How the Diablo IV Paladin Rumor Began?

The Diablo IV Paladin rumor doesn’t have one specific source. It is more of a combination of multiple things that happened within a short timeframe. Some of the rumors surfaced as a teaser, as datamining strings, and the combination of those two ballooned up on social media.

The very first hint of a Paladin-like class for Diablo IV came from a promotional artwork release around December 2022 which included the original playable classes: Barbarian, Druid, Rogue, Sorceress, and Necromancer. What caught the eye of fans that day was the one class at the top-center of the image. This unannounced class wields a shield and a spear. The developers never revealed what this class was or why it was in the artwork.

How the Diablo IV Paladin Rumor Began?

The Game Awards 2025 rumor has two underlying elements in the minds of fans because Rhykker posted a video many months before that, in June 2025, about content hinting at a Paladin Class. Then, on August 14, a few websites detected an encrypted Diablo IV Season 11 vendor build with the string: 2.5.Xpaladin.67961.

On November 6, 2025 — during a Rob2628 livestream, Diablo IV associate game director Zaven Haroutunian responded that fans should watch The Game Awards 2025 on December 11. This was interpreted by the community as a potential announcement of the unannounced Diablo IV expansion or some type of teaser.

Fast-forward, The Game Awards 2025 + Diablo IV Paladin rumor started initially as a wild interpretation from a teaser posted by Geoff Keighley on November 28, 2025. However, it was a teaser that didn’t mention the word “Diablo” at all. Fans filled in the blank because the image posted by Geoff was of a statue with skeletons with a demonic vibe.

WhatCulture Gaming pointed out that the three words in Geoff Kighley’s tweet: “regal.inspiring.thickness” were interpreted by some people to be the words to be used at the what3words website — which uses 3 words as a shortcut to real-world coordinates in the map.

It is a real statue placed in Joshua Tree, California for marketing purposes. The full statue image can be seen in this Yahoo article.

This statue inspired a flood of threads around the Diablo IV community, hyping that it was related to the unannounced Diablo IV expansion. On December 1, Jason Schreier debunked this in a Resetera response to a thread discussing the Geoff tweet:

Jschreier: No idea where Jez is getting that, but this statue is not teasing the Diablo 4 expansion. (I don’t currently plan on reporting what it is, sorry, but it’s a good one.)

Considering Jason is well known for leaking inside scoops from game developers, his comment confirms the teaser had nothing to do with Diablo IV. However, that didn’t stop the speculation and rumors as new gasoline was spilled on the rumor fires,

After the Diablo IV Season 11: Divine Intervention details were revealed, on December 3, 2025, Blizzard Entertainment posted an update page that contains this thumbnail under the text: “Additional Bonus Rewards.” That’s definitely a flail weapon. There are no flail weapons in Diablo IV. Diablo II players can recognize this as a Paladin weapon.

If that’s not enough reason to be hyped, then here is another one. During the Season 11 livestream, at 00:32:18, when the developers showed the pet reward, the tooltip shows 7 Class icons — one of them a Barbarian duplicate placeholder. There are only six classes in Diablo IV at the moment.

The rumor going around is that the Paladin Class will be playable in Season 11.

So the pile of breadcrumbs has been growing over a span of 6 months. We will find out once and for all whether the rumors and speculations were right or wrong today, December 11, at 7 pm EST when The Game Awards goes Live. Or most likely toward the end of the livestream.

Where to watch The Game Awards 2025 …