It's hard to believe, but Hearthstone has been around for a long while. It first launched in early 2014 on PC, before coming to mobile devices a year later. It's seen a lot of changes since then, and modes have come and gone, but the game is still going strong, hosting multiple eSports tournaments throughout the year, including at BlizzCon.
While a lot of collectible card games have bowed out in the digital space, Hearthstone forges on, and now we're getting new details straight out of BlizzCon 2026. A new expansion is on the way, as well as a few other twists some players didn't see coming.
During the Opening Ceremony in Anaheim, California, Blizzard notes that this is a pretty big year of announcements, with multiple new updates coming to Hearthstone. For one, a new expansion is coming, set "10s of thousands of years" in the past, when the Old Gods in the Warcraft universe were at the peak of their power.
It's called Reign of the Black Empire, and it's "deeply rooted in World of Warcraft lore." Part of that power fantasy comes through the new keyword: Assemble. You can merge the text boxes of two minions...
