WoW Circle opens a fresh Legion x5 realm on 17 October, with BfA and Shadowlands to follow

WoW Circle announced on 30 September 2026 that it is moving to what it calls a new "expansion progress" format: a series of fresh realms with x5 experience, opened one after another over the coming months.

Launch timeline

• Legion 7.3.5 x5: Saturday 17 October 2026 at 16:00 GMT (19:00 Moscow time)
• Battle for Azeroth x5: planned for around December 2026
• Shadowlands x5: planned for around February 2027

The team says more and more players want fresh realms where everyone starts on equal terms, and that new realms are also its answer to old, outdated ones.

The Legion realm

• x5 experience and x2 for everything else; players can set their own rate anywhere from x1 to x5 with the `.xp rate` command
• PvP realm type, with realm-first titles available
• Content opens in stages from patch 7.0, followed by 7.1 Return to Karazhan, 7.2 Tomb of Sargeras and 7.3 Shadows of Argus. WoW Circle says each patch will arrive faster than on its earlier realms
• Custom features include 1v1 and 3v3 solo queue arenas, PvE and arena spectator modes, arena replays and an in-game `.menu`
• The control-panel shop starts almost empty: at launch only character repair is offered, so not even gold or a VIP account can be bought in the first days. More items are added as the realm progresses

Transfers instead of merges

WoW Circle says it will stop merging old realms into new ones. Once a fresh realm has released and finished all of its content, a manual transfer service in the control panel will let players move characters from an older realm of the same expansion, for example from an old Legion realm to the fresh one.

WoW Circle's last fresh realm was a Dragonflight 10.2.7 x2 realm that opened in March 2026.

Source: WoW Circle forum announcements "Opening new servers [Legion, BFA, Shadowlands]" and "Opening Legion 7.3.5 x5 - 17.10.26" (30 September 2026) and the realm page wowcircle.me/legion.