D&D 5E (2024) So What Is Winter's Mysterious D&D "Season of Champions"?

As reported today, WotC has announced three 'seasons' for 2026's Dungeons & Dragons releases. These are the seasons of Horror, Magic, and Champions, respectively.

Summer's Season of Horror is focused on a Ravenloft sourcebook and accessories. Autumn's Season of Magic is a sourcebook called Arcana Unleashed, and an accompanying adventure.

And in Winter 2026 there is a mysterious "Season of Champions"--but we don't yet know what that is.

The two most popular guesses are the long-predicted Dark Sun content, or a martial-themed sourcebook to follow Arcana Unleashed.

What's your guess for Season of Champions, running from October 2026 through December?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

„Champions“ does not sound much like Dark Sun at all… and isn‘t that Lord Soth right there on right of the Calendar?

Yeah, that's him, for sure. (I just spent way too much time comparing the 5E version of his helmet.)

Returning to Dragonlance at this point would be a surprise, to put it mildly, since there haven't been any UAs hinting at it and the last Dragonlance book they released didn't exactly set the world on fire. I guess they could do a player-facing Krynn book, but that doesn't feel like a big splash that will drive holiday sales.

Maybe he's in the Ravenloft book and he and Cthulhu will be held up as examples of ways to use the rules in the book outside of Ravenloft. Him standing next to "more to come" is certainly suggestive, though.

I feel like a Champions of the Borderlands boxed set makes more sense as a holiday season product, or a Dark Sun: Champions of the Arena adventure or something.

Dragonlance, though, in this economy? Hard to get my head around.

 

[Parmandur]

„Champions“ does not sound much like Dark Sun at all… and isn‘t that Lord Soth right there on right of the Calendar?

I mean...the DL modules have wen sitting right there waiting for a refresh for a decade.

 

[doctorhook]

I'm still going to guess Dark Sun with a hint of hopepunk are the champions.

This is heresy

 

[Zaukrie]

Champions of Krynn, with a TV series in 27*

* I don't actually believe this, but one could hope.

 

[Lalato]

Can't believe they sent this out with the obvious typo. Season of Champignons

We're getting a playable Myconid species... I can taste it!

 

[TravDoc42]

Can't believe they sent this out with the obvious typo. Season of Champignons

We're getting a playable Myconid species... I can taste it!

I swear, I saw the title of this thread and went to make a mushroom joke, but you beat me to it by FOUR MINUTES. I think the gods of luck are laughing at me.

(Your joke is amazing though! I would love a myconid supplement!)

 

[Remathilis]

This is heresy

 

[JDazzle]

I wonder if WotC at this point would even do another full Dark Sun book? Yes it's rumoured, but rumours also can be wrong. What if it's a collection of classes, variants that could be used in other settings, including Dark Sun. At this point, i wouldn't be mad about it. And would just use the old stuff to build a campaign using 5.5e rules.

I think that's the minimum of what we are expecting (hoping for?) because we can always use updated classes and stat blocks along with the original modules available on DM's Guild

But I keep hoping that they end up doing a full remaster of the main Dark Sun campaign like what they did with Curse of Strahd.

I also know that this is extraordinarily unlikely... But it's okay to hope for things

 

[JDazzle]

I mean...the DL modules have wen sitting right there waiting for a refresh for a decade.

AND WotC made a huge deal about reconciling with Hickman & Weis...

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

AND WotC made a huge deal about reconciling with Hickman & Weis...

"Huge deal" feels like an overstatement, at least from the WotC side. But yes, it does seem to portend more collaborations of some sort.