Despite Initial Plans for Annual Expansions, Diablo 4 Won't Get its Second Until 2026

Rod Fergusson, Diablo general manager, announced at DICE that Diablo 4’s next expansion won’t be coming until sometime next year. This breaks with previous announcements that Diablo 4 would see annual expansions.

What we will be getting soon is a 2025 roadmap.  Fergusson says that we'll get that roadmap sometime this year before Season 8. The team is preparing to give us info about upcoming seasons, updates, and a timeline as to when we can reasonably expect their release. “Now, our second expansion won't be on that roadmap, because our second expansion is coming in 2026, but at least players will have the road ahead,” he said in his comments in Las Vegas. 

Vessel of Hatred came out last year, and in the talk (via IGN), he said that that first expansion came out six months later than they had originally intended. The plan was to get out the first expansion a year after launch and to follow with subsequent annual releases, with the usual round of balance patches and feature updates and fixes to follow throughout with the seasons. 

Seems that the time it took to create the first expansion, as well as work that the team had to put in to fix some things, react to feedback, and  even roll back some very poorly received changes that led to some shifts in their update announcement policies may be factors. It looks like the team is focused on the base game and seasons right now, while taking its time to create the next Diablo 4 expansion instead of trying to push to make that annual goal. 

Now, we wait for that roadmap to see what else is on the horizon.