Quick answer: World of Warcraft: Forever launches worldwide at the same moment on Wednesday, November 4, 2026, at 3:00 p.m. PST. That's 23:00 UTC: 6:00 p.m. ET in New York, 11:00 p.m. in London, midnight going into November 5 in Berlin and Paris, 2:00 a.m. Nov 5 in Moscow, 7:00 a.m. Nov 5 in Singapore and 10:00 a.m. Nov 5 in Sydney. Before that, a Battle.net app notice lists maintenance from 10:00 a.m. PST (18:00 UTC), during which "the game will be unavailable for play", so your reserved characters can't be opened in those five hours. Access is included with an active WoW Subscription or Game Time.
Updated November 3, 2026: launch is tomorrow and nothing has moved. We added the November 4 maintenance window in every time zone, Blizzard's own launch-time table, the fourth new zone Blizzard now names (Shen'dralas), and what happens now that name reservation closes today. Blizzard has also corrected the old "PDT" label: every Forever article now says PST.
The beta closed on October 23 and name reservation ends today, so the only question left in most Forever threads is the simple one: what time do servers open where I live? Blizzard gives one global moment, but the US, Europe and Australia have all changed clocks in the last three weeks, so a quick mental conversion can be off by an hour. This guide lists the exact local time for every major region, plus the maintenance window that comes first.
What you'll find below:
- The full launch-time table for every major time zone
- The November 4 maintenance window, converted to your clock
- Why it's PST, not PDT (Blizzard has now fixed its own pages)
- What happens to your name-reservation characters at launch
- Every date left after launch (friend codes, Game Time, raids)
All WoW Forever prices · How delivery works in WoW ForeverWoW Forever Power LevelingWoW Forever GoldWoW Forever PvP Rank & HonorWoW Forever Raids, Dungeons & Pre-Raid GearWoW Forever ProfessionsWoW Forever Reputation, Riding & Class QuestsWoW Forever account safety
WoW Forever prices today
- Gold: from $34.20 (5 gold), within 30 minutes; $6.84 per gold, No account access, US, EU
- Power Leveling: from $436.99 (1–60), within 12 days; from $0.95 per level, Piloted / Self-play Remote, US, EU
- PvP Rank & Honor: from $37.02 (rank 1–2), within 7 days; from $37.02 per rank, Piloted / Self-play Remote, US, EU
What time does WoW Forever launch?
3:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time on November 4, 2026, which is 23:00 UTC. Blizzard's launch announcement says it directly:
"Begin your first adventure or return to a new and reimagined Azeroth in World of Warcraft: Forever, launching worldwide November 4 at 3:00 p.m. PST." — Blizzard Entertainment, World of Warcraft: Forever Goes Live Globally November 4!
The key word is worldwide: Blizzard gives one launch moment, not a separate EU or Asia slot. Players in every region get in at the same moment, which is why Europeans play from midnight and Australians get a mid-morning start. The countdown on the official World of Warcraft: Forever page ends at 2026-11-04 23:00 UTC; we re-checked the page's own data on November 3.
Forever also has no realm list. You pick a ruleset (Normal, PvP, Roleplaying or Roleplay-PvP at launch, Hardcore later) and play with others in your region who share it. Our rulesets and play-with-friends guide covers how that matchmaking works.
As of November 3, launch is one day away.
What is the WoW Forever release date?
Wednesday, November 4, 2026. That's the release date in the Americas and the UK. In continental Europe, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific the clock has already passed midnight when servers open, so locally Forever releases on Thursday, November 5. Blizzard's own table marks the same split: November 4 for the Americas, Brazil and the UK, November 5 for Europe, Taiwan, Korea and Australia/New Zealand.
WoW Forever launch time in every time zone
Every conversion below uses Blizzard's 3:00 p.m. PST (UTC−8) = 23:00 UTC on November 4. We checked each one against the 2026 daylight-saving calendar. The US left daylight time on November 1, Europe left it on October 25, and southeast Australia and New Zealand are already on summer time. Canadians, note this: British Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba are not turning their clocks back this November, so Vancouver, Calgary and Winnipeg are an hour later than Seattle, Denver and Chicago.
| Region / city | Time zone on Nov 4–5 | Forever launch time |
|---|---|---|
| Hawaii | HST (UTC−10) | 1:00 p.m., Wed Nov 4 |
| Alaska | AKST (UTC−9) | 2:00 p.m., Wed Nov 4 |
| Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco | PST (UTC−8) | 3:00 p.m., Wed Nov 4 |
| Denver, Phoenix | MST (UTC−7) | 4:00 p.m., Wed Nov 4 |
| Vancouver (B.C. stays on UTC−7 in 2026) | Pacific Time (UTC−7) | 4:00 p.m., Wed Nov 4 |
| Chicago, Dallas, Mexico City | CST (UTC−6) | 5:00 p.m., Wed Nov 4 |
| Calgary, Edmonton (Alberta stays on UTC−6 in 2026) | Alberta Time (UTC−6) | 5:00 p.m., Wed Nov 4 |
| Winnipeg (Manitoba stays on UTC−5 in 2026) | Central Daylight Time (UTC−5) | 6:00 p.m., Wed Nov 4 |
| New York, Toronto, Miami | EST (UTC−5) | 6:00 p.m., Wed Nov 4 |
| São Paulo, Buenos Aires | UTC−3 | 8:00 p.m., Wed Nov 4 |
| London, Dublin, Lisbon | GMT/WET (UTC+0) | 11:00 p.m., Wed Nov 4 |
| Berlin, Paris, Madrid, Stockholm, Warsaw | CET (UTC+1) | 12:00 a.m. (midnight), Thu Nov 5 |
| Helsinki, Athens, Kyiv, Bucharest | EET (UTC+2) | 1:00 a.m., Thu Nov 5 |
| Moscow, Istanbul | UTC+3 | 2:00 a.m., Thu Nov 5 |
| Dubai | UTC+4 | 3:00 a.m., Thu Nov 5 |
| India | IST (UTC+5:30) | 4:30 a.m., Thu Nov 5 |
| Singapore, Manila, Beijing, Taipei | UTC+8 | 7:00 a.m., Thu Nov 5 |
| Seoul, Tokyo | UTC+9 | 8:00 a.m., Thu Nov 5 |
| Brisbane | AEST (UTC+10) | 9:00 a.m., Thu Nov 5 |
| Sydney, Melbourne | AEDT (UTC+11) | 10:00 a.m., Thu Nov 5 |
| Auckland | NZDT (UTC+13) | 12:00 p.m. (noon), Thu Nov 5 |
Blizzard's launch article prints a shorter version of the same table, and every row matches ours: 3:00 p.m. PST, 8:00 p.m. BRT, 11:00 p.m. GMT, 12:00 a.m. CET, 7:00 a.m. Taiwan, 8:00 a.m. KST and 10:00 a.m. AEDT.
Quick rule: for anywhere in continental Europe, Forever is a Wednesday-night-into-Thursday launch. For anywhere in Asia-Pacific, it's a Thursday-morning launch. If you're booking time off work, book Thursday, November 5, not Wednesday.
Will WoW Forever be down before launch?
Yes, for about five hours. A notice in the Battle.net app, quoted word for word in a Blizzard forum thread on October 31 and reported by Wowhead on November 2, reads:
"We will be performing scheduled maintenance beginning on Wednesday, November 4th, 10:00 AM (PST) and we expect the service to be available again at approximately 3:00 PM (PST). During this time the game will be unavailable for play." — Battle.net app notice
Blizzard hasn't put this on its news site, so treat the end time as an estimate, exactly as the notice does ("approximately"). Here is the window on your clock:
| Region | Maintenance starts | Expected back (= launch) |
|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles (PST) | 10:00 a.m. Wed | ~3:00 p.m. Wed |
| New York (EST) | 1:00 p.m. Wed | ~6:00 p.m. Wed |
| UTC | 18:00 Wed | ~23:00 Wed |
| London (GMT) | 6:00 p.m. Wed | ~11:00 p.m. Wed |
| Berlin, Paris (CET) | 7:00 p.m. Wed | ~12:00 a.m. Thu |
| Moscow (UTC+3) | 9:00 p.m. Wed | ~2:00 a.m. Thu |
| Seoul (KST) | 3:00 a.m. Thu | ~8:00 a.m. Thu |
| Sydney (AEDT) | 5:00 a.m. Thu | ~10:00 a.m. Thu |
What this means in practice:
- Change your reserved characters before maintenance, not during it. If you want to check a name, look or ruleset on the characters you made during reservation, do it before 10:00 a.m. PST on November 4. After that the game is closed until launch.
- Patch early. Maintenance is when a final client update usually lands. Open Battle.net once maintenance starts and again 30 minutes before launch, so the download is done when the gate opens.
- Don't panic at "unavailable". If the launcher says Forever is offline at 2:00 p.m. PST, that is the maintenance, not a delay. The launch time has not moved.
Is it 3 p.m. PST or PDT?
PST, and Blizzard's pages now all agree. For six weeks this was the confusing part: the "Carve a New Path" Forever article (news.blizzard.com/en-us/article/24302093) printed 3:00 p.m. PDT near the top while the pre-purchase article said 3:00 p.m. PST. The two labels are an hour apart (23:00 UTC vs 22:00 UTC).
When we re-read 24302093 on November 3, both mentions say PST: "World of Warcraft: Forever launches November 4 at 3:00 p.m. PST globally." The launch article, the countdown (23:00 UTC) and the calendar agree too. US daylight saving time ended on Sunday, November 1, 2026, three days before launch, so on November 4 the West Coast is on PST.
Practical advice: log in to Battle.net 15–30 minutes before your local time anyway. That gives the launcher time to finish any day-one patch, and you'll be in the first wave if a login queue forms.
What happens to my name-reservation characters at launch?
They are your launch characters. Early Name Reservation ran from October 27 (18:00 CET in Europe, 1:00 p.m. PDT in North America, October 28 at 07:00 in Korea and Taiwan) and ends today, November 3, per Blizzard's name reservation announcement. Blizzard hasn't published an exact closing hour, so if you still want a name, make it now rather than tonight.
What carries into launch:
- Up to three characters total across all rulesets. Blizzard's example: "if you create two on a PvP Ruleset, you'll only be able to create one more character in a Normal or Role-Play Ruleset." The three-character cap only applies during reservation; at launch you can make more.
- Level 1. Reserved characters can't be played or levelled before 3:00 p.m. PST on November 4. Nothing was earned early, and nothing from the beta carries over: beta characters were wiped.
- The ruleset and faction you picked. Blizzard has announced no way to move a launch character between rulesets (the only transfer is a dead Hardcore character moving out, once Hardcore arrives), so if you picked the wrong one, delete it and remake it while you still can.
One thread on r/classicwow asked how to "copy early access character progress" to the live game. There is no progress to copy: reservation characters are already the live ones, and the beta was a separate, wiped test. Our name reservation guide covers the two-part name rules and the known reservation errors.
Every date left after launch
Here's the rest of Blizzard's published calendar, all from the pre-purchase article unless noted:
| Date (PST) | What happens | Who it's for |
|---|---|---|
| Nov 3 | Early Name Reservation ends (exact hour not published) | Any upgrade edition |
| Nov 4, 10:00 a.m. | Maintenance begins, game unavailable (Battle.net app notice) | Everyone |
| Nov 4, 3:00 p.m. | Launch. Everyone starts at level 1 | Anyone with Subscription or Game Time |
| Nov 4 – Nov 11 | Invite-A-Friend codes give friends access without a sub | Invitees |
| Nov 4 | 30 days of Game Time added to your account | Epic Pack and Collection |
| Dec 9 | First raids unlock: Barrow Deeps (10), Hyjal Summit (20), Onyxia's Lair (40) | Level 60s (Blizzard raid overview) |
| Jan 11, 2027 | Last day to buy the Warcraft Forever Collection ($79.99 on the Battle.net shop) | Buyers |
Two of these cause most of the confusion:
- Friend codes don't give anything before November 4. They grant access from launch to November 11 only, and "These Invite-A-Friend Launch Codes do not include beta access." Full details are in our Invite-A-Friend codes guide.
- Game Time from the Epic Pack starts November 4, not on the day you bought it. If you pre-purchased in September, those 30 days run to early December, right around when the raids open.
Do I need to buy anything to play at launch?
No. The base game is included with an active World of Warcraft Subscription or Game Time. The paid upgrades ($29.99 Skyborne Heroic Pack, $59.99 Skyborne Epic Pack, $79.99 Warcraft Forever Collection) add the Skyborne race, cosmetics and friend codes, and name reservation while it was open. They don't decide whether you can log in at 3:00 p.m. Skyborne itself requires an upgrade, so if you plan to roll one on day one, buy the Heroic Pack or higher before you create the character. Our cost breakdown compares the editions.
If your subscription has lapsed, renew it today. A payment problem at 2:55 p.m. is a bad way to lose your spot in the first queue.
What can I do the moment Forever goes live?
At 3:00 p.m. PST, everyone starts at level 1 on a fresh economy. Blizzard hasn't announced any transfer from Classic Era, Season of Discovery or Anniversary, so plan to start from zero.
What's waiting is a lot. Blizzard's launch article promises "more than 1,000 new quests across the level 1–60 journey" and names four new destinations: Mount Hyjal, Shen'dralas, the Riverglades and Zephras Isle. Shen'dralas is a hidden region between Mulgore and Desolace, and the Riverglades alone carries more than 150 quests in the mid-30s to mid-40s range. Add nine new dungeons and a level cap of 60. Raids are not available at launch: all three open together on December 9, so the first five weeks are about leveling, dungeons, professions and gold.
What to expect in the first hours:
- Queues. Every region logs in at the same moment, right after five hours of maintenance, so expect a rush. Our server status and queues guide tracks outages.
- Crowded starting zones. Every new character starts in the same handful of zones in the first hour. Don't expect Zephras Isle to be the quiet option: Skyborne was the most-created race in a volunteer census of beta characters. A late-night session (by your local clock) is the safer bet for a calmer start.
- No early advantage to buy. Reserved characters stay at level 1 until launch. Anyone selling "pre-launch leveling" is selling something that can't exist.
For the full launch-day plan, including your first hour and which addons to set up, read our WoW Forever launch day checklist. If you hit a greyed-out Install button, our pre-install fix covers it. Check the system requirements too: the client requires an SSD.
Long-time readers may remember when we were still asking whether Classic+ would get a release date at all. Now it's tomorrow.
Short on hours in launch week? If you can't play at midnight in Europe or between morning meetings in Sydney, timesaver.gg can handle part of the grind once servers are live.
- WoW Forever Power Leveling to 60: book ahead, and it starts once the game is live on November 4.
- WoW Forever Gold: starting gold for your riding skill, professions and repairs on a fresh economy.
- All WoW Forever services: dungeons, raids from December 9, and more.
FAQ
What is the WoW Forever release date? November 4, 2026, at 3:00 p.m. PST (23:00 UTC). In continental Europe and Asia-Pacific that moment falls after midnight, so the local release date there is Thursday, November 5.
What time does WoW Forever come out? World of Warcraft: Forever launches worldwide on November 4, 2026, at 3:00 p.m. PST, which is 23:00 UTC. That's 6:00 p.m. ET, 11:00 p.m. in the UK and midnight going into November 5 in Central Europe.
Will WoW Forever be down before launch? Yes. A Battle.net app notice lists maintenance from 10:00 a.m. PST (18:00 UTC) on November 4, with service expected back at approximately 3:00 p.m. PST, the launch time. The game is unavailable during that window, including your reserved characters.
What time does WoW Forever launch in Europe? Midnight going into Thursday, November 5, in Central European Time (Berlin, Paris, Madrid). It's 11:00 p.m. Wednesday in the UK, 1:00 a.m. in Finland and Greece, and 2:00 a.m. in Moscow.
Do EU and US servers launch at different times? No. Blizzard gives a single worldwide launch time, 3:00 p.m. PST on November 4, so every region unlocks at the same moment.
Is the WoW Forever launch time PST or PDT? PST. Blizzard's articles once used both labels, but they now all say PST, and the countdown on the official Forever page ends at 23:00 UTC on November 4, which is 3:00 p.m. PST.
When does name reservation end? November 3, 2026. Blizzard hasn't published the exact closing hour. Characters you created are the ones you log in with at launch, still at level 1.
Is WoW Forever free at launch? It's included with an active World of Warcraft Subscription or Game Time, with no separate purchase required. Invite-A-Friend codes give friends access from November 4 to November 11, 2026.
