Rust Halloween 2026 Update: What’s New and How to Run a Halloween Server

Rust’s Halloween update arrives on 22 October 2026 at 18:00 BST / 13:00 EST, and it is mandatory: every server and every client has to update to keep playing together. For server owners it is also the one week of the year when players log in looking for something to be scared of, and the servers that give it to them are the ones they remember.

The Halloween event comes back (scarecrows, Halloween dungeons, spooky collectables and a Frankenstein table you can craft from the start), with new limited items this year: Halloween wallpapers, Halloween string lights, a Skull Wall Lamp and an alien costume. Update in the 18:00 BST window, back up your plugins first, and give your players an event of your own on top.

What follows comes from Facepunch’s announcement in the October patch notes and from its public commit log, where the Halloween branch was merged into the main game on 19 October. When Facepunch publishes its own Halloween notes, this page is checked against them.

When it lands, and what mandatory means

Facepunch announced the update for 18:00 BST / 13:00 EST on 22 October. Mandatory means the new client cannot join an old server and the old client cannot join a new one, so your server is effectively offline until you update it. The October announcement does not mention a wipe.

• Update the server as soon as the build is out.
• Update Oxide or Carbon in the same window; a game update usually needs a new build of the mod framework too.
• Keep a copy of your oxide (or carbon) folder from before the update, so any plugin that breaks can be rolled back while it is fixed.

What comes back with the Halloween event

The commits switching the event on list four things:

• Scarecrows roam the map again. A fix in the same update stops Halloween NPCs from spawning inside safe zones.
• Halloween dungeons open through portals. This year’s fixes give the dungeon a map, stop radiation from starting the moment you walk in, and stop players who are not admins from being killed inside.
• Collectables switch to their spooky versions, and candy spawns around the world for the event.
• The Frankenstein table, where players assemble their own Frankenstein, can be crafted by default, and it cannot be used while building blocked.

Halloween decorations at night: carved pumpkins, candles, a tombstone and a skull torch. Image: Facepunch Studios.

New this year: limited Halloween items

The Halloween 2026 content in the commit log adds a set of limited items to the store:

• Halloween wallpapers for the inside of your base.
• Halloween string lights, reworked so they deploy cleanly and do not trap players walking over them.
• A Skull Wall Lamp.
• An alien costume that protects like bone armour and takes the same clothing slots.

Older Halloween deployables, from the carvable pumpkin to the skull trophies, get fixes in the same update: the pumpkin can no longer take a code lock, and the four skull trophy variants finally look different from each other.

What it changes for server owners

The event runs on its own on vanilla servers. What is worth your attention:

• NPC population. Scarecrows add hostile NPCs across the map for the season. On a server that already runs NPC plugins, watch the numbers on the first night.
• Dungeons are new places for fights to happen. Tell players where the portals are and that the dungeon fixes are in.
• Safe zones stay safe: Halloween NPCs no longer spawn inside them.

Most broken Halloween nights are not Facepunch’s update but a plugin that was never tested against it. If you cannot test before 18:00 BST, at least know which plugins you would unload first if the console fills with errors.

Give your players an event of their own

The vanilla event is the same on every server. What makes players pick yours this week is something they cannot get elsewhere. A few ideas that work:

1. A dungeon night: announce an hour when the whole server goes into the Halloween dungeons together, with a prize for the first group out.
2. A costume contest: screenshots of players in costume in your Discord, voted by the community.
3. A hunt: something on the map that hunts players, rather than players hunting it.

That third one is what my Halloween plugin does. Michael Myers walks towards one player at a time, anywhere on the map. Only that player hears the theme and sees the warning; doors and towers do not stop him. Whoever puts him down for the third time becomes him, with his outfit, his knife and five powers. It runs on its own: no commands for players, no permissions to set up and no other plugins needed.

Pair the hunt with a place worth being scared in. A haunted landmark on the map gives the event somewhere to start and somewhere for players to run to.

Halloween on the map itself

If you run a custom map, a themed landmark does more for the season than any decoration in the store. Three of mine were made with Halloween in mind:

• Cursed Temple, an ancient temple swallowed by the forest, sealed by doors that open with a card reader.
• Ghostbusters Barracks, the firehouse from the films, with seven areas, two puzzles, a trap and NPCs.
• Ghostbusters Logo, free, a wall-sized sign for a haunted building or a Halloween maze.

The checklist for 22 October

• Back up oxide or carbon before 18:00 BST.
• Update the server and the mod framework when the build is out.
• Check the console for plugin errors in the first minutes.
• Tell players about the dungeons, the scarecrows and the new limited items.
• Plan one event of your own for the week.

Where Badgyver comes in

I make Rust plugins and custom maps for servers that want more than the vanilla game, and Halloween is the week that shows the difference. The Halloween plugin is ready for this season, and the rest of the Rust plugins and custom maps are a click away. Questions go straight to me on Discord. For what comes after Halloween, read the preview of the November update.