BlizzCon 2021 has been cancelled, Blizzard confirms
Company planning to hold a hybrid physical and digital event in early 2022
Blizzard has cancelled plans to hold its traditional in-person BlizzCon convention for the second year running.
The long-running event is usually held at the Anaheim Convention Center in California each November, but 2020’s event was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Blizzard announced on Wednesday that hopes to bring the event back in 2021 have also been dashed by the “ongoing complexities and uncertainties of the pandemic”.
However, a hybrid event mixing the formula of February 2021’s BlizzConline “with smaller in-person gatherings” will be held in early 2022.
Further reading
Blizzard’s player base has fallen 29% over the last 3 years
“Building an in-person BlizzCon is an epic and complex affair that takes many months of preparation—not just for us, but also for the many talented production partners, esports pros, hosts, entertainers, artists, and other collaborators we team up with locally and globally to put all of the pieces together,” said BlizzCon executive producer Saralyn Smith.
“The ongoing complexities and uncertainties of the pandemic have impacted our ability to properly move forward on many of these fronts, and ultimately we’re now past the point where we’d be able to develop the kind of event we’d want to create for you in November.
“But we don’t want to let too long go by before we connect with everyone again. So in the meantime, we’re planning a global event for the early part of next year, combining an online show along the lines of our recent BlizzConline with smaller in-person gatherings, and we’ll share more as our plans come together.”
