Apex Legends' Blood Pact event runs from October 13 to November 3, 2026, EA announced on October 8, and it replaces the Street Fighter 6 takeover that ran from September 22 to October 13. The event adds a faction pledge to the Wildcard mode, moves its map to a haunted Kings Canyon at night, and fills the store with werewolf and demon cosmetics. Its final day is also the final day of Season 30.

Wildcard is where the season's themed takeovers have landed. Blood Pact keeps the mode's structure and adds one choice at the start: pledge to the Beasts or to the Demons, then earn that faction's Wild Cards by completing the challenge each round sets. Deal enough damage or land enough knocks and the card is yours. Each card grants one specific power.

Six faction Wild Cards, three per faction

Beasts are built around movement. Evasive Maneuvers makes a player move faster and gain a double jump while weapons are stowed. Fast Draw speeds up reloads and the use of shield cells. Critical Roll grants temporary critical hits on reload.

Demons trade mobility for durability. Speedy Charge recharges tactical and ultimate abilities faster. Shields Up gives Epic-level shields. Super Cells make cells regenerate all shield health instead of part of it.

EA had already tuned one of those cards before the event started. An October 2 update cut Fast Draw's reload benefit to 25% from 35% and its consumable-use benefit to 25% from 50%.

Six neutral ability icons in two groups: movement and handling motifs on the left, with recharge and shield motifs on the right.
Concept illustration of the six source-described Wild Card effects, grouped by movement and handling versus recharge and durability.

A haunted Kings Canyon with rolling fog

Blood Pact moves the Wildcard map to a night version of Kings Canyon. Fog can descend at random and reduce sightlines, which the announcement presents as a chance to stalk other squads. Rev Shell Grenades return to help players find whoever is hiding in the dark. The takeover adds haunted buildings, glowing Nessies, haunted Loot Bins and pumpkin-skinned EVO orbs, along with a horned skull on one point of interest.

What the last takeover in this mode contained

The Street Fighter 6 event that finished on the day Blood Pact began shows how much of this mode is rebuilt each time. Players collected tokens to fill a Fight Gauge, then triggered a Fighter Form that pulled the camera into third person and used the fighting styles of Ryu, Chun-Li, Akuma and Dhalsim, ending in a Showdown where downed players dropped straight back into the fight. Olympus became the stage, with a takeover at Luke's Gym, smashable Punch Trucks, arcade cabinets and giant Blanka-chan balloons. The cosmetics ran to eight Iconic Legend Skins, eight Legendary weapon skins and a Hadoken Mythic Universal Melee with a matching Deathbox, with Zenny earned toward a Reward Shop that included a Lifeline x Li-Fen Epic Skin.

EA tuned that version while it ran. An October 1 update cut Fighter's Defense to 50% from 55% and reduced the stored ultimates for Ryu, Chun-Li and Dhalsim to two from three, part of what the studio called continued tuning of Wildcard.

What the store adds, and what the post leaves unpriced

Sparrow gets a Legend Skin and a matching Character Select Animation with an 80s werewolf look, Alter gets a Legend Skin, and the R-99 gets a Weapon Skin. Beast and Demon Legend Retheme Bundles round out the offers, and the store image on the announcement shows offers for Alter, Octane, Fuse, Sparrow, Conduit and Revenant alongside Apex Packs. That post carries no price for any of it and describes no free reward track, so the cost is only visible in the in-game store.

Exploit fixes, Javelin numbers and two queue tests

The event landed during a week with several updates. On October 9, the anti-cheat team said it had fixed weapon exploits that had been circulating in videos that week, including one that let an entire magazine fire in a single shot and another that let the Sentinel and the C.A.R. SMG fire and reload faster than intended. The same day, EA started a matchmaking test that raises maximum queue times for Platinum and above on every platform and in every region, scaling with rank tier; Masters players face an extension of about 30 seconds. It runs until the season ends or until the team has enough data.

A day earlier, the anti-cheat team published the first week of EA Javelin Anticheat: 265,550 cheat attempts prevented, 12,969 accounts banned, 40 cheat programs tracked and 91% of those programs disrupted. Javelin took over Apex's PC anti-cheat on September 29, replacing Easy Anti-Cheat, and EA said at the time that Apex players would not have to enable secure boot for it. Some of the first week's enforcement targeted hardware cheating devices, with 4,058 bans tied to Aimzenix, 1,201 to Cronus, 199 to XIM and 141 to Titan.

Two other tests were already running. From October 7, cross-play became the default on US-West servers for all platforms, and console players can turn it off in settings; that test runs until the season ends on November 3. On October 2, EA fixed a bug that reset game settings after every relaunch for some Steam users, most often in APAC. On October 8, it fixed console movement problems affecting Ash's dash and double jump, Sparrow's double jump, Revenant's climb and mantle, and Lifeline's run animation.

Three open issues on EA's public tracker

EA lists three issues it is still working on: an Alter portal can drop players in the wrong location, players can clip through the ground of some structures on Broken Moon, and game settings reset on startup for some players. The anti-cheat post adds that a console update is coming in the coming weeks and that the team is investigating videos of cheating it called egregious.

The event post also leaves the shape of the grind open. It does not say how many Wild Cards a squad can hold, how the challenges scale with the round number, or whether cards carry between matches.