Overwatch Anniversary 2019 start date locked in: Skins, playlists and more

With its three year anniversary fast approaching, Overwatch will kick off celebrations with its annual Anniversary event, which has a start date of May 21. Lasting until June 10, players will have almost a month to test their skills across a variety of different game modes, earning new skins and dance emotes along the way.

As is always the case with Overwatch Anniversary Events, popular events from earlier in the year are featured throughout the three-week celebration, and so we can expect to see a rotating playlist including Junkenstein and Lucio Ball join the fold.

Let’s get this party started! ??

The Overwatch Anniversary celebration begins on May 21! pic.twitter.com/pEh1upfdIv

— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) May 18, 2019

Alongside those favourites will be your stockstandard rush of new Legendary Skins for the Anniversary event, as well as new dancing emotes for the game’s three newest heroes that joined this past year in Ashe, Wrecking Ball and Baptiste.

Blizzard will ramp up Overwatch‘s three-year anniversary celebrations with a week of free-to-play action as well, with a free trial on offer from May 21 to May 28 across Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

What is perhaps most appealing about the anniversary event is that it will open up all past skins — including event skins — to be purchased with in-game currency, meaning that old Lunar New Year or Christmas skin that you missed out on can now be purchased with standard currency throughout the Anniversary event.

The launch of Overwatch Anniversary Event 2019 comes just as Blizzard plans to unleash the Workshop on players across the public servers and console. It’s spent a few weeks being refined on the PTR, and so players engaged on the PTR are being asked to save their work and record their project codes for use when the Workshop launches in full, perhaps as well as May 21.