If you were waiting for the rollout of Call of Duty: Warzone and Black Ops 6 Season 3, your wait just got a little longer. Activision and the development teams currently working on Call of Duty: Warzone and Black Ops 6 have announced that the game’s upcoming third season has been delayed until April 3.
Season 03 is a big moment for Call of Duty: Warzone and Black Ops 6, and we’re taking the time to deliver a great experience starting on April 3. More to come following Call of Duty: Warzone’s 5th anniversary next week… pic.twitter.com/TmPJnoYBZSMarch 3, 2025
According to the team, Call of Duty’s third season is set to be “a big moment for Call of Duty: Warzone and Black Ops 6” though there was no announcement of exactly what content is expected as part of the launch.
Call of Duty’s seasonal content regularly drops bi-monthly for one year following the launch of a premium Call of Duty title in the fall. It is then supplemented with a mid-season refresh 30 days after a new season starts. These content drops typically include a themed event, additional story for extended cast in Call of Duty storylines, new maps and modes, and gameplay modifiers such as new perks or weapons.
The most recent content drop for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 was the release of Season 2 Reloaded in February. An in-game timer typically counts down to the end of a season, with Season 2’s originally set to end around March 20.
There was rampant speculation by Call of Duty “leakers” who claimed that the start of Season 3 would see Raven Software and fellow support teams for Warzone re-release Verdansk, the original Call of Duty: Warzone map that was available when the free-to-play Battle Royale game launched on March 10, 2020.
Activision has confirmed that Verdansk is returning to Call of Duty: Warzone this spring, but no official timeline for when players can expect to drop back in to the stadium has been revealed.
The delay of Season 3 for Warzone and Black Ops 6 came on the heels of a similar announcement from the Call of Duty team that Season 2 would see a reduction in content. The studios behind the franchise chose to focus on improving Warzone’s overall playability following negative player feedback during Season 1.
Warzone suffered a significant setback in gameplay functionality following its integration with Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. While past Call of Duty premium titles integrated into Warzone with a brand-new map for the battle royale playlists, Warzone’s integration with Black Ops 6 brought a smaller map dubbed Area 99. This map, based on the popular Black Ops series’ Nuketown, is only available for Warzone’s Resurgence playlists, which eschews traditional battle royale gameplay for faster-paced action and the ability to respawn.
In lieu of a new map for the Battle Royale playlists, Treyarch and Raven Software made the baffling decision to roll back the current BR map, Urzikstan, to its original launch state. This eliminated a year’s worth of content updates to Urzikstan, which originally launched alongside the Season 1 content for Sledgehammer Games’ Modern Warfare 3 (2023).
The removal of features and upgrades combined with a failing anti-cheat system led to an alarming number of prominent Call of Duty influencers decrying the state of Warzone and calls for an exodus of the free-to-play title, even as Black Ops 6 saw record player numbers. Even before the launch of Urzikstan, the community had already began calling for the return of Verdansk.
Verdansk was removed from Call of Duty: Warzone’s first iteration when the game was taken offline in favor of a successor dubbed Warzone 2.0 that launched alongside Modern Warfare 2 in 2022. Despite being removed from PC and console versions of Call of Duty, Verdansk did eventually return to the franchise via Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile.
The return of Verdansk to PC and console versions of Call of Duty: Warzone may be more of a litmus test for the future of the free-to-play mode than fans of the game might want it to be. A recent statement from a prolific Call of Duty leaker claims that if the launch of Verdansk fails to revive the Warzone player base, it is likely plans for Warzone 3.0 could be scrapped going forward.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Warzone are available on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC via Steam, Microsoft Store, and Battle.net.
