Stadium is now Overwatch 2’s most-played mode, roadmap details new additions and improvements for 2025 and beyond

It’s official, Stadium mode in Overwatch 2 has been a big hit with players, and Blizzard Entertainment has numbers to back it up.

After launching just over a week ago on April 22, Stadium has become the most-played mode in all of OW2, surpassing both Quick Play and Competitive Play, with 2.3 million matches played across 7.8 million hours during its launch week, which is more than double the stats of OW Classic’s launch, and Blizzard says this is a big deal.

“While we often see a big spike in play time shortly after a sparkly new event launches, play time in Stadium has been a bit stickier,” game director Aaron Keller said. “In its first week, roughly 50 percent of all play hours in Overwatch 2 were devoted to Stadium!”

In total, 900 Billion Stadium Cash has been earned by players so far, with 206 million Items chosen between rounds. Meanwhile, Lucio takes the crown as the winningest hero so far while also being the least-picked hero, so figure that one out.

And this is just the beginning, says Blizzard, as the company has now confirmed additional content drops coming to Stadium over the course of 2025, including at least six new heroes and four new maps this summer, plus crossplay support, custom games, and the ability to save and share builds.

Here are all the details revealed by Blizzard thus far about what’s coming to Stadium in OW2 in the near future.

Overwatch 2 Stadium roadmap

Season 17 (June)

• New heroes
• New maps
• New features
  • Crossplay
  • Custom Games
  • Save and Share builds
  • More example Builds

Season 18 (August)

• New heroes
  • Winston, Sojourn, Brigitte
• New maps
• New game mode: Payload Race, including 2 new maps
• New All-Star Rewards
• Stadium Trials Feature

Season 19 (October) and beyond

• Heroes added every season
• New China map
• Draft Mode Feature
• Consumables
• Item Upgrades

In a Director’s Take blog to accompany the roadmap, the developers made sure to let players know that while Stadium is awesome, it’s not going to take away from the other modes in the game.

“I’d like to reiterate the team’s commitment to the Core modes of Overwatch,” OW2 director Aaron Keller said. “We’re still pouring as much time, energy and passion into these as we always have. Stadium isn’t competing for those resources: it’s giving us more opportunities to deliver Overwatch in a new, exciting way. We can’t wait for you to see what’s coming there, especially Season 18. It’s going to be a banger!”