‘Overwatch 2' Stadium Roadmap: New Heroes, Maps, Unranked, Crossplay And More

Forbes

01-05-2025

The new Overwatch 2 mode, Stadium, is a clear hit with players. In the first week that Stadium was live, 2.3 million matches were played across 7.8 million hours. Blizzard says that's over twice as much playtime as the previous most successful game mode launch week, when OW Classic hit Overwatch 2.
Stadium is the most-played of the three main modes in the game right now, outpacing Competitive and Quick Play. In fact, Stadium accounted for about half of all Overwatch 2 playtime in its first week.
That's an impressive start, but you might be wondering about what's next. Well, we already knew that new hero Freja will be available in Stadium when the Overwatch 2 midseason patch goes live in a few weeks. There might be balance updates and other Stadium changes then as well, if not before then.
Now, Blizzard has revealed the Stadium roadmap for the next couple of seasons. Here's a quick overview of what's coming in Season 17 (starting in June), Season 18 (August) and beyond:
The Overwatch 2 Stadium mode roadmap for 2025
Blizzard Entertainment
There are a couple of other things Blizzard didn't mention in this list that it has revealed elsewhere. For one thing, an unranked option is in the works, and it's coming in Season 17, per the infographic Blizzard sent over.
'Since Stadium has a competitive system, it follows the rules of our core competitive mode, which doesn't allow PC and Console players to group. Since this is the only way to play the mode, we agree, and we'd like to do something about it,' game director Aaron Keller wrote in the latest director's take blog post. 'We're currently investigating what it would take to make an unranked version of the mode. This would allow groups of friends to play together and would give us the ability to make other changes as well, possibly introducing a best-of-5 format to the mode.'
In a recent AMA on Reddit, developers from Team 4 said the plan is to bring new heroes that are added to the game to Stadium in their respective midseason patch. That means we should see the new Support coming in Season 18 codenamed Aqua, arriving in Stadium around September.
Otherwise, there's a lot to get excited about here. Custom games and unranked option will let players try out builds away from the pressure cooker of the ranked system without having to jump into the practice arena. The new hero additions are looking spicy too. Given how dominant she is in the game overall, Sojourn could be absolutely ridiculous in Stadium.
And then there's that new Payload Race mode. I don't know anything else about it just yet (and Blizzard is keeping quiet about that one for now) but those two words are sparking a lot of ideas in my brain about what the mode might entail.
As for consumables, this seems like another idea Blizzard has rescued from the embers of the canceled PVP mode to bring it back for Stadium. Very intrigued about that and the Stadium trials. I'm glad to see more example builds are on the way as well. I've found those very useful so far.
Meanwhile, Blizzard shared more Stadium launch-week stats with me. During the mode's first seven days, players earned 900 billion Stadium Cash – that's a lot of bounties – and picked 206 million Items to power up their heroes.
The hero with the highest win rate in the first week was Lucio. As it happens, the support was also the least-picked hero in the first seven days Stadium was live. Go figure. Or go get good at wall riding.
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