The Big Autumn Warhammer Preview is new this year, landing just weeks after GW quietly killed the Nova Open preview for the second time.
There wasn’t a Big Autumn Warhammer Preview last year (or ever), so GW suddenly adding one now is kinda hard to ignore. It airs Friday at 7pm UK time across Warhammer Community, Twitch and YouTube, with the next Warhammer 40,000 Codex on the bill alongside a new Kill Team, a heap of Warhammer: The Old World miniatures, a new Blood Bowl team, and an Age of Sigmar reveal GW is calling long-awaited.
The lineup is plenty big, but the new slot on GW’s calendar might be the most interesting. WarCom points back to the Big Summer Preview, like Autumn is simply the next show in the series.
That’s a change from how autumn reveals used to work. Nova Open used to hold the late summer/fall slot, and it looks like GW has a new seasonal schedule to follow now…
GW Traded the Convention Floor for a Calendar It Owns
- New slot: the Big Autumn Warhammer Preview didn’t exist before this year, and it lands right where the Nova Open reveals used to.
- The pattern: GW has now cut Nova twice, plus the Dallas Open, Tacoma, GenCon, LVO, and Warhammer Day previews.
- Friday’s slate: the next 40k Codex, a new Kill Team, Old World kits, a Blood Bowl team, and an all-new Duardin faction for Age of Sigmar.
The timing isn’t subtle either, as we spent the start of the month looking at an empty Nova reveal calendar, and now GW has a brand-new seasonal preview nobody had heard of until today. GW hasn’t called Autumn a replacement, but rolling it out in the same month Nova disappears sure makes it look like one.
Running through what’s already been cancled it gets even harder to write this off as a coincidence. Nova in 2025 and again in 2026, GenCon, 2025 LVO, and more. Every one of those was tied to a convention floor GW didn’t own. New Year, Summer, and now Autumn happen entirely on GW’s terms.
You can see why GW would prefer it that way. It gets a preview calendar it can plan around, and nobody else gets a chance to scoop the reveals first. What we lose is the part where a few hundred people are all in the same hall seeing something at once, which was most of the fun of a convention reveal in the first place. Those previews have been vanishing all year, (except the Adepticon Preview) and GW still hasn’t explained why.
GW still hasn’t come out and said this is the new preview strategy, so yes, we’re reading the pattern rather than a press release. But at this point, though, the canceled pile is deep enough that “seasonal” is starting to look a lot more like the schedule than the marketing.
A Gholem of Gazul Is the Only Thing Here You Can’t Already Look Up
The Duardin tease is the one part of this announcement we expected after they already leaked the models. In this preview, they showed a silhouette, dropped two names, a Gholem of Gazul and the Khazalites Holds, and said the thing marches with the war throngs of an all-new Duardin faction for Age of Sigmar. That’s all GW gave us until Friday, well, other than the banner they leaked on the Warhammer site.
A brand-new Duardin army is a proper range addition, not another repack, and the AoS release schedule has plenty of room for something this substantial too.
Final Thoughts on the Big Autumn Warhammer Preview
Friday tells us what GW is trying to sell us next and were here for it. Plus, in a few months we’ll know whether there is a November Warhammer World Championships preview or GW pushes to New Year’s 2027 for their next big reveal show; that will tell us whether Autumn actually took somebody else’s spot.
If the November show runs normally, Autumn is probably just another stop on GW’s calendar. If November disappears too, then we have our answer on their new “seasonal” preview stradegy.
Either way, Friday at 7 pm UK is when those new Duardin finally get some answers, along with whatever else GW has stuffed into this monster of a preview.
🔗 Related Reads:
- GW Pulled The Plug on The Nova Open Preview
- GW Keeps Pulling the Plug On New Warhammer Previews
- Warhammer Summer Preview 2026
- New Warhammer 40k 2026 Roadmap, 11th Edition Release Schedule
- Updated 2026 Age of Sigmar Roadmap + New Releases Schedule
- Warhammer Previews, Reveals, News & Rumors Hub
What do you think about the Big Autumn Warhammer Preview replacing GW’s convention reveals?
