With Season 2 coming soon, Ranked modes are around the corner. That includes Warzone, which just saw a new competitive circuit unveiled. The devs at Raven Software have been hard at work to not only make Ranked a great experience, but add to it. Iron Gauntlet is a new mode arriving in beta, inspired by the Iron Trials introduced in previous Warzone titles. It's cool to see the team experimenting with the game, and we won't have long to wait!
The competitive landscape of Call of Duty: Warzone is entering a new chapter. Over the past few months, we’ve taken a deep dive into how competitive play is performing across all skill levels, looking closely at everything from queue times to match quality. What we found made one thing clear: it's time for our format to evolve into one that further sharpens competition, improves the experience and creates more exciting, meaningful moments for you, our players. February 2026 marks the beginning of that evolution.
To start, Ranked Play: Resurgence will return early in Season 02, bringing back the fast-paced, high-intensity experience that players know and love. This mode will continue to showcase aggressive play, strong team coordination, and quick decision-making, while still preserving the depth and progression expected from Warzone competition.
In addition, we'll be introducing a beta version of a new mode called Iron Gauntlet - a competitive experience built as an evolution of Iron Trials. Designed to emphasize skill expression, smart positioning, and calculated engagements, Iron Gauntlet will be a large map, Battle Royale experience with tuned features such as health, loot, and loadout rules. Iron Gauntlet represents an important step forward in refining competition for traditional Battle Royale, as well as an opportunity for us to experiment with a fresh mode with the long-term health of competition in Warzone in mind. Throughout Season 02, we’ll be closely monitoring player feedback and in-game data to help determine how we mold this mode and the role it will play in future seasons.
Importantly, we’ll be rotating these modes at defined intervals rather than running multiple competitive modes in parallel. Iron Gauntlet will be enabled during specific sprints that will be proactively communicated throughout the season. While Iron Gauntlet is active, Ranked Play: Resurgence will be temporarily disabled. This approach will bring the competitive community together in an ecosystem with healthier matchmaking, stronger competition in matches, and exciting moments for our competitive community to chase unique rewards, while also giving us clearer insight into how each format performs.
To round off our 2026 offering, later today we'll be posting an official blog detailing the brand new Call of Duty®: Warzone Resurgence Series - a new circuit where the best Resurgence players will compete for their share of a massive prize pool across months of intense competition beginning next month. Keep an eye out for the blog on @COD_Esports.
We're incredibly excited for the new chapter of competition that's just around the corner for Warzone! As always, follow us on @RavenSoftware for updates and continue to send us your feedback as we prepare to kick off a fresh season of competition.
Stay tuned to GamingTrend for more Call of Duty: Warzone news and info!
