D&D 5E (2024) Predict WotC's 2026 D&D releases

[darjr]

There is a new playtest today too.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Don't you own a store? Don't you need books to sell before May?

I don't rely on Dungeons & Dragons as my source for Q1 sales. We don't normally have D&D books to sell before May. Keep in mind that the MM24, which came out in February '25, was supposed to be out in '24 Q4. And Q3 and Q4 D&D books almost always sell better than Q2 ones. There's a reason why WotC usually end-loads the year (they just should avoid doing it to the extent that they did in '25. But that was not on purpose.

 

[darjr]

Beadle and Grimms announced a new Platinum box is going up for preorder in June. They said the title will be revealed when WotC announced the new book, so we know it isn’t for an existing product.

They only do those for adventures (at least so far) so I guess at least one 2026 product is a full adventure book.

Do you have a link? Thanks!

 

[Uta-napishti]

I agree we will see Dark Sun - likely the most player options and new subsystems will be included here.. further developing Ravenloft makes sense as a set of small adventures. Would hope for some big campaign adventure from WoTC , but it kinda would feel too scattered if none of the these three books relate to each other. So maybe the big adventure is a Ravenloft theme? Or maybe the big Adventure is Forgotten Realms based (maybe Dalelands, Moonsea, Thay?) and the Ravenloft book is slimmer like Forge of the Artificer. I think a fat book of player options a-la-Xanathar's comes very late this year for Xmas or next year. More urgent is more playable content.

 

[mamba]

Why? Shorn of their nostalgia, most of them simply aren’t very good. How would you turn White Plume Mountain into anything other than a silly fun house?

I would not have included White Plume in the first place. Whichever ones I would include, I would have updated similar to what they did with the Infinite Staircase however, rather than taking something that is a pretty poor adventure to begin with and not changing anything about it, just updating some stat blocks and some maps.

Nostalgia should not be the only reason to take a look at an adventure, even if it might be a consideration when it comes to which adventures get selected.

 

[Reynard]

I agree we will see Dark Sun - likely the most player options and new subsystems will be included here.. further developing Ravenloft makes sense as a set of small adventures. Would hope for some big campaign adventure from WoTC , but it kinda would feel too scattered if none of the these three books relate to each other. So maybe the big adventure is a Ravenloft theme? Or maybe the big Adventure is Forgotten Realms based (maybe Dalelands, Moonsea, Thay?) and the Ravenloft book is slimmer like Forge of the Artificer. I think a fat book of player options a-la-Xanathar's comes very late this year for Xmas or next year. More urgent is more playable content.

Despite Ravenloft and Eberron existing as big fat hardcovers for 5E for YEARs, they have not put out campaign length adventures for either (No, Strahd does not count as it predates VRG by a decade almost). I don't see any reason to believe they will change that. Nor is there any reason to believe DS will get such an adventure, unless they pull a SJ/PS/DL with it (which seems like a precarious position to take).

 

[Uta-napishti]

Re: Big Campaign. I kind of think they kind of need to make up some new villain if they do a part of the Realms we have recently seen. The exception would be if they do Thay, in which case they could use Szass Tam, for the movie tie in. Most of the old villains feel underpowered and they had to use a God last time (Auril) they did something in the western Realms. Pretty much all the villains other than Tam are played out long ago, so it would be good to either avoid the FR or invent a proper new threat. Maybe something in Shou if WoTC is finally brave enough to tackle non-European fantasy in a longer form.

In the Perkins/Crawford era they really loved recycling old Villains, so if they were more into Greyhawk as a setting I could see Iuz or someone making an appearance, but I think the new crew are less into looking backward. If the Vecna book didn't already try multiverse-spanning adventure, I would say they might try that.
Personally, I wouldn't hate an Eberron adventure, but that was done in the Adventuerer's League with Oracle of War.

Or maybe they really try to fuse the adventure with a new setting and do a Darksun hardcover with campaign. This was the 5E Dragonlance approach, which I felt was moderately successfull resucitating an old setting (less so), while putting a fairly good longer adventure out (more so).

 

[Reynard]

Wait, isn't Myth Drannor in the area of the Realms they just opened up? They could go for another megadungeon.

 

[Uta-napishti]

Myth Drannor is a possibility. Just please please don't make the tired old Elminster & friends vs the Zhentarim / Manshoon / Church of Bane themes surface again though.... Greenwood gave us a great setting, but we don't have to re-use his protagonists and antagonists over and over forever amen. Drow had a whole hardcover in Out of the Abyss already as well... so they don't need center stage either.

 

[GarrettKP]

They have talked about a Red Wizards adventure. If they wanted one that could accompany the Arcane subclasses they have been playtesting, the Thay adventure makes sense.