At BlizzCon 2026, Blizzard officially announced World of Warcraft: Forever — a standalone Classic+ branch with modern graphics. Beta starts in mid-September, launch in early November 2026.

On 12 September 2026, at BlizzCon, Blizzard officially unveiled World of Warcraft: Forever — a standalone Classic+ branch that continues the original game's story on a modern graphics engine. The project is aimed both at players who feel nostalgia for the vanilla era and at those who came to World of Warcraft later.

A separate point of emphasis is its independence: Forever is being developed in parallel with the modern World of Warcraft and Midnight, without pulling resources from those teams.

Right after the on-stage segment, Blizzard opened the project's landing page and invited players to sign up for updates. The presentation was followed by a live Q&A session: developers from modern WoW and WoW Forever answered community questions on air.

Blizzard later released a weekly WoW Weekly roundup dedicated to BlizzCon 2026 — one piece that pulls together Forever, the announcement of Midnight's third season, and the community Q&A. The recorded Q&A video with the developers is posted separately on the Blizzard forums.

What this means for you

If you've long wanted to bring back an Azeroth of the vanilla flavour but aren't ready to put up with the old interface and graphics — Forever is exactly that case: the same continents, dungeons and raids, but on a modern engine. Beta starts just a few days after the announcement, so it's worth signing up for participation in advance, and on 4 November be ready for the servers to open — global launch is scheduled for 23:00 UTC.