Overwatch Season 26 Extended Due to a 'Technical Issue'

Season 26 of Overwatch has been extended until March 9 due to technical issues regarding the rollout of Season 27. Blizzard Entertainment's customer service Twitter account, @BlizzardCS, made the announcement on March 4. Their tweet has a link that leads to a forum post that explains the details behind this decision.

According to Josh Nash, the community manager, the Overwatch team encountered "technical issues" when trying to release Season 27.

In the official forum post, Nash says: "Our team tested a number of fixes, but in the interest of time and allowing players to get back into Competitive Play, we have made the choice to the extend Season 26 a few days while we continue to identify the cause of this issue and work on a fix."

If all goes well, Season 27 should be live in the servers by Tueday, March 9 at around 11:00 a.m. PST. In the meantime, the Competitive play screen says that the season will end "in less than one minute." On the Blizzard forum post, Josh Nash clarifies that this will be the case for a few days, but Season 26 will not end until March 9.

Additionally, the leaderboard will be re-enabled. Overwatch players can still climb the ranks as if the season had not ended, but there's a catch.

If during this extended period of time a player ranks up, they are eligible for "non-consumable" awards, such as sprays, but they will not receive credits from their new placement. Players who are in the Top 500 leaderboard, and already received their rewards for the rank, will not receive any additional rewards for reaching their rank at the end of the season.

And finally, players who have not logged into and received their Season 26 awards will have to wait for the updated end of the season this upcoming Tuesday in order to receive their rewards.