Season 29 our Winter Update is now Live!

Howdy Folks! Winter is in full force. Love is in the air…If you consider Rocket Shaped Hearts Love that is! Season 29 is now live. This update will bring some changes to the spawn system again, Golden Crown reward has been added for achieving Elite rank in Duel, Skill Rank reset, Special movement ability added for DOOM | Nyx, New Podium, and much more. Check out a full break down of whats being added to this season below. Make sure to put on your Valentines day cosmetics!

Update Noes from Bethesda

Quake Champions 2026 Season 29 – Winter Update

Season 29 Battle Pass:

New: Cthalha’s ELDER MAGIC Podium level 100 of paid BP

Features seasonal content for winter and early spring
Features the previously Store Exclusive Valentine’s Day weapons and vanities

New Ranked Play Rewards:

Leaderboards and Skill Ratings have been reset for all game modes
Ranking Tiers updated: Bronze 1-599, Silver 600-1099, Gold 1100-1599, Diamond 1600-2099, Elite 2100+
New: GOLDEN CROWN vanity – Unlocked when a player earns Elite.
Every Champion has their own crown to earn, granted when playing as that champion in Elite.

New Controls+ menu:

Added a Controls+ settings menu for advanced champion controls, and moved the special movement bind to this menu
Doom Slayer can now use the special movement bind for Double Jump
Nyx can now use the special movement bind for Wall Jump
Special Movement vars moved into the input config to address initialization concerns. This will mean that your preferences will need to be reset on the Controls+ menu, as they will no longer be read from the old config or the cloud

Spawn Code:

Updated spawn code to no longer favor respawn locations near teammates and just try to spread players out as much as possible. It will largely behave like the old spawn code, except fixes the fundamental issues that had been discovered and still offers the two-best spawn possibilities in ranked modes.
Fixed line of sight check for respawns effecting spawn locations on Blood Run, Corrupted Keep, Crucible, Deep Embrace, that would cause the enemy to sometimes respawn within a close line of sight of their attacker

Map Updates:

Corrupted Keep: Removed a totem spot outside the map
Crucible: Removed the central respawn locations and fixed spawn weight imbalances
Crucible: Fixed incorrect gamemode flags on 3 respawn locations, which made them unavailable in Duel
Deep Embrace: Made the trapped rl respawn location less likely to occur
Insomnia: Fixed incorrect gamemode flags on 3 respawn locations, which made them unavailable in Duel

Reduced Knockback:

Reduced max knockback from 160 to 120
Reduced max knockback scale from 3x to 2x (reducing the amount of knockback created by quad damage)
Reduce the amount of knockback reduction provided by Protection, clamping knockback reduction between the bonus protection rate and 0.5 (protection reduces knockback by 1/2, instead of by 3/4)
Removed vertical knockback lift from Gauntlet, starting Machine Gun, and starting Shotgun
Reduced vertical knockback lift from Heavy Machine Gun, Super Shotgun, and Lightning Gun from 16u to 10u
Ranger: Dire Orb Knockback reduced from 75 to 40
Scalebearer: Reduced knockback from the Stomper passive from 50 to 25
Strogg: Reduced Peeker hyperblaster knockback from 22 to 15
Strogg: Reduced Peeker explosive knockback from 75 to 50

Additional Weapon Updates:

Lightning Gun rate of fire improved from 48 to 44 ms (125 to 136 dps)

Quality of Life on Champion Mechanics:

Clutch: Dodge Stamina – increased stamina regen from 0.2 to 0.33
Clutch: Air Dodge – removed min time delay between dodge activations
Clutch: Air Dodge – removed the requirement of touching the ground after a dodge before being allowed to perform another dodge
Clutch: Reduced shield protection rate from 40% to 35%
Strogg: Stroyent drops on all kills, but the hp bonus was lowered from 20hp to 10hp
Visor: No longer required to zoom during ability to gain the Piercing Damage bonus

Quake 3 Shotgun, Rocket Launcher, and Lightning Gun Weapon models:

Due to player feedback, we have introduced higher quality models for the TERMINATOR, LAST JUDGMENT, and SHAFT, adding additional details and higher quality textures

Additional Fixes & Changes:

Resolved the CPU-utilization issue introduced in the Nov anti-cheat updates
Fixed the Quake 2 BLASTER & Quake 4 CITIZEN KANE shot sounds (the de-synced firing rate)
Fixed main menu texture quality for the NAPALM LAUNCHER, PROXIMITY LAUNCHER and Q3 Medals Vanities
Increased the Ultra Texture Quality from 2k to 4k (source quality)
Bots will no longer steal major items from nearby players

Don’t forget to Q for Team Death Match, Capture The Flag, Sacrifice, Death Match, Instagib, and Unholy Trinity this week, as everyone benefits from playing those game modes!

A new set of challenges opens up every Wednesday at 8:00 PM EAST | Thursday at 2:00 AM CST. The challenges are broken up in 2 parts. First their week, and then their side left side | right side. The left side consists of the free challenges you can obtain without buying the Battlepass. The right side is accessible after buying the Battlepass. The right side tends to be slightly harder, but gives additional XP as well as shards. Bot Games work as well for these challenges. 76 DAYS REMAIN FOR SEASON 29

Also included at the start of this season are new Ranked Event Challenges. Kill 1000 players in Ranked Duel & Ranked TDM 2v2 as well as 100 Kills in Arena Kings for 3 shards & 50,000 XP each. Good Luck!

You can buy the BattlePass for 1000 platinum. Platinum is the Premium in-game currency in Quake Champions. You can Purchase Platinum in game any time you would like. Quake Champions has also been released on the Microsoft Store. You can Purchase Platinum in the Microsoft Store out of game as well.

The Battlepass itself is separated in 2 rows. The top row is the free version. You can acquire all the items here just by playing the game to level up your Battlepass. The bottom row is unlocked only with the purchase of the Battlepass. This is retroactive. So, if you are at level 50 and decide at that point you want to buy the Battlepass. Everything below level 49 will be added to your account.

Once you have purchased the BP click the shield at the top of the screen, and hit the activate button that will be below the season 29 Name Plate. Tons of shards, and past skins in Season 29’s Battlepass including the Silver Ranger skin which was originally quite a bit of shards. Level 2 of the paid BP includes a 7 day XP boost at level 5. Tons of past skins are part of the paid BP this summer. 167 Shards can be gained in this Season’s BP.

Note if you already own an item it instantly converts it to shards. Level 101 onwards changed starting in season 14. There is technically a 2nd half to the Battlepass levels maxing out at level 200. Level 101 to 200 has rewards as well. Every 5 levels starting at 105 you will receive 1 shard. While every 10 levels starting at level 110 you will receive 1 shard, and 1 Reliquary. The only exceptions being 190 where you receive 3 shards, and 200 which you will receive 5 shards. I have not verified if this is still the setup for Season 29…Gotta push those levels up first. I will update in a subsequent post about the 2nd half at a latter date.

Quake Champions is now part of the extended Microsoft | Xbox family, and Xbox has given Quake Champions lots of love, and attention since Quake joined. Quake Champions is now on the Microsoft Store, and was also added to the PC version of Xbox Game Pass. The Ultimate Edition of the PC Xbox Game Pass Subscription service will give you the Champions pack for free upon login.

Official Quake discord here: discord.gg/Quake

all bugs need to be posted in the “#bug-reports” channel under the “QC FEEDBACK” header in the official discord. Video clips, or screenshots of your issue are very useful for the developers.

Play Quake Champions for Free!

Want to play more Quake Champions? Come Join Church of Quake’s discord for Nightly Pickup games, and Global Pickups every Sunday at 2PM EST | 8PM CST.

HAPPY FRAGGING FOLKS, AND WE SHALL SEE EACHOTHER IN THE ARENAS!