Overwatch announces dates for Lunar New Year event

Overwatch will be kicking off its 2020 Lunar New Year event sooner than anyone expected, as revealed by a surprise announcement on Twitter.

The Lunar New Year celebration is always scheduled as the first event of the year after Winter Wonderland, which only just ended on January 2.

Fans are usually given a few days warning before things kick off, but Blizzard apparently decided to surprise everyone by dropping the news right before it begins.

Overwatch announced via Twitter on January 15 that the 2020 Lunar New Year event would begin the next day on January 16 and run through February 5.

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Lunar New Year, like all events in Overwatch, brings new skins and cosmetics for heroes that players can collect – but Blizzard hasn’t shared any hints on what to expect for new goodies at the time of writing.

The announcement video does feature Hanzo releasing some sky lanterns, which could possibly be a new highlight intro, or nothing more than fluff.

A potential hint that Lunar New Year was coming soon could have been under our noses this whole time in the form of the Capture the Flag game mode appearing in Arcade this week.

Overwatch’s CTF was originally introduced along with Lunar New Year, so it will be interesting to see if there are any changes – or even a new map for 2020.

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While a completely new map may be a little ambitious, there’s also the possibility of an existing map getting a Lunar New Year makeover, as seen on LiJiang Tower and Busan.

As previously stated, Overwatch’s Lunar New Year event for 2020 runs from January 16 to February 5, giving players just over 2 weeks to collect all of the cosmetics and skins they want.