Diablo 5 Director Confirms Game is Already in Full Production

While tons of new updates are coming to Diablo, including a new Netflix series, Diablo 4 Season 15, a Switch 2 port, and more, the biggest reveal for the franchise at BlizzCon 2026 was the announcement of Diablo V, coming in 2029.

IGN sat down exclusively with the team behind the upcoming game, including Game Director Joe Shely, Narrative Director Jennifer Helper, and Production Director Tiffany Wat, who gave us tons of new details about Diablo 5, including how it’s already past early development.

IGN: I know probably nobody has missed the Diablo 5 announcement, but can you guys just kind of give sort of a top-level view of what the game will be?

Joe Shely: Diablo 5 is a world where Sanctuary has fallen and Diablo has won. That means that the world is in an apocalypse. The fate that players have been trying to prevent for many years throughout other Diablo games has happened. Other heroes rose up, tried to stop Diablo, and failed. Diablo sits on the throne of Westmarch and has conquered all of the Western continent.

The Reason Diablo 5 is Set 100 Years After Diablo 4

IGN: Diablo 4 still has some life in it. What are you planning to achieve in Diablo 5 that you don’t think that as a whole would’ve been able to be achievable in Diablo 4?

Shely: Diablo 4 has bright support. It’s fully supported by the team. We were just announcing earlier today, coming to Diablo 4, the Amazon, the Season of Hell’s legacy, Diablo 4 is coming to Switch 2, and there will continue to be ongoing support for Diablo 4. There’s many reasons for players to keep playing. And of course, we’ve been in development for some time on Diablo 5. We’re in full production and it’s been really an exciting time for us to be able to get to share it with players.

Jennifer Helper: We’re bringing Diablo back and Diablo should never be an “and another thing” in a Diablo game. We need a full campaign and full story based around Diablo. [With Diablo 5], we’ve jumped a hundred years ahead to tell that story so that Diablo 4 has lots of space to continue their story and their development while we’re doing Diablo 5.

Diablo 5 Will Have “More Classes Than You’ve Ever Seen”

Tiffany Wat: [Diablo 5] is an opportunity for us to really lean into some of the incredible innovations, both on the technology, but also on the gameplay and system side. We are bringing more classes than you’ve ever seen in a Diablo game. We talked about bringing back the procedural world, something that was really popular in prior Diablo games, and we leaned into it in Diablo 4 with our dungeon system. In Diablo 5, we really felt that this is such a really fun and integral way to be playing Diablo, and we wanted to bring it back to both the overworld and the dungeon systems.

Joe talks to his team a lot about the importance of constant discovery and not knowing what’s around the corner. That adds an element of danger to the world of Sanctuary and that really ties well with the story that Jennifer and her team are trying to tell. Being able to tie all of that together and really reach for the gameplay ambitions that Joe and his team have, it made a lot of sense for us to just embark on a sequel, and we’ve been doing it for a little bit of time now.

Diablo 5 Will Be Less Open World Because Diablo Has Destroyed Everything

IGN: It seems like you guys are going for more of that traditional overworld that people travel to in different spaces. So we’re not going to have that open world vibe like we did in Diablo 4.

Wat: There are no more towns because Diablo and his Dread Commanders have completely destroyed Sanctuary. And so that caravan that you are gathering, these members that you have met, survivors of Sanctuary that are coming along with you to try and just survive, figure out what’s going on with Diablo, you’re moving from region to region and that gives us a chance to really show what Sanctuary looks like when it’s under the Lord of Terror and see the different ways that the Dread Commanders have twisted the world. Joe and I worked together on monsters for over a decade now on Diablo, and man, the monsters team is cooking. So being able to see the twisted, disgusting, horrifying demons that show up at different times in different worlds that you’re loading into is just really, really cool.

IGN: When Diablo 5 launches, support seems like it’ll continue for Diablo 4 and other games. Do you foresee any challenges with not just player retention, but overall content creation when you have basically five Diablo games in rotation for people to come back to season after season?

Wat: We have dedicated teams for each of those games because those games are important to us and they’re really important for our community. I think it really gives us a really great opportunity to be able to collaborate together, to talk with one another. Even though we might be distinct teams, we still work together quite closely because ultimately we are making games for the Diablo community. I think it’s the best time to be a Diablo fan.

How Diablo 2 Inspired Diablo 5

IGN: The ARPG market is getting larger. How does Diablo evolve in a market when the target audience is split across multiple titles? Do you look to these games to see what types of new things they’re making to inject into your games?

Shely: Of course. ARPGs are ultimately systems games underneath everything. And we play everything that relates to Diablo or could give us an idea of what players are enjoying. But in particular, the way that we approach it is by focusing on the things that are really core to Diablo and Diablo really excels at. Things like evolving our combat model, things like making a game that’s approachable and has an incredible campaign. We want this to be our best campaign ever.

Some of the crunchiness of Diablo 2 that really speaks to many of the core ARPG players has inspired Diablo 5 with things like stat requirements returning on items, item tiers, which is very much inspired by Diablo 2, and even things like the return of the belt slot or multi-slot items in your inventory.

The Return of the Belt Slot

IGN: Can you talk a little bit actually about the return of the belt slot and about the itemization in Diablo 5 versus say Diablo 4 and how you guys plan to approach that?

Shely: I mean, the simple answer is that the belt slot is generally a more exciting slot than the pants slot. The belt slot is just a reflection of the way that we look at the suite of items that the player can equip. And we always want to balance that so that you have the right amount of different pieces of your gear that you’re chasing both between the weapons and the armor. So in terms of evolving the visual style, one of the things that the belt slot lets us do is make gear sets that are more cohesive between the chest armor and the pants.