Diablo 4 New Season: Season 15 Release Date and Guide

Updated October 31, 2026 for Diablo 4 New Season.

Diablo 4's new season is Season 15, Season of Hell's Legacy, which launched on September 15, 2026. Its main features include Prime Evil powers, socketable Soul Splinters, Waking Nightmares and Character Rebirth.

Release date and expected end date

The launch times given for September 15 were 9:30 AM PT or 10:00 AM PDT or 5:30 PM UK time. Season 15's expected finish is mid-December 2026; treat that as an estimate when planning your remaining progression.

How to start and use Character Rebirth

Create a character on the Seasonal Realm to begin at level 1, with fresh progression including Paragon and Gold; campaign completion lets you choose to skip into seasonal endgame content. Seasonal characters and their progress move to Eternal when the season ends, while cosmetics and transmogs are shared across realms.

Rebirth lets you bring an existing Eternal hero into the Seasonal Realm instead of making another character. Prepare the transfer in this order:

1. Move the hero's equipment and carried items into your Eternal stash.
2. Save the cosmetic preferences you want to transfer as an ensemble, including transmogs, pigments, mounts, accessories, pets, portals and headstones.
3. Empty every equipment slot and the personal inventory; Rebirth cannot proceed while either still contains items.
4. Select Rebirth to transfer the hero and reset their level to 1.

Your class, name, appearance, Normal or Hardcore state, and cumulative hours played survive the transfer. The warning before Rebirth gives you the opportunity to remove retained items or destroy them, so store anything you want to keep first.

Which Prime Evil Splinter should you choose?

Completing the seasonal questline on a new character unlocks Prime Evil Powers for all characters in that Normal/Hardcore or Normal/SSF partition. The questline takes you through the Prime Evil encounters and lets you collect their three Splinters of Evil.

Choose around the activities you intend to farm:

Every choice also modifies the Tree of Whispers, with eight activity modifiers and six Iconic Power upgrades in each reputation track. Earn reputation through the associated activities and unlock their modifiers and upgrades through War Plans.

You can bear only one Prime Evil Splinter at a time, and its Iconic Power triggers periodically during combat. Bearing it increases your vulnerability to the corresponding Prime Evil and exposes you to its pursuit.

One creator found the combat bonuses similar enough to recommend choosing by activity rewards rather than raw power. To switch reputation tracks and rewards, obtain another Splinter through the largest Waking Nightmares.

Where to fight the Prime Evils

If an earlier quest bug left your powers inaccessible, complete the seasonal questline on a new character in the same partition to unlock them for the affected characters too.

Soul Splinters: sockets, rarities and upgrades

Socketable Soul Splinters are a separate system from your Prime Evil alignment: you can equip up to three across available Jewelry slots. Each combines a benefit with a drawback, and the positive effect improves with rarity while the drawback stays unchanged.

The available types are:

• Splinter of Anguish: Associated with Andariel.
• Splinter of Sin: Associated with Azmodan.
• Splinter of Lies: Associated with Belial.
• Splinter of the Black Soulstone: Associated with that artifact.
• Splinter of Pain: Associated with Duriel.
• Splinter of the Mother: Associated with Lilith.
• Splinter of Hellfire: Associated with Na-Krul.
• Splinter of Damnation: Associated with Skarn.

They drop in Magic, Rare, Legendary and Unique rarities. Use Amalgamation in the Horadric Cube to combine matching types and rarities into the next rarity up. Prioritize upgrades for the effects your build already uses.

Waking Nightmares and Uber Tristram

Waking Nightmare types

The largest Waking Nightmares are multi-floor Capstone encounters introduced during the seasonal questline. You can replay them on Torment difficulties after the story, and their difficulty is fixed like other Capstones. Pinnacle versions at Torment 10 and above offer greater challenge and loot.

Standard dungeon versions occupy fixed world locations and recreate earlier encounters, including the Den of Evil.

The smallest versions appear in the open world and contain a single room with a boss such as Queen Araneae or groups such as Flayers. Their portals stay open for about a minute after activation, and braziers inside let you raise the encounter's difficulty before fighting. These portals can award cosmetics as well as loot.

Uber Tristram and repeat farming

Use Wart's lucky coins at the fountain to open the portal for the triple Prime Evil battle. The early bug that could consume coins without opening the portal was fixed in the first post-launch patch.

Tristram also has side quests and characters to explore, and you cannot ride a mount through it. World Stone Keep offers a repeatable endgame farming loop.

Prime Evil Splinters used for Hellfire Torch farming now stack to 99 following the October 28 update. Keep that inventory change separate from the limit on the alignment power you can bear.

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War Plans, leveling and alternate characters

War Plans reputation and levels are shared between your characters when all three partitions match: Seasonal or Eternal, Normal or Hardcore, and standard play or Solo-Self Found. Each hero retains a separate planner and can allocate the shared points differently.

For Hardcore progress to reach Eternal at the end of Season 15, keep another living Hardcore character in the same partition; even a level 1 storage character can carry the accumulated points across.

Undercity from level 25

One creator's leveling route used Undercity from level 25 with Splinter of Destruction and the Jade Epiphany War Plan node. That creator's second character could immediately use the already-unlocked experience-orb bonuses because War Plan progress was shared.

Screenshot: RageGamingVideos on YouTube.

Jade Epiphany's Experience Orb output was doubled in the season's patch changes, while the chance for Plague Maggot Young from Hellmouth to drop Experience Orbs was reduced. Portent of Pain and Plague Devourers drop one or two Experience Orbs rather than always two.

Infernal Hordes experience farming

One creator rated a properly configured Infernal Hordes setup as the strongest experience farm in their testing, with stacked monster power increasing both danger and rewards. Stop raising the challenge when it makes your clears unreliable.

Crafting an Infernal Horde Compass costs 500 Sigil Powder, and salvaging one returns 100.

Other experience rewards

War Plans completion rewards scale strongly with Torment difficulty. At Torment X and above, completing any node awards four baseline Experience Orbs; Magic through Mythic experience-reward nodes have also had their orb counts doubled.

The Pit's Choron's Soul node doubles experience from Progress Orbs, and the higher-tier completion bonus reaches 2,700% at Pit Tier 150. Whisper Caches give four to six Experience Orbs, plus another two to four in Torment X and above.

Horadric Cube recipes and Mythic crafting

Affix Value Reroll

Use Affix Value Reroll when an item has the affixes you want but disappointing values: it rerolls their values while keeping the affix identities. It works on equipment, Charms and Seals, protecting Greater Affixes, Enchanted affixes, Tempers and eligible Transfigurations. An Unmodifiable Transfigured item is excluded.

Horadric Reroll

Horadric Reroll works on Legendary-or-higher Charms and Seals and randomizes their base affixes. It preserves set bonuses and Unique or Mythic Charm powers; on Seals, it also leaves Charm Set Bonus Affixes intact. Use this recipe when the set or power is right and the base affixes need replacing.

The prospect of two full set bonuses appeals to some players, though they worry that Horadric items' +1 set count could make builds too powerful.

Ways to obtain Mythic Uniques

Upgrade Direct Item to Mythic cannot accept an Unmodifiable item, and you can equip only one item bearing its Crafted tag. Other crafted or dropped Mythics can be equipped alongside it, and Iconic Mythics remain exclusive to Mythic quality.

One creator also demonstrated recycling three copies of the same Crafted-tag Mythic through the Cube's Recycle Unique option to produce a version without the tag, with randomized eligible affixes.

All Unique items can drop from level 1 on any difficulty. Initiate and Greater Lair Bosses, and choices from Belial's Hoard, use their own Unique pools for Mythic Unique rewards, with generic extra loot retaining a small chance at Mythics outside those pools.

Initiate Lair Boss Mythic drop rates were raised to match Greater Lair Bosses, and Echo of Mephisto has a guaranteed Mythic drop.

New Legacy Uniques and build options

Diablo 4's new season introduced nine Legacy Uniques as permanent loot for both Seasonal and Eternal realms.

Leoric's Crown treats its socket as Jewelry and strengthens the socketed gem's effect, including support for Soul Splinter effects. Nemesis Bracers spawn an Elite pack when you activate a shrine, while Stone of Jordan raises your resistances to match your highest and boosts damage of that element.

Henri's Perquisition converts a portion of Dexterity into Primary Stat, The Furnace increases damage against Elites, and Arioc's Needle improves Deadly Strike chance and damage. Defeating an Elite pack activates In-Geom's skill-cooldown reduction effect for 15 seconds.

Build options to consider

One creator's October 2 assessment placed Blazing Scream Warlock above the other builds they discussed and highlighted Enigma's movement as part of its smooth playstyle. Treat that as a dated recommendation when choosing what to try.

Blazing Scream's Brimstone Hunger cap was raised to 50%, and Elegy makes the skill an Archfiend Skill, grants Skull Splitter, boosts its damage by 30–50%, and makes Lesser Demon skulls match the main skull's damage.

Paladin's Judgement now scales with the rank of the applying skill, while Sorcerer's Piercing Cold Ice Shards variant gains 50% multiplicative damage. Spiritborn gains the Swarm of Storms Paragon board, whose Legendary node increases damage for skills creating Pestilent Swarms and Spirit Storms by 80% multiplicatively and Storm Feather damage by 150%.

Spiritborn requires Vessel of Hatred, while Paladin and Warlock require Lord of Hatred.

Season Journey rewards and Blessings

Season progression contains nine ranks and 125 objectives, with account-wide goals and rewards. Roughly 15% of objectives require Lord of Hatred, including objectives needed for Rank VIII and the complete reward collection.

Earn Smoldering Ashes from Seasonal Objectives and Chapter Rewards, then spend them on Blessings.

• Urn of Curiosities: Increases the chance of receiving an extra item from a Purveyor of Curiosities purchase.
• Urn of Reclamation: Improves the chance of rare salvage materials.
• Urn of Masterworking: Improves the chance of additional Obducite drops.
• Urn of Glyphs: Gives glyph upgrades a chance at an extra improvement.
• Urn of Ancestral Whispers: Improves the chance of an Ancestral Cache when handing in Whispers.

Reliquary rewards, Platinum and Favor

The free Hell's Legacy Reliquary includes 200 Platinum, three weapon appearances, a horse mount, mount armor and a Town Portal. Favor carries into future seasons and caps at 99 tokens.

Buying all Reliquaries individually costs 1,500 Platinum, and buying an individual Reliquary removes the Premium Bundle purchase option. Eternal characters can earn Favor and access Reliquary cosmetics too.

Halloween events through November 4

Meat or Treat and March of the Goblins began on October 28 and run through November 4. Prioritize these before returning to longer seasonal goals.

Meat or Treat

Activate Dungeon Shrines for their usual buffs and an additional Halloween outcome. Possible encounters include Infernal Butchers, extra Treasure Goblins and dangerous surprises with additional rewards.

March of the Goblins

Kill Treasure Goblins to advance a ten-rank reputation track and claim rewards at the Goblin Altar in Kyovashad. The extra goblins from Meat or Treat can help advance this track during the overlap.

Rewards include Gold, crafting materials, Murmuring Obols, Gem Fragments, Runes and Goblin caches. Higher ranks award Regalia of the Sacred Creed mount armor and the March of the Goblins Emblem; the final Fedric's Gift cache contains Runes and a Resplendent Spark.

Seasonal story and Horadric Post

Season 15 celebrates Diablo's 30th anniversary through three former Prime Evil vessels returning from Pandemonium, with Deckard Cain's soul guiding you into their memories. Waking Nightmares turn those memories into encounters with figures and places from Sanctuary's past.

Tyrael's possible death in a seasonal quest worries one player, who writes.

killing off tyreal in a seasonal quest rather than main story of a main game would be criminally stupid

— one player

The Horadric Post sends account deliveries from the Diablo IV team, including messages, supplies, rewards and commemorative items; it is a one-way system. Mounted access to the Post was fixed in a later patch.

You can choose between ongoing Eternal progression and a fresh seasonal journey in Diablo 4.