Wizards of the Coast has confirmed that the two upcoming classic settings for Dungeons & Dragons will launch in 2022. The most recent classic setting to return was Ravenloft, which was updated in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft.
The default campaign setting for D&D is the Forgotten Realms, but a number of them exist in the lore of the series. These include the post-apocalyptic desert world of Dark Sun, where wizards used magic to bleed the planet dry, and the interstellar magic spaceships of Spelljammer. Some of the classic campaign settings from older Dungeons & Dragons editions have been revived for the fifth edition of D&D, like the magitek world of Eberron, but there are still many that fans would love to see brought back. There are some Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings that cannot return due to legal reasons, but there are plenty of D&D worlds that could return to the multiverse.
Wizards of the Coast previously announced that two more classic D&D campaign settings were on the way after Ravenloft. No time frame was given for the release of these settings, but fans believed that at least one of them could have launched at the end of 2021. However, D&D executive producer Ray Winninger recently revealed during a press event for the upcoming Fizban's Treasury of Dragons that the classic settings will launch in 2022.
It isn't too surprising to learn that the classic campaign settings will launch next year, considering how fleshed out the rest of D&D's 2021 schedule is. The remainder of 2021 includes The Wild Beyond the Witchlight campaign book, which will be released on September 21; Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, which is a guide to dragonkind that is launching on October 19; and Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos, which brings a wizard academy from Magic: The Gathering into D&D on November 16. Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft also launched in May, so a new classic campaign setting would be hot on its heels.
The fact that Wizards of the Coast is releasing a book starring a Dragonlance hero as its POV character suggests that it's one of the contenders for a new Dungeons & Dragons book. The Spelljammer references that have crept into some of the new books (as well as Baldur's Gate 3) also suggest that it's on the list. Whatever the case, Wizards of the Coast isn't likely to reveal the returning Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings just yet. Fans will have to be satisfied with battling the darklords of Ravenloft and surviving a semester of Strixhaven in the meantime.
Source: Wizards of the Coast