why are there only 23 brawlers

There aren’t literally “only 23 Brawlers” in Brawl Stars overall; the phrase is trending right now because of a limited game mode / ruleset and a bit of community nostalgia and exaggeration.

What “only 23 Brawlers” refers to

• In current ranked / special modes, the pool of available characters can be heavily restricted, so it may feel like the game has “only” a couple dozen usable Brawlers instead of the full roster.

• Some events temporarily disable or “delete” a large number of Brawlers from the selectable pool (for balance or theme reasons), which has led players to joke that dozens of them were “removed from the face of the earth.”

Why the pool feels so small

• Certain modes have been running with assassin‑heavy or role‑limited lineups, so you mostly see the same few Brawlers over and over, especially in high‑level play.

• Competitive players complain that with so many Brawlers temporarily unavailable, scrims and team comps become repetitive and frustrating, which amplifies this “only 23 Brawlers” sentiment in community posts and videos.

Nostalgia and memes

• Community posts and memes have started saying “remember when we actually had only 23 Brawlers?” as a nostalgic joke about how simple the game used to be compared with the current, more chaotic state.

• That phrase has now become a mini‑meme and a shorthand title for discussions, videos, and forum threads about the recent restricted‑pool experiments and missing Brawlers.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.