Overwatch 2’s season-based model is continuing with the upcoming Season 3, which is set to drop very soon. Like previous seasons, Season 3 will bring fans a variety of new cosmetic rewards, gameplay offerings, balance changes, and more over the course of its nine-week runtime.
We don’t know about everything that Season 3 has in store for players yet, but there’s quite a lot that we are aware of ahead of its launch. Here’s a comprehensive overview of everything we know so far, including the season’s release date, Battle Pass details, some of its confirmed changes and patch notes, and more.
Overwatch 2 Season 3: Release date and launch time
Blizzard has recently confirmed that Overwatch 2 Season 3 is scheduled to go live on February 7, 2023. When this happens, Season 2’s ongoing Year of the Rabbit event will end, and players will no longer be able to earn rewards from the Season 2 Battle Pass as the game transitions to a new one.
In terms of when Season 3 is launching specifically, our best guess is 12:00 p.m. PT / 3:00 p.m. ET. Historically, this has been the time of day at which Overwatch 2 patches are released, and it’s also when the game’s weekly resets occur.
Since Overwatch 2 updates go live at the same time globally, Season 3 is expected to begin earlier or later in some regions due to time zone differences. In the table below, we’ve listed when the patch will likely release in each major time zone. Notably, some eastern regions won’t be able to download the update until the morning of February 8.
| Time zone | Expected release time |
|---|---|
| Pacific Time (PT) | Feb. 7, 12:00 p.m. |
| Mountain Time (MT) | Feb. 7, 1:00 p.m. |
| Central Time (CT) | Feb. 7, 2:00 p.m. |
| Eastern Time (ET) | Feb. 7, 3:00 p.m. |
| Brasilia Time (BRT) | Feb. 7, 4:00 p.m. |
| Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) | Feb. 7, 7:00 p.m. |
| British Summer Time (BST) | Feb. 7, 8:00 p.m. |
| Central European Summer Time (CEST) | Feb. 7, 9:00 p.m. |
| Moscow Time (MSK) | Feb. 7, 10:00 p.m. |
| Gulf Standard Time (GST) | Feb. 7, 11:00 p.m. |
| Indian Standard Time (IST) | Feb. 8, 12:30 a.m. |
| Singapore Standard Time (SNST) | Feb. 8, 3:00 a.m. |
| China Standard Time (CST) | Feb. 8, 3:00 a.m. |
| Japan Standard Time (JST) | Feb. 8, 4:00 a.m. |
| Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST) | Feb. 8, 5:00 a.m. |
| New Zealand Standard Time (NZST) | Feb. 8, 8:00 a.m. |
Overwatch 2 Season 3: Roadmap and events
Previous Overwatch 2 seasons have included both new and returning events, such as Season 1’s Junkenstein’s Revenge: Wrath of the Bride and Season 2’s Winter Wonderland, Battle for Olympus, and Year of the Rabbit celebration of the Lunar New Year. Season 3 doesn’t have an official roadmap for events like these, but it’s very possible that we’ll see Overwatch Archives — a PvE-focused event with three playable missions and several event skins — make a return towards the end of its nine-week runtime in late March or early April.
Overwatch Archives’ three levels (Overwatch Uprising, Overwatch Retribution, and Overwatch Storm Rising) directly tie into the series’ lore and story, giving fans a chance to experience battles with the Null Sector and Talon terrorist organizations that occurred in the past. Players have the option to play these missions with the four chosen characters that are part of their official story, but can also opt for an “All Heroes” playlist that lets them use any hero in the game as well. Fans can also
It’s worth noting that since Overwatch 2’s official PvE campaign content is slated to arrive in 2023, Blizzard may reveal a small portion of it and make it playable during Overwatch Archives (if it does return). Alternatively, we might get a new Archives-exclusive level that uses Overwatch 2’s PvE upgrades system, allowing fans to try out some of the enhanced hero abilities they’ll be able to use in the upcoming campaign.
Overwatch 2 Season 3: Battle Pass skins, rewards, and price
Overwatch 2 Season 3 will offer players a brand new 80-tier Battle Pass, complete with several different cosmetic items like skins, emotes, victory poses, voice lines, and a brand new customizable Mythic skin. Like previous seasons, these rewards will be split between Free and Premium tracks, with the Premium Battle Pass costing 1,000 Overwatch Coins, or $10.
New to the Season 3 Battle Pass are unlockable Overwatch Credits, which act as a currency that newer players can use to unlock legacy Overwatch cosmetics. Blizzard has said that 1,500 of these credits will be earnable from each Battle Pass for free-to-play users, while 500 of them will be exclusive to Premium Battle Pass owners. Each legacy Legendary skin will cost 1,500 Overwatch Credits, though less expensive items like voice lines and victory poses can be bought with them as well.
New Mythic skin: Amaterasu Kiriko
🚨 Meet Amaterasu Kiriko 🚨An all-new Mythic skin arrives in Season 3, beginning Feb 7. pic.twitter.com/FEopEc0FDmFebruary 1, 2023
The Season 3 Battle Pass’ final Tier 80 reward will be Amaterasu Kiriko, a Mythic skin based on the Japanese sun goddess of the same name. The default variant of the skin features plenty of gold, yellow, white, and dark brown colors, and also gives Kiriko a snazzy crown and traditional Japanese makeup.
Mythic skins are special in that their colors and styles can be mixed and matched, allowing fans to personalize them extensively. With Amaterasu Kiriko, players can opt for blue, purple, and bronze or red, white, and lavender color schemes if they don’t like the default colors, and can also change Kiriko’s hair, makeup, and robes.
Overwatch 2 Season 3: Will it have a new hero?
Ahead of Season 3’s arrival, many fans are wondering if it will bring a new hero to the game, much like Season 1’s Kiriko and Season 2’s Ramattra. Unfortunately, Season 3 won’t have add a new character to play. The reason why this is the case is because Blizzard only plans to add heroes every other season, meaning that since Ramattra released in Season 2, a new playable character isn’t expected to arrive until Season 4.
The developers have confirmed that the back-to-back release of Kiriko and Ramattra was a unique case, and shouldn’t be considered the norm. With that said, these “off-seasons” will still feature other types of gameplay content, as Blizzard still wants to ensure that fans have a steady stream of new things to enjoy. Season 3, for example, will release alongside a new map, which we’ll go over in the section below.
Overwatch 2 Season 3: New map Antarctic Peninsula
The new Antarctic Peninsula Control (King of the Hill) map will debut when Season 3 goes live, bringing the fight to one of the most remote and dangerous locations on Earth. Set in the frozen ruins of an Overwatch research facility and the wreck of the organization’s icebreaker ship that failed to rescue Mei and her colleagues, it’s one of the most organic and distinctive maps ever created for the game.
Like other Control maps, the level is split into three different stages: Icebreaker, a tighter close-quarters arena set on and around the Overwatch icebreaker vessel; Sublevel, a spacious underground area with lots of verticality and high ground; and the Labs, which seems like a “jack of all trades” point where most heroes can be highly effective if played well. The Labs stage also has a platform located directly above the objective, which is a first for a Control map.
Antarctic Peninsula will have extensive connections to Overwatch’s lore, including Mei’s origin story and “something even more exciting about the story to come.” It also contains several humorous easter eggs and interactive elements, including unique hero voice lines, snow that you can “draw” snow angels in, fishing holes you can shoot to make fish flop out, and penguins. For more on the map, check out our full deep dive, which includes several quotes from the developers that worked on the level.
Overwatch 2 Season 3: Patch notes and changes
On top of the addition of earnable Overwatch Credits to seasonal Battle Passes, Season 3 is also bringing several other adjustments to the game. These include Overwatch 2 hero changes, new social features, tweaks to Overwatch 2’s ranked competitive play systems, and more.
While we don’t have the full Season 3 patch notes yet — we won’t until the update actually goes live and Blizzard posts them on the official Overwatch website — we’ve created a bullet point list of all the changes coming that Blizzard has communicated about. This will give you an accurate idea of what to expect from Season 3. Once the season arrives, we’ll update this article with the official patch notes.
General
- The Season 3 Battle Pass and Amaterasu Kiriko Mythic skin will be added.
- All players can earn 1,500 Overwatch Credits from this Battle Pass, as well as future ones.
- Premium owners can earn an additional 500 Overwatch Credits.
- The new Control map Antarctic Peninsula will be added.
- Custom game moderation tools will be added that automatically remove custom games with inappropriate content, while also issuing restrictions or account actions against the creators of such content.
- Blizzard will begin taking action against players that repeatedly group up with cheaters.
- Streamer Protection will be added, which allows players to combat the practice of “stream sniping” by hiding their BattleTag and the BattleTags of other players in their games. This stops stream snipers from being able to tell if they’re in the same lobby as a streamer.
- Players can also hide their queue time or delay it for a random time before the matchmaker begins searching for a match.
Balance changes
GENERAL
- Ultimate charge refund when swapping heroes is being reduced from 30% to 25%.
RAMATTRA
- Annihilation
- Will tick down slower if affecting enemies, rather than lasting permanently
- A length cap of 20 seconds is being given to the Ultimate
Competitive play
- Number of wins and losses between competitive updates is being reduced from 7 and 20 to 5 and 15, respectively.
- A change to the UI will make progress towards your next update visible.
- Changes to the matchmaker will try to make it put players against opponents of the same skill level within their chosen role. For example, a team with Platinum damage heroes, Gold supports, and Diamond tanks will likely be paired up against a similar-looking team.
Overwatch 2 Season 3: Trailer
Blizzard has announced that on February 6, a Season 3 trailer will be released that gives fans a closer look at everything coming in the new season. When it’s uploaded, we’ll embed the video in this section.
Overwatch 2 is available now on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, PS5, PS4, and Nintendo Switch. It’s arguably one of the best Xbox shooters available, and since it’s free-to-play, it doesn’t cost anything to check it out. Alternatively, there’s the Overwatch 2: Watchpoint Pack that provides access to a Premium Battle Pass, in-game currency, and more.
