Dungeons & Dragons launches 2026 community advisory group to shape roadmap

Wizards of the Coast is trying to move Dungeons & Dragons feedback out of the comments section and into the room where plans get made. The new 2026 Community Advisory Group is a rotating panel of creators, store owners, event organizers, community builders and educators, and the company says members are paid like professional consultants so they can give candid, unfiltered feedback early enough to matter.

That push fits the reset Dan Ayoub has been building since he took over the D&D franchise in 2025. In a July 30, 2025 post, Ayoub said D&D was being put “back where it belongs: at your table,” and he has said the team has been listening through monthly AMAs, Discord, State of the Game updates, creator YouTube channels, Unearthed Arcana feedback, daily comments and a recent survey. The advisory group makes that listening more formal. It gives Wizards a smaller, selected group of trusted voices to pressure-test ideas before those ideas become fixed.

The practical stakes are obvious in the 2026 roadmap work. The group has already discussed early product concepts and D&D Beyond tools, and its feedback helped push the team to revisit the timing of the 2026 roadmap before it was shared publicly in March. That roadmap was divided into Now, Next and Complete, warned that priorities and scope could change, and put the year’s big priorities on rebuilding the game platform, improving player onboarding and the character builder, and launching Dungeon Master tools. D&D Beyond also said it would keep the public roadmap hub updated for years, while regular surveys launched in March to track what is working, what needs improving and where players want the game to go next.

The same pattern shows up in D&D’s wider release calendar. On March 3, the company laid out dates for Ravenloft: The Horrors Within, with pre-order opening April 13, Master Tier access on June 2, Hero Tier access on June 9 and wide release on June 16. It also flagged the Season of Magic, D&D Reference Cards in August, and Arcana Unleashed and Arcana Unleashed: Deadfall in September. At Gary Con, Ayoub also said he spent time with Luke Gygax and that D&D announced a collaboration to bring more Greyhawk to the game, with more collaborations to come.

The question now is whether this advisory group is just a cleaner wrapper around feedback Wizards was already collecting, or a real seat at the table before the map is drawn. If it works, fewer surprises will hit the community after the roadmap is locked, and more of them will be caught before the initiative order is set.