Street Fighter 6 Starts Season 3 with a Bang from a Familiar Foe

Over two years since its initial release, Street Fighter 6 is showing no signs of slowing down, with the popular fighting game getting a fresh set of updates, including a third season of DLC characters. Announced by Capcom at Summer Game Fest 2025, this new season not only highlights classic fighters from across the Street Fighter franchise’s history, but also brings back one of its most controversial figures. Capcom provided early access to the season’s first new character, Sagat, at the 2025 Evolution Championship Series – better known as Evo – in Las Vegas and Den of Geek got a tantalizing preview with the returning King of Muay Thai.

For the uninitiated, Sagat was final boss of the original 1987 Street Fighter game, using his prodigious reach and fireballs to keep players at bay. Canonically defeated and scarred by Ryu during the events of that game, Sagat fell in with the villainous M. Bison during Street Fighter II before beginning to work towards his redemption in Street Fighter IV and Street Fighter V. This path continues on in Street Fighter 6, with Sagat having since secluded himself in the mountains to focus on his martial arts training.

The most striking thing about Sagat in Street Fighter 6 is just how tall he is compared to the other playable characters, towering above the competition trying to take him on. Sagat has always had impressive reach, particularly with his devastating kicks, and his redesign in Street Fighter 6 certainly invokes that dynamic more than his appearances in Street Fighter IV and V, harkening back to his initial appearance in the first two games. Sagat has all his classic moves, with a handful of new attacks, including a crush Super and Critical Arts technique, that make him just as formidable as ever.

As with the other DLC characters, Sagat comes with his own stage, a modernized update of his Street Fighter II stage, Ayutthaya Ruins, complete with Thai temples and a resting Buddha statue in the background. In addition to the impressive graphical presentation, the game has a morning mist and flower petals billowing in the wind behind fighters, continuing SF6’s tradition of really leaning into the technical possibilities of the game’s RE Engine. And as with other returning characters to the series, Sagat’s alternate costume is his classic Street Fighter appearance with athletic shorts, something Capcom highlighted with an impressively rendered statue of the character at their Evo booth.

Three seasons of DLC in and Capcom appears to be moving away from adding new characters to the franchise for the foreseeable future, instead focusing on celebrating different aspects of Street Fighter history. Crimson Viper is the next character slated for season 3, the first original character introduced in the base version of Street Fighter IV, added to SF6. Alex, the protagonist of Street Fighter III, will be the first character added to the roster in 2026 and the second Street Fighter III currently included in SF6 overall.

The biggest surprise in Street Fighter 6 Season 3 is the inclusion of Ingrid, a character with a complicated history within Capcom originally intended for the crossover game Capcom Fighting All-Stars. Following that game’s cancellation in 2003, Ingrid made her official debut in the following year’s Capcom Fighting Evolution, which was widely lambasted during its initial release. Other than a guest appearance in 2006’s Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX and this year’s re-release of Capcom Fighting Evolution as part of Capcom Fighting Collection 2, Ingrid has remained a largely obscure footnote in Capcom history.

Capcom knows that Street Fighter purists are expecting the return of classic characters to be added to Street Fighter 6, as it had with Street Fighter V’s own DLC. But the inclusion of characters like Ingrid, or last year’s Fatal Fury guest fighters, proves that Capcom’s DLC rollout will not proceed exactly as fans expect, with plenty of tricks up the developers’ sleeves. And Ingrid underscores the fact that Capcom is shying away from the franchise’s most divisive moments, but instead reinventing them for modern audiences in their own way.

If there was ever a character to add into Street Fighter 6 to celebrate the franchise’s roots, it doesn’t get much more foundational than Sagat, who has been the only constant presence, in addition to Ryu and Ken, outside of Sagat’s glaring omission from Street Fighter III. Judging by the hands-on preview, and the sheer popularity of Evo attendees looking to try out the character nearly a full week in advance, players are excited for the King of Muay Thai’s return. Street Fighter 6 continues to build towards its future by honoring its past and Sagat is ready to catapult the title to new heights and keep its momentum coming out of its second year.

Street Fighter 6 is developed and published by Capcom, and is available on Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. Sagat will be added to the game on August 5, with Crimson Viper added in Autumn 2025, Alex added in early Spring 2026, and Ingrid added in late Spring 2026.