Welcome to the Year of the Scarab

The moment is almost here to gaze up at the great Hearthstone clock in the sky and count down the days until a new year of Hearthstone begins, as we welcome the Year of the Scarab!

Tune in: Hearthstone Spotlight Livestream

Tune in to the Hearthstone Spotlight livestream on February 9 at 9:30 a.m. PST for your first look at exciting updates coming in 2026. The team will be revealing a variety of free rewards and surprises. Don't miss it!

Where to watch: Twitch and YouTube

Year of the Scarab Core Set Changes

The Core Set is the free card pool that forms the foundation for each Hearthstone year, so rotation is our opportunity to reshape that framework for the year ahead. That includes deciding which cards stay, leave, or join Core, as well as making adjustments to some of those cards. These changes to the Core Set will take effect with the launch of our next expansion.

You can find all the upcoming changes linked below.

Cards entering and leaving Core:

• Graphic
• Text-only list

All Scarab Core cards getting adjustments:

• Graphic
• Text-only list

Keep reading for a summary of our latest Core Set changes.

Staples Step Aside

We are removing a variety of high-impact cards to open up new design space and give classes the chance to explore fresh strategies without being tied to older, dominant effects. Swipe, Brawl, and Corpse Explosion are just a few examples. One of the biggest changes is the removal of Shadowstep, a card that has shaped Rogue since the very beginning of Hearthstone, and we are excited to see how the class grows once this iconic staple disappears into the shadows.

Core Set Comebacks

Several returning favorites are coming back, including Call of the Wild, Shadow of Demise, and Runed Orb, and a few others are returning with light buffs.

New Class Tools

We're introducing a few new cards that help reinforce the general direction of their classes and related archetypes.