Persona 5 will steal the heart of Heaven Burns Red on May 22. Check out when the upcoming crossover will drop and when HBR’s special livestream for the event will happen.
Heaven Burns Red x Persona 5 Official Launch Announced
Coming May 22 with Special Livestream on May 14
Heaven Burns Red (HBR), the free-to-play, turn-based mobile and PC RPG written by Japanese visual novelist Jun Maeda, has announced that its collaboration with Persona 5 Royal (P5R) will officially launch on May 22, 2026. This highly anticipated crossover was first teased on February 1 and will feature an original story supervised by ATLUS.
According to the game’s official X (Twitter) account, developers WFS, Inc. and Key will host a special livestream on HBR’s YouTube channel on May 14 at 4:00 AM PT / 7:00 AM ET to share further details regarding the event. Check out the table below to know when the livestream begins in each region:
| Region | Livestream Start Time |
|---|---|
| United States (ET) | Thursday, May 14, 2026, 7:00 a.m. |
| United States (PT) | Thursday, May 14, 2026, 4:00 a.m. |
| United Kingdom | Thursday, May 14, 2026, 12:00 p.m. |
| Central Europe | Thursday, May 14, 2026, 1:00 p.m. |
| New Zealand | Friday, May 15, 2026, 12:00 a.m. |
| Australian East Coast | Thursday, May 14, 2026, 9:00 p.m. |
| Australian West Coast | Thursday, May 14, 2026, 7:00 p.m. |
| Japan | Thursday, May 14, 2026, 8:00 p.m. |
| Philippines | Thursday, May 14, 2026, 7:00 p.m. |
| South Africa | Thursday, May 14, 2026, 1:00 p.m. |
| Brazil | Thursday, May 14, 2026, 8:00 a.m. |
| Universal Time (UTC) | Thursday, May 14, 2026, 11:00 a.m. |
First Collab Outside of Key Studio IPs
The P5R event is the first time HBR has crossed over with a franchise outside of visual novel studio Key’s IPs. Previous team-ups with titles under the Key banner include the popular anime series Angel Beats!, Kaginado, Clannad, Air, and Kannon.
While not much is known about HBR x Persona 5, fans anticipate an extensive narrative featuring P5R’s most popular characters. This expectation stems from the Angel Beats! collab, which was praised for delivering a deeply emotional backstory for its crossover cast.
The Persona 5 Curse Continues?
Despite the excitement, the P5R partnership sparked mixed reactions on various Reddit threads and X (Twitter) comments, with some fans speculating that HBR might be nearing its end. This stems from an online meme suggesting that titles joining forces with the ATLUS franchise often face "end-of-service" (EOS) shortly after the event concludes.
Notable "victims" often cited in the "Persona 5 curse" include SAO: Memory Defrag, Dragalia Lost, and NieR Reincarnation. This superstition even extended to Overwatch 2, as while the game did not shut down, fans joked that the collaboration catalyzed the recent major revamp, essentially "killing" the sequel to make way for the return to a unified Overwatch experience.
However, these are mere speculations and a series of unfortunate coincidences, given that many more titles have previously collaborated with P5R and continue to operate and proliferate to this day. This includes Identity V, AFK Arena, Wuthering Waves, and the most recently released Neverness To Everness, just to name a few.
While the viral meme continues to spread online, fans of the HBR franchise are excited about what the upcoming P5R event will bring to the game. The popular mobile gacha title originally debuted as a Japan-exclusive in 2022, followed by a global release in 2024 under the publishing of Yostar Games.
Heaven Burns Red is available on iOS, Android, and PC via Steam and its dedicated client. As of writing, the global version is rapidly catching up to the Japanese server through an accelerated content schedule aimed at eventual synchronization.
Sources:
Heaven Burns Red X post on Persona 5 Collab
Heaven Burns Red x Persona 5 Special Livestream
