Blizzard Announces New Season 16 of Overwatch 2 Coming April 22

Yesterday, Activision Blizzard announced the new Season 16: Stadium coming to Overwatch 2 on April 22nd. The update will come to all platforms that Overwatch 2 is on such as PC through Steam, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox Series X/S, and the Nintendo Switch. Season 16 will bring a new battle pass, a new game mode, a new damage hero, and also new skins and additions to the past mythic skins.

Through the trailer, Blizzard shows that players can expect to see in this next season that will come out next Tuesday. The trailer first introduces the new game mode called Stadium. Blizzard announced this previously in the developer update last February, but there is new information about the particular game mode.

Stadium will be a best of 7 round based combat game mode where there are currently going to be 17 out of the 42 heroes, but over time more heroes will be added to the game mode every season. Some of the characters players will be able to play as consist of D.va, Moira, Mei, Ana, Ashe, and more. In this game mode, players will be able to choose between playing in first-person or in third-person for the first time in Overwatch history. Players will be able to build their loadout every couple of matches, and earn rewards as they rank up.

Damage hero Freja will also be introduced in season 16. In her kit she has the ability to slow down time to aim her shots accurately as her second primary, and her primary fire allows her to shoot out arrows at a faster pace. She also has the ability to fly for a certain amount of time, and her ultimate ability, Bola Shot, it deals damage when it hits an enemy and pulls other nearby enemies into the fire as well.

Hero bans will also be introduced in season 16 for competitive mode. From the trailer, it looks like players will be able to vote out 3 heroes they would like to be banned from the match, making the most voted character to be unplayable. Along with that, there will be an update to Overwatch Classic with the 2020 patch.

Season 16 introduces new skins coming to the shop and to the battle pass, and players are first introduced to the Dokiwatch skins that consist of D.va, Brigitte, Kiriko, Widowmaker, and Freja. Juno, the leader of Dokiwatch, gets the mythic skin for this season called Heart of Hope with 3 different variants. Other skins that will be in the shop will be for Lifeweaver, Hanzo, Genji, Mauga, Moira, Mercy, Ashe, and Illari. There will be new mythic aspects, adding a new color to every mythic hero skin.

PlayOverwatch’s Twitter account also released a teaser at the end of the trailer for an upcoming collaboration with Gundam Wing. The collaboration will arrive in-game on April 29th, just a week after the release of Season 16: Stadium.