both left the company that same week, according to reporting from NBC News and The Associated Press.

More cuts followed. GameSpot has tallied roughly 650 additional corporate and support roles cut later in 2024, then close to 9,000 jobs across Microsoft’s broader workforce in July 2025, hitting the King mobile studio, ZeniMax and Forza developer Turn 10. One casualty of the cuts, per GameSpot, was an unannounced Blizzard survival game known internally as Project Odyssey, which would have been the studio’s first original property since Overwatch.

The Math Behind the New Bundles

Add up all five bundles at full price and the tab comes to $139.95. The Ultimate Collection costs $49.99, a savings of roughly $90 for anyone who wants more than a game or two, plus the handful of items sold nowhere else.

That top price is barely different from what Blizzard charged for its old all-in-one Virtual Ticket, which opened at $39.95 in 2010 and climbed to $49.99 by 2018, where it held through 2019. One payment back then covered livestream access and in-game goodies for every Blizzard franchise at once. BlizzCon 2023 made the livestream free and renamed the goodies the BlizzCon Collection. For 2026, Blizzard split that collection into five separate storefronts, so a fan who only plays one game now pays $24.99 to $29.99 for a slice of what used to come bundled with everything else.

Will Any of This Return After September?

Blizzard has not said. The company has confirmed only the bundle contents, the prices and the September 28 cutoff, leaving open whether any item returns later, whether more BlizzCon-themed content arrives before the show, and what the event’s full announcement lineup will include.

• We know: the bundle prices, contents and the September 28 shop deadline.
• We know: BlizzCon 2026 runs September 12 and 13 in Anaheim and streams live for free.

• Unconfirmed: whether any bundle item returns to the shop after September 28.
• Unconfirmed: whether Blizzard adds more BlizzCon-themed content before the show.
• Unconfirmed: the event’s panel schedule or announcement lineup.

In each of the years without a BlizzCon, Blizzard used other stages instead. Diablo IV’s first expansion, Vessel of Hatred, got its reveal at Gamescom 2024 rather than at a Blizzard-run show, and a 30th-anniversary livestream carried the Warcraft franchise’s news that same year, according to GameSpot’s reporting at the time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the BlizzCon 2026 livestream free to watch?

Yes. Unlike the old Virtual Ticket years, when watching required a $39.95 to $49.99 purchase, BlizzCon 2026’s broadcast streams free for anyone, worldwide, according to Inven Global’s report on the announcement. Paying only unlocks the in-game cosmetics, not the show itself.

Do I need to buy a bundle to get the two free Battle.net items?

No. The Heroes of the Storm Thrall armor and the StarCraft II co-op boost are available to every player regardless of whether they bought a BlizzCon ticket or a Digital Bundle, per Blizzard’s own listings on the Battle.net shop.

Have past BlizzCon-exclusive skins ever come back?

Not so far. Overwatch’s 2019 Illidan Genji and Tyrande Symmetra skins, tied to that year’s $49.99 Virtual Ticket, have not returned to the shop since, and fan-tracked resale listings have shown some of that year’s items selling for hundreds or even thousands of dollars on secondary markets. That precedent suggests this year’s cosmetics are likely to stay just as exclusive.

Why do Diablo Immortal and Hearthstone cost less than the other three bundles?

Blizzard has not explained the gap, but the pattern lines up with each game’s usual shop pricing. Diablo Immortal and Hearthstone are Blizzard’s two mobile-first, free-to-play titles, and both are priced at $24.99, five dollars under the $29.99 charged for the World of Warcraft, Overwatch and Diablo IV bundles.

Has Blizzard said when BlizzCon 2026 tickets go on sale?

Not yet. Blizzard has confirmed only the dates and venue for BlizzCon 2026, and has pointed fans to the official BlizzCon website for updates on when in-person tickets will go on sale, according to GameSpot’s coverage of the announcement.