Overwatch is starting a new event on February 08 (tomorrow at the time of this post). The Year of the Dog, similar to the year of the rooster last year, is an event based on the Chinese New year. Along with the myriad skins from the previous event, there will be new ones available for 6 characters including Genji and Mercy.

We also have the inclusion of Capture the Flag competitive, a new map dedicated to the mode set in Thailand, and a few adjustments to go along with it.

Going forward Flag capture will be instantaneous."If you use certain abilities and these abilities are limited to things that either give you invulnerability or give you great mobility, those abilities will drop the flag. We call these ‘restricted abilities.” Winston's jump pack for instance. So you can imagine the days of sombra's sneaky cap/teleport strat are largely over. According to Jeff Kaplin, "we found that the rate of capture is much higher, the game are much more offensive... and it's actually very rare for games to even go to sudden death now." And speaking to that last part, there will be a new sudden death mechanic when a draw occurs now. Each team's flag will be moved closer towards the center of the map when this happens. This will both disrupt emboldened defense (from your usual sym, torb and bastions), and give enemy teams a smaller distance to travel when going for that extra point. All of this sounds like a really good effort towards making CTF a more engaging, fun mode, which up till now has honestly felt stale.

Year of the dog will last for 4 weeks. (Ending on March 6) The developer video discussing this event in full is posted below.

Edit: Check out all the new stuff here!