How Many Heroes in Marvel Rivals? The Count, Season by Season

Is it 55 heroes now that Season 11 is live?

Yes. Season 11, "Doomsday", went live on November 13, 2026, and the official Version 20261113 patch notes list "New Hero: Nightcrawler" as its headline content. The wiki's Nightcrawler page calls him a Strategist and "the game's 55th playable character", introduced in Season 11.0, and the wiki's Heroes page now gives a total of 55. Season 11 is split into Season 11.0 (November 13 to December 11, 2026) and Season 11.5 (December 11, 2026 to January 15, 2027), per the wiki's Season 11 page.

The wiki's Season 11 page also lists Dracula as an 11.5 hero, and its Heroes table puts him at #56 with a release date of December 11, 2026. Until that update ships he is announced, not playable, and the wiki shows no confirmed role for him, so this page does not count him. If the select screen shows 56 portraits after December 11, the count has moved again.

Season 10 had been different from every season before it. Each half-season from Season 2 to Season 9 added one hero, but Season 10 (September 11 to November 13, 2026) added only Gorr, a 10.0 release; its 10.5 update brought the Path to Doomsday modes based on Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame instead of a character. So the count stayed at 54 for the whole of Season 10, and anyone who claimed a 55th playable hero in Season 10.5 was wrong by the wiki's season record.

Gorr's place in the count is recorded the same way across sources: the wiki's Gorr page calls him the 54th hero introduced to the roster, released in Season 10.0, and his role is Duelist. His kit is built around All-Black the Necrosword and Black Berserkers, summoned allies that spawn when he lands a final blow. His season's content is on the marvel rivals season 10 page; Nightcrawler has his own page at nightcrawler marvel rivals, and the rest of Season 11 is on marvel rivals season 11.

The 55 by role

The roster is lopsided, and the lopsidedness matters for anyone choosing a main or rolling a random pick. Just under half of all heroes are Duelists; the wiki's role summary says this role "has the highest number of heroes by far, containing 27 out of the 55 heroes."

| Role | Heroes | Share of roster | What the role does (wiki summary) | |---|---|---|---| | Vanguard | 14 | 25% | Frontline heroes with large health pools and at least one way to block or mitigate damage | | Duelist | 27 | 49% | Damage dealers responsible for finding and eliminating opponents | | Strategist | 13 | 24% | Healers and support heroes who also grant buffs such as bonus health or damage | | Multi-Role | 1 | 2% | Deadpool, who has a separate Vanguard, Duelist and Strategist version |

The percentages are simple arithmetic on the counts, rounded. They have a practical consequence: an unfiltered random roll from all 55 heroes lands on a Duelist just under half the time (27 in 55, about 49%), purely because there are more of them. That is why the marvel rivals hero randomizer lets you filter by role, and why a random Strategist roll draws from only 13 names.

The smaller pools also explain a common piece of beginner advice. A team that needs a tank or a healer has 14 or 13 heroes to choose from, so learning two or three heroes in each of those roles covers a large share of the options you will ever be asked to fill. The full role-by-role breakdown, with what each role is expected to do in a fight, is on marvel rivals roles explained.

How did the roster grow from 33 to 55?

The wiki's Hero Release Dates table records the order of every addition. At launch on December 6, 2024 the game had 33 heroes. Working back from that table, the launch cast was 8 Vanguards, 18 Duelists and 7 Strategists; Deadpool did not exist yet. Every hero since then has arrived with a season or a half-season update:

| Season (half) | Date live | Hero added | Role | Roster total | |---|---|---|---|---| | Season 1 (first half) | Jan 10, 2025 | Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman | Duelist, Strategist | 35 | | Season 1 (second half) | Feb 21, 2025 | Human Torch, The Thing | Duelist, Vanguard | 37 | | Season 2 | Apr 11, 2025 | Emma Frost | Vanguard | 38 | | Season 2.5 | May 30, 2025 | Ultron | Strategist | 39 | | Season 3 | Jul 11, 2025 | Phoenix | Duelist | 40 | | Season 3.5 | Aug 8, 2025 | Blade | Duelist | 41 | | Season 4 | Sep 12, 2025 | Angela | Vanguard | 42 | | Season 4.5 | Oct 10, 2025 | Daredevil | Duelist | 43 | | Season 5 | Nov 14, 2025 | Gambit | Strategist | 44 | | Season 5.5 | Dec 12, 2025 | Rogue | Vanguard | 45 | | Season 6 | Jan 16, 2026 | Deadpool | Multi-Role | 46 | | Season 6.5 | Feb 13, 2026 | Elsa Bloodstone | Duelist | 47 | | Season 7 | Mar 20, 2026 | White Fox | Strategist | 48 | | Season 7.5 | Apr 17, 2026 | Black Cat | Duelist | 49 | | Season 8 | May 15, 2026 | Devil Dinosaur | Vanguard | 50 | | Season 8.5 | Jun 12, 2026 | Cyclops | Duelist | 51 | | Season 9 | Jul 10, 2026 | Jubilee | Strategist | 52 | | Season 9.5 | Aug 7, 2026 | The Hood | Vanguard | 53 | | Season 10 | Sep 11, 2026 | Gorr | Duelist | 54 | | Season 11 | Nov 13, 2026 | Nightcrawler | Strategist | 55 |

Season 1 is the only season that added four heroes, the Fantastic Four, two in each half. From Season 2 to Season 9 the pattern was one hero per half-season; once seasons shortened to nine weeks from Season 3, the wiki's Seasons page notes, that meant roughly one new hero a month. Of the 22 heroes added after launch, 9 were Duelists, 6 Vanguards, 6 Strategists and 1 Multi-Role, so the Duelist pool has grown fastest in absolute terms, while Vanguards went from 8 to 14 and Strategists from 7 to 13.

Two role assignments in that table regularly get misstated elsewhere, so they are worth flagging: Gambit is a Strategist, not a damage hero, and Rogue is a Vanguard.

Why Season 10 added only one hero

Season 10 is the first season with a single new hero, and the wiki's trivia section on the Season 10 page explains the background. When the season was first planned, Gorr was meant to be the last character released in 2026, with Season 11 shipping without a hero so the team could prioritise the Avengers: Doomsday mode before resuming normal releases in Season 12. The wiki notes that this plan was later scrapped at an unknown point. It also records that players had widely speculated that Nightcrawler would be Season 10's second hero, which did not happen.

The practical reading for players is narrow: the 10.5 half went to modes rather than a character, so the 55th hero had to wait for the next season. He turned out to be Nightcrawler, the hero players had expected in Season 10. The wiki's Heroes table shows him first in the Season 11 official trailer on November 10, 2026 and playable on November 13, 2026. In that table every hero since Season 1 was first shown in a trailer between three days (White Fox, Devil Dinosaur, Jubilee, Gorr, Nightcrawler) and about nine weeks (Elsa Bloodstone) before becoming playable. Season 11 also brings Dracula, listed for Season 11.5 on December 11, 2026.

Counting questions: Deadpool, Cloak & Dagger and reworks

Most disagreements about the hero count come from three cases, and the game's own roster settles each of them.

Deadpool counts once. He is the only Multi-Role hero and has three separate versions, one per role, with altered stats and abilities in each. The wiki counts him as a single hero, which is how the total reaches 55 rather than 57. He arrived in Season 6 on January 16, 2026 as the 46th hero.

Cloak & Dagger count once. The duo is two characters who share one hero slot and swap between Cloak's and Dagger's abilities. They are listed as one Strategist in the roster, among the 13. Counting characters rather than heroes gives a higher number, but the wiki's hero total does not count them that way.

Reworks do not change the count. Season 9 gave Black Widow a rework to her moveset, Season 10 did the same for Scarlet Witch, and the wiki's Season 11 page lists a Squirrel Girl rework, according to the wiki's season pages. Each changed how that hero plays, but none added a portrait. The same is true of balance patches, which the wiki notes arrive every half-season and adjust existing heroes. A roster that "feels" bigger after a rework still has the same number of heroes.

One more source of confusion is announcement dates versus release dates. The wiki's table records both: Nightcrawler, for example, was shown in the Season 11 trailer on November 10, 2026 but was not playable until November 13, and Dracula is listed in the table now but is not due until December 11. A count taken from announcements rather than from the live game can run one ahead for a few days before each season.

Checking the count yourself

The select screen is the definitive check, since it shows every hero you can pick. Counting portraits there takes a minute, and if the number differs from 55 a new hero has arrived since this page was last updated.

Outside the game, the Marvel Rivals Wiki's Heroes page states the current total in its first paragraph and keeps the release-date table used above, and the official site's news section posts patch notes and season announcements for every new hero. When a hero drops, those two sources are where the change shows up first.

On this site, every tool and count reads from one roster file, so the marvel rivals hero randomizer, the marvel rivals character wheel and this page all use the same 55 names. A watcher script compares that file with the wiki's roster once a day and opens an alert when a new hero or season appears, but a human confirms the change against the official site before the roster is updated. If you want to see the full cast with roles and portraits, use marvel rivals characters list; for how strong each hero is considered at the moment, the marvel rivals tier list labels its placements as community consensus rather than measured data.