Capcom confirms that fans who have been waiting to play Mai Shiranui will do so for a long time in Street Fighter 6

If there is any hope for a December launch by

After more than 35 years, Street Fighter is doing something the series has never done before by bringing not one but two outside guest characters to the new game.

Between SNK’s Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui, only the former seems to be on the fairly close horizon for Street Fighter 6’s second season.

Capcom published a new post on social media tonight confirming that Mai, the Alluring Kunoichi, will not be playable in SF6 until early 2025.

Previously, the developers stated that Shiranui ninja was planned for a winter 2025 release, but there is still some hope that it will arrive sooner rather than later.

This is because “Winter 2025” actually begins in December 2024, although it appears that May will not be visiting for Christmas or New Year’s, leaving Terry alone with the warriors of the world.

Since Season 2 content starts its content release schedule sooner than Year 1, we can still at least look at the wait for Mai and Elena being a little less than the wait for Ed and Akuma.

Mai, the attractive kunoichi.
Arriving in early 2025. pic.twitter.com/q6d76gxUfb

— Street Fighter (@StreetFighter) June 15, 2024

M. Bison will launch on June 26 while Rosetta didn’t come until the end of July last year, so Capcom is keeping a similar DLC calendar, so we can pinpoint some tentative times for when we’ll be able to see the rest of Season 2.

Moving things up a month from AKI could see Terry’s release pushed back sometime around August with Mai in January and Elena around April although that’s purely speculative at this point based on last year’s schedule.

This wait between AKI and Ed was particularly long last year as well, at about five months between characters, so perhaps they’ll keep Terry around September or October to maintain a more balanced spread of content this time around.

It will also be interesting to see how Mai’s release lines up with Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves as well considering that the game is scheduled for an “early 2025” release window with this cross-promotion between the studios continuing.

The developers of Street Fighter 6 have talked a lot about the inclusion of Terry and Mai as the first guest characters in the series such as how they are close to bringing the famous Fatal Fury moves to Street Fighter and the Drive System.

They also answered questions about what this means for a potential Capcom vs. SNK revival, and why the pair was chosen in the first place.

With M. Bison appearing soon, Terry Bogard will likely receive at least one more teaser with his actual in-game appearance for SF6 next month at Evo 2024 which will run from July 19-21.