Hero Voting

0:40 Deadlock's hero voting is how Valve releases a big update's new heroes: instead of unlocking all of them at once, it releases one at a time over two or three weeks, and players vote on which comes next. Valve has run three votes, for the Six New Heroes update in Aug 2025, Old Gods, New Blood in Jan and Feb 2026, and City Never Sleeps in Oct 2026, which brought 18 of Deadlock's 44 heroes. Every completed game earns votes; in the latest vote they are cast in the Pregame lobby before a match. No vote is running on Oct 26, 2026: the last ended with Nurse Harrow on Oct 20, 2026, and Valve has not announced the next.

Quick facts

Source: Valve's Six New Heroes post, Aug 18, 2025; Old Gods, New Blood page, Jan 22, 2026; City Never Sleeps page, Sep 29, 2026; Valve's Oct 20, 2026 post.

How voting works

Valve releases the first hero of an update on a fixed day and lets votes decide the order of the rest. "Rather than enabling all these new heroes at once, we're trying a new approach where we'll be staggering their release," Valve wrote when it began on Aug 18, 2025, "you'll help decide which hero unlocks next by casting votes". Each round's winner unlocks for everyone at 2pm Pacific, and Valve announces it in a Steam post with a short story about the hero. The last hero of each set needs no vote, since only one remains.

Votes come from playing. In Aug 2025 each completed game earned one vote. For Old Gods, New Blood, games of Standard or Street Brawl earned votes and the first win of the day gave 4 more (Valve's page). For City Never Sleeps the first win of the day doubled your votes and the winning team's votes counted double (Valve's page).

1:50 Where you vote has moved with each event. The first vote used a voting booth in the Hideout, the player's own lobby area (Valve, Aug 18, 2025); the second used a ballot box in the Hideout, with in-game sprays to campaign for a hero (Valve's page); and the third moved voting into the new Pregame lobby, where campaign posters and New Hero Priority Tokens, earned by playing, returned (Valve's page).

Vote 1: Six New Heroes (Aug 2025)

The first vote released six heroes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays over two weeks. Mina came first on Aug 18, 2025 without a vote, and the other five followed every other day, per Valve's post.

Valve's results came with Victor. "Nearly 6 million votes were cast in total by the community"; the most by one player was 203; Billy won with the largest lead, "just over 30% of the total votes at the time of his release"; and The Doorman beat Paige by 0.85%, the closest contest, per Valve's Aug 29, 2025 post. Deadlock's peak player count passed 50,000 for five days in a row after the update, Esports.gg reported.

Vote 2: Old Gods, New Blood (Jan to Feb 2026)

The second vote released two heroes a week, on Mondays and Thursdays at 2pm Pacific, from Jan 26, 2026, four days after the Old Gods New Blood Update went live (Valve's page).

Turnout grew tenfold. Players cast 60,776,963 votes; "exactly 600 people had the foresight to only vote for the eventual winner each round"; the largest winning margin was Venator over Celeste at 11%; and the most votes by one player was 813, "every single one was for Celeste", per Valve's Feb 12, 2026 post.

Vote 3: City Never Sleeps (Oct 2026)

1:20 The third vote released two heroes a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays at 2pm Pacific, from Oct 2, 2026, three days after the City Never Sleeps Update (Valve's page).

This was the biggest vote yet. Valve's Oct 20, 2026 post counted over 110 million votes; the closest contest was Baba against Solomon, "decided by a nearly 0.5% difference in votes"; only 847 players voted in every round and only for each winner, while 36,236 voted in every round and never picked a winner; and 22,194 players voted only for Nurse Harrow, one of them exactly 1,000 times. Valve added that Nurse Harrow's voters "consistently proved to have a higher win rate over all other hero voters".

Each release brought a player record. Deadlock passed Team Fortress 2's all-time peak with 262,145 players on Oct 9, Solomon's day (PC Gamer), and reached its all-time peak of 303,347 on Oct 16, Violet's day, on SteamDB's chart (read Oct 26, 2026); see Steam Player Count.

The Rat King meme

0:47 Rat King was a community joke before he was a hero. The character "began as a fan concept a year ago and quickly became a meme in the community", PC Gamer wrote when City Never Sleeps named him among its six heroes on Sep 29, 2026. He was the first of the six to arrive, on Oct 2, 2026, "out of the sewers and into the streets" in Valve's words, and Valve trimmed his ultimate three days later in its Oct 5, 2026 patch.

Heroes before voting

Deadlock's other 26 heroes arrived without a vote. Twenty-one were in the 2024 playtest, as Esports.gg's 2024 hero list counted, Mirage was added on Sep 26, 2024, and Holliday, Vyper, Calico and The Magnificent Sinclair joined normal matchmaking together on Jan 17, 2025. Valve paused Hero Labs while it built the first six voted heroes and "may revisit some of the hero labs heroes", it said on Aug 18, 2025; the whole roster is on Heroes, and Hero Labs on Game Modes.

Frequently asked questions

How do you vote for heroes in Deadlock? In Deadlock you earn hero votes by completing games, and during the City Never Sleeps vote (Oct 2026) you cast them in the Pregame lobby before a match, as Valve's page describes. Earlier votes used a booth or ballot box in the Hideout.

Is there a Deadlock hero vote right now? No, there is no Deadlock hero vote running on Oct 26, 2026: the last one ended when Nurse Harrow came out on Oct 20, 2026, per Valve's post. Valve has not announced the next.

Who won the Deadlock hero vote? Each Deadlock vote released every hero in its set, so the vote decided the order: in Oct 2026 it went Rat King, Baba, Solomon, Deadman Danny, Violet, then Nurse Harrow, as Valve's posts announced. Baba beat Solomon by nearly 0.5%, the closest contest.

How many votes were cast in Deadlock's hero votes? Deadlock players cast nearly 6 million votes in Aug 2025, 60,776,963 in Jan and Feb 2026 and over 110 million in Oct 2026, according to Valve's posts of Aug 29, 2025, Feb 12, 2026 and Oct 20, 2026.

What time do new Deadlock heroes release? New Deadlock heroes have released at 2pm Pacific in every vote, two a week in 2026 (Tuesdays and Fridays in Oct 2026), per Valve's City Never Sleeps page.

Do you get more votes for winning in Deadlock? Yes, in the Oct 2026 Deadlock vote the first win of the day gave double votes and the winning team's votes counted double, per Valve's page. In Jan 2026 the first win of the day gave 4 extra votes.

Sources

• Deadlock MAJOR Update: "City Never Sleeps", Dead Air, Oct 2, 2026 (video)
• Old Gods New Blood - Deadlock Full Game (No Commentary), DerplockDL, Jan 23, 2026 (video)
• Deadlock Devs Explain Everything NOT in the City Never Sleeps Major Update, Goopy, Sep 30, 2026 (video)
• Six New Heroes, Valve (Steam news), Aug 18, 2025
• Billy Comes in Swinging, Valve (Steam news), Aug 20, 2025
• The Doorman, at your Service, Valve (Steam news), Aug 22, 2025
• Paige Writes Her Own Story, Valve (Steam news), Aug 25, 2025
• Drifter Emerges from the Shadows, Valve (Steam news), Aug 27, 2025
• You Can't Kill Victor, Valve (Steam news), Aug 29, 2025
• Deadlock - Old Gods, New Blood, Valve (playdeadlock.com), Jan 22, 2026
• Rem Enters The City That Never Sleeps, Valve (Steam news), Jan 26, 2026
• Graves Prefers The Dead, Valve (Steam news), Jan 29, 2026
• The Curse Beckons for Silver, Valve (Steam news), Feb 2, 2026
• Some Are Merciful, The Venator Is Not, Valve (Steam news), Feb 5, 2026
• Introducing The Dazzling Celeste, Valve (Steam news), Feb 9, 2026
• Apollo - A Cut Above, Valve (Steam news), Feb 12, 2026
• Deadlock - City Never Sleeps, Valve (playdeadlock.com), Sep 29, 2026
• Listen up, Crumbums! Your King is here., Valve (Steam news), Oct 2, 2026
• Minor Update - 10-05-2026, Valve (Steam news), Oct 5, 2026
• Mind the Birds!, Valve (Steam news), Oct 6, 2026
• Make Your Move., Valve (Steam news), Oct 9, 2026
• Fairfax Industries Employee Spotlight, Valve (Steam news), Oct 13, 2026
• Paint the Town, Valve (Steam news), Oct 16, 2026
• Shh... This Won't Hurt a Bit., Valve (Steam news), Oct 20, 2026
• 09-26-2024 Update, Valve (Yoshi, Deadlock forums), Sep 26, 2024
• Holliday, Vyper, Calico, and The Magnificent Sinclair, Valve (Steam news), Jan 17, 2025
• Deadlock's gigantic new update gives its city a spooky new coat of paint and debuts 6 new heroes, including the one and only Rat King, PC Gamer (Tyler Colp), Sep 29, 2026
• Deadlock surpasses Team Fortress 2's all-time concurrent player count peak as it adds a chess wizard, PC Gamer (Justin Wagner), Oct 10, 2026
• Deadlock hero abilities, Esports.gg, 2024
• Deadlock August Update triggers biggest spike since alpha launch, Esports.gg (Lawrence), Aug 29, 2025
• Deadlock charts, SteamDB, read Oct 26, 2026