Eight weeks to December 9: what we know about the Forever raids so far

The date hasn't moved. Onyxia's attunement chain is back, the two new raids skip it. Boss counts are known; the names still aren't.

No change to the schedule: Barrow Deeps (10-player), Hyjal Summit (20-player) and Onyxia's Lair (40-player) all open on December 9. That's exactly five weeks after the game launches on November 4. The level cap is 60, and Blizzard says it will stay there for a long time.

The clearest news of the past week came from episode three of the official podcast, released on October 8. Onyxia keeps the long attunement chain from Classic, and at least at launch it won't be account-wide, so every character runs the chain on their own. The two new raids, Barrow Deeps and Hyjal Summit, have no attunement chain. The developers did hint at a few extra steps for "the full experience", without saying what they are.

Boss counts have more or less settled. Barrow Deeps has 8 bosses, a number that comes from the goal in Blizzard's Legacy system preview. Hyjal Summit shows 13 encounters in the beta data. Names are another story: every list going around was pulled from beta files, the lists don't agree with each other, and Blizzard hasn't confirmed a single boss name. That's why our race page still marks bosses as "name not final"; we'll switch to the official names the day the raids open.

The opening time hasn't been announced either. Our countdown is set to December 9, 09:00 Turkey time (UTC+3) for now, and we'll adjust it as soon as Blizzard gives a time. There are no details yet on the tier sets or the legendary said to come from Barrow Deeps; Blizzard says "later". The roadmap shows two more raids in spring 2027.

On our side, the race works simply: once guilds upload to Warcraft Logs, their kills land in the rankings on their own. Guilds with live logging on during the raid also show up in Progress Live in real time: which boss, which pull, best percentage. Register your guild now and you'll be on the board on the morning of December 9.

Sources: Warcraft Tavern, "Onyxia's Lair Raid Will Still Require Attunement in WoW Forever" (8 Oct 2026) — https://www.warcrafttavern.com/forever/news/onyxias-lair-raid-will-still-require-attunement-in-wow-forever/ · WoWGuide, Forever raid schedule — https://wowguide.net/en/guides/wow-forever-raids-release-date · Endgame Tools, new dungeons and raids — https://endgametools.com/en/wow-forever/news/wow-forever-new-dungeons-raids