Season 39 'Shades of the Nephalem': Your Shadow Fights With You

Season 39 'Shades of the Nephalem' has been live since June 26, 2026 at 5:00 PM PDT/CEST and is the current season of Diablo 3. Blizzard re-runs a theme that originally debuted in Season 22 — but pairs it this time with a second change that reaches much further into build design: a fourth slot in Kanai's Cube.

This also ended Season 38 'Ethereal Memory', which ran from March 27 to June 21, 2026. Ethereal items only dropped during the season and did not carry over to non-seasonal heroes.

Shadows of the Past

The season theme is called Shadows of the Past and works about as directly as it sounds: activate a shrine or pylon and a shadow clone of your own class appears to fight at your side.

• The clone uses a build picked at random from three presets for your class
• Its power scales with your character — the stronger you get, the harder it hits
• It lasts one minute, or until your character dies

In practice, shrines turn into a resource-management decision. Grabbing a pylon in an empty corridor wastes most of the clone's minute. Popping it in the middle of a dense pack hands you close to a second source of damage.

The fourth slot in Kanai's Cube

The second addition looks small on paper but is the genuinely interesting one for build tinkerers: in Season 39 Kanai's Cube has an additional fourth slot.

• The fourth slot offers the same choices as the first three
• It cannot be stacked with them — running the same power twice gains you nothing
• Blizzard explicitly frames the goal as more creative freedom in character builds

For most set builds the obvious answer is the Ring of Royal Grandeur: it lowers the set requirement by one piece and hands you back a full gear slot. Builds bottlenecked by a cooldown — Uliana's Stratagem with Seven-Sided Strike, for instance — take the matching weapon power instead. Every one of our build guides now names the power we would put in the fourth slot, and why.

Haedrig's Gift in Season 39

Completing chapters 2, 3 and 4 of the Season Journey grants three gifts that together make up a full class set. Only one set per season can be unlocked this way — Hardcore and non-Hardcore combined.

• Barbarian: Wrath of the Wastes
• Crusader: Roland's Legacy
• Demon Hunter: Unhallowed Essence
• Monk: Raiment of a Thousand Storms
• Necromancer: Bones of Rathma
• Witch Doctor: Helltooth Harness
• Wizard: Tal Rasha's Elements

Important: what counts is the class of the character you open the gift with, and all three gifts have to be opened on the same character.

Seasonal achievements

The achievements rotate again. Season 39 brings five challenges:

• Sprinter/Speed Racer — the entire campaign from Act I to Act V at level 70 in under one hour
• Avarice/Greed — a 50 million gold streak outside the Vault and the Inner Sanctum
• Boss Mode/A Cut Above — every boss at max level on Torment X in under twenty minutes
• Gem Hunter/Superhuman — a level 45 Greater Rift solo with no set items equipped
• Master of All/Game, Set and Match — eight different Set Dungeons at Mastery rank

Extra stash tab

If the Season Journey has not yet earned you five stash tabs, Conqueror tier unlocks another one. Eight objectives are required: a level 70 Nephalem Rift in five minutes on Torment XIII, three legendary gems at rank 55, two seasonal achievements, Malthael at level 70 on Torment XIII in 1:30, Greed on Torment XIII, a level 60 solo Greater Rift, augmenting an ancient legendary with a rank 50+ gem, and a reforge in Kanai's Cube.

Cosmetic rewards

As usual, older rewards return — this time from Season 15 onward. On top of that come the chest and glove slots of the exclusive Conqueror set plus portrait frames themed around the Eternal Conflict. Collectors get the pet Belphegor, travelling along as the keeper of your coins.

Two more items are new for finishing the Season Journey: the pet Corvus Corpus and the portrait 'Laurels of Knowledge'.

Everything about the running season is collected on our Season 39 overview.