Overwatch Season 6 will bring a four-week 6v6 Role Queue Competitive mini season and a 6v6 balance patch
Overwatch director Aaron Keller says Season 6 will launch with a four-week 6v6 Role Queue Competitive mini season and a dedicated 6v6 balance patch.
Overwatch’s next season will bring 6v6 Role Queue back to Competitive play for a limited run. In a Director’s Take published on 10 November 2026 (US time), Aaron Keller says Season 6 will launch with a four-week 2-2-2 Role Queue Competitive mini season, alongside a balance patch built specifically for 6v6.
Three Competitive options on Day 1
Players will be able to pick from three Competitive versions of the game when Season 6 starts:
- Standard 5v5
- Open Queue 6v6
- The Role Queue 6v6 test, which runs for the first four weeks of the season
Open Queue 6v6 keeps running during the mini season, and the new balance patch applies to it as well.
A balance patch for 6v6
Keller says a dedicated balance pass has been one of the biggest requests, next to Role Queue itself. When Open Queue moved to 6v6, Blizzard made a large set of adjustments, and later seasonal changes carried over to the mode. That mostly worked, but not for every hero: Keller says D.Mon is more effective in 6v6, while Domina is less effective.
Why both modes
Blizzard says it ran two 6v6 tests earlier this year, plus surveys afterwards, and found the community split fairly evenly. In the in-game survey, 32% of respondents on both sides stood fully behind their preferred mode. Open Queue 6v6 is now the second most-played mode in Season 5, with Mystery Madness close behind.
Running Role Queue 6v6 and Open Queue 6v6 together should show how many people play for the role flexibility and how many for the team size, Keller says. He acknowledges the extra queue may affect wait times, but says Season 6 matchmaking changes should help, and the team will be monitoring them.
Blizzard has no plans to make 6v6 the main mode, but Keller calls it “a second among equals”.
Also in Season 6
Keller says the next hero will be fully revealed in the OWCS Finals Broadcast. Mystery Madness is due back in Season 1 2027 with a new theme, new powers and other enhancements.
