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Expect HBO's Heated Rivalry season 2 soon, says creator Jacob Tierney, but not "December 2026" soon

Tierney, who created Heated Rivalry based on the Game Changers novels by Rachel Reid, provided an exciting (yet tempered) updated on season 2's release schedule

News by Grant DeArmitt, Staff Writer

Published on Wed Dec 31 2025

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More Heated Rivalry is on its way, steamy sports fans, but don't get ahead of yourselves.

The series, which began on Canadian TV and then moved to HBO Max, is perhaps one of the biggest streaming successes of this holiday season, inspiring loads of internet chatter and making fans thirsty for a season 2. Already confirmed, the second season of the LGBTQ+ hockey romance is already in the works from series creator Jacob Tierney, but fans shouldn't expect another Hot Hockey Holiday come 2026.

Speaking to Variety in an interview published December 22, Tierney provided a largely detail-free update on when viewers can expect the next season to skate its way onto their screens.

"It can’t be same time next year," confirmed Tierney, who created Heated Rivalry based on the series of Game Changer novels by author Rachel Reid, "Because this time last year I’d written five of these, and this time this year I’ve written zero of them [...] So it’s going to be a little bit later, but it’s still going to be soon."

A quick note here - along with this look ahead, Tierney and his co-creators also spent a great deal of this interview talking about how the timeframe of Heated Rivalry season 1 was actually moved up. "Originally," reported Justin Stockman, VP of Content Development & Programming at the show's original studio, Bell Media, "We were planning to air it in early 2026."

So hey, if recent history has any lessons to teach, we could maybe expect Heated Rivalry season 2's release date to be earlier than Tierney believes. That said, we do acknowledge that the episodes will have to, in fact, be written first.

Heated Rivalry is streaming now on HBO Max.

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Grant DeArmitt: Grant DeArmitt (he/him) likes horror, comics, and the unholy union of the two. In the past, and despite their better judgment, he has written for Nightmare on Film Street and Newsarama. He lives in Brooklyn with his partner, Kingsley, and corgi, Legs.