Scream Fortress XVIII arrived in Team Fortress 2 on 1 October 2026 and runs through 7 November. The launch notes read like an ordinary Halloween drop — five new community maps, a 23-item case, five taunts, 21 new Unusual effects, and every Halloween Contract wiped clean so it can be earned again — and then carry an unusually large amount of change underneath that headline. The same patch that names HolyHell, Scarypass, Trainsawlaser, Medi-Evil and Scaredy-Cat also rebuilds how Zombie Infection starts and respawns, and gives four zombie classes new abilities.
Three further patches landed inside twelve days. That is the shape of this year’s event: the launch notes are the announcement, and the follow-ups are where the balance settled.
What this covers: everything in Scream Fortress XVIII — the five maps, the Haunted Hoard Case and its 23 cosmetics, the new taunts and Unusual effects, the Contract reset, and the Zombie Infection rework — plus the three patches that changed it after launch. Why it matters: the event runs to 7 November, Halloween Contracts and their case chances are the only free route to the new items, and the Zombie Infection changes are a mode rework rather than a map tidy-up. Who should care: returning Halloween players, community-server operators rotating the new maps, and anyone weighing a key against a case.
The update at a glance
Valve’s 1 October patch, published in the game’s update history, lists the event’s contents directly.
| Item | What Scream Fortress XVIII added |
|---|---|
| Maps | Five community maps: HolyHell, Scarypass, Trainsawlaser, Medi-Evil and Scaredy-Cat |
| Case | The Haunted Hoard Case — 23 community cosmetic items making up the Haunted Hoard Collection, with a chance at a taunt Unusualifier as a bonus item |
| Taunts | Five community taunts: Hippocratic Hypocrite, Showrunner’s Spirit, Barrel Roll, One-Eyed Punt! and Sear You Later |
| Unusual effects | 21 new community effects — 11 for hats, 10 for taunts |
| Contracts | Every Halloween Contract reset, plus new Contracts for this year’s featured community maps |
| Access | Halloween matches are joined through the Special Events category in Casual |
| Window | Runs through 7 November 2026 |
One clause in that list decides how most players will spend the fortnight. All cosmetic and taunt Cases grant Halloween 2026 Unusual effects for the duration of the event, and the notes say explicitly that this does not include Crates. The Haunted Hoard Case is a Case, so its Unusual pool is the Halloween one — the same rule that applied to the Summer 2026 case when that event ran from 7 July to 15 September.
For scale, the Mannco.store event guide sets this year beside last year: it lists Scream Fortress XVII (1 October to 7 November 2025) as having brought five maps, 27 cosmetics, 15 Unusual effects and three taunts, against this year’s five maps, 23 cosmetics, 21 effects and five taunts. Those 2025 figures come from that guide alone and are worth treating as its estimate rather than Valve’s.
What the five maps are
The official notes name the maps but do not give their game modes. The Mannco.store guide, a secondary source that cites the Official TF2 Wiki, lists them as follows.
| Map | Mode, per the Mannco.store guide |
|---|---|
| HolyHell | Control Point |
| Scarypass | Payload |
| Trainsawlaser | King of the Hill |
| Medi-Evil | Capture the Flag, in Medieval mode |
| Scaredy-Cat | Control Point |
Each new map carries its own Halloween Contract, so playing the five is the shortest route through this year’s list. The follow-ups then adjusted some of them by hand. The 2 October patch replaced the “Collect a Halloween Pumpkin” Contract objective on cp_wildcat_event with “Kill with a pumpkin bomb”, and reworked ctf_medi_evil — the round timer went to ten minutes from eight, overtime was removed, and its pumpkin-bomb objective became “Get 5 kills in a single life”. The 5 October patch changed the numbers required for the Scaredy-Cat bonus objectives and fixed the “Get a train, saw, or laser kill” objective on TrainSawLaser, which had not been counting kills.
The Haunted Hoard Case and its 23 items
The case is the item centrepiece, and its contents are the reason the map Contract list matters: the notes say completing a Halloween Contract gives a classic Halloween item and a chance at a Haunted Hoard Case, so the case is earnable without spending money on it directly. The Mannco.store guide adds the mechanics around it — the case drops through the normal item drop system and can also be bought in the Mann Co. Store, and opening one needs the matching Haunted Hoard Key. The official notes confirm the bonus item: the case has a chance to give a taunt Unusualifier.
That guide also groups the 23-item Haunted Hoard Collection by class. It records single items for Scout (Batter’s Jersey) and Engineer (Mined Mind), two apiece for Soldier (General’s Greatcoat, Grenadier’s Goggles), Pyro (Clowning Cowl, Two Faced Terror) and Spy (Bounty Hunter’s Brim and Desperado Disguise), three apiece for Demoman, Heavy, Medic and Sniper, and three — Bone Chiller, Skeleton Crew and Royal Remains — wearable by every class.
Several of those names have already been patched. The 2 October patch recorded the Skeleton Crew gaining a second style; the 5 October patch then fixed the Bounty Hunter’s Brim’s materials, stopped the Skeleton Crew failing to hide the Sniper’s bullets, and fixed the Bone Chiller not hiding the correct bodygroup; and the 12 October patch added a “No Grenades” style to the General’s Greatcoat and updated the style names for The Damage Dealer. A collection is not frozen on the day it ships.
The guide also makes the economic point plainly, and it is worth keeping: the chance of an Unusual from a case is, in its words, “only about 1%”, and most of the new collection was already trading below the price of a key in launch week.
Taunts and the 21 new Unusual effects
Five taunts went to the Mann Co. Store, and the guide assigns each to a class: Showrunner’s Spirit to Scout, One-Eyed Punt! to Soldier, Sear You Later to Pyro, Barrel Roll to Demoman and Hippocratic Hypocrite to Medic. Each can be made Unusual with one of the ten new taunt effects, using a taunt Unusualifier found as a bonus item in the case.
The official split for the 21 new effects is 11 for hats and 10 for taunts. The guide names them:
| Category | Effects (per the Mannco.store guide) |
|---|---|
| Hats (11) | Flor De Muerto, Autumn Breeze, Spirit Swirl, Ghost Swirl, Fable Quills, Fable Feathers, Grudge n’ Drudge, Boil n’ Toil, Screeching Soul, Shrieking Soul, Screaming Soul |
| Taunts (10) | Electric Impulse, Primordial Ooze, Geiger Breaker, Sulfuric Acid, Shroud of Darkness, Gradient Gale, Amethyst Gale, Gamma Rays, Meltdown, Radioactive |
Two of those effect names appear in the follow-up notes as bugs: the 12 October patch updated the Flor de Muerto effect to fix clutter issues, and the 2 October patch updated the Autumn Breeze effect to fix visibility problems.
Contracts, the Soul Gargoyle and the reset
The free route through the event runs on the Soul Gargoyle. Every player who launches the game during the event receives one if they do not already have it, and it grants access to Merasmissions and Halloween item transmutations while tracking Merasmissions completed and souls collected. Souls come from killing enemies, completing map objectives, or picking up the Soul Gargoyles that spawn in the maps.
The reset is the part returning players care about most: all Halloween Contracts have been reset so they can be completed again, and Valve added new Contracts for this year’s featured community maps. It is the same structure the event has used for several years, and it is a textbook instance of the annual-event cadence that the live-service season model breaks down.
The guide fills in the numbers the official notes leave out, crediting the Official TF2 Wiki: one soul per kill or assist, 10 for picking up a ghost gargoyle and 25 for defeating a Halloween boss; a transmutation trades three qualifying items for an untradable, uncraftable cosmetic from a past Halloween event, and every tenth transmutation yields a bonus item guaranteed to be Haunted quality.
Three patches in twelve days
The launch patch was not the last word. All three of the entries below come from the official update history.
| Date | What the patch changed |
|---|---|
| 2 October | Removed an exploit that let Heavy and Sniper move at full speed while aiming; fixed Jack-o’-Potion sounds playing globally; retuned the two event-map Contract objectives described above |
| 5 October | Added the sv_wallbug convar to restore previous movement behaviour on community servers; fixed view jitter that persisted over long sessions; fixed a crash triggered by snd_mix_async; fixed the Marshlands Contract not activating; raised limits for new custom maps |
| 12 October | Fixed a regression in the Sandwich Diner war paint and an exploit where the Dragon’s Fury could crash the server; gave koth_sawmill_event respawn-room portals for the team that loses the point; cut respawn times slightly and added missing nobuilds on koth_trainsawlaser |
The sv_wallbug convar is the notable one for community servers, because it restores movement behaviour that the 1 October patch had changed — the kind of change that breaks server-side muscle memory for a few weeks.
Zombie Infection is this update’s real rework
The Halloween content is the headline; the Zombie Infection maps are the substance. The zi_ prefix belongs to the Zombie Infection mode in the Official TF2 Wiki’s map list, which records five such maps from October 2023; the October 2026 patch touches six, including zi_blazehattan.
The new feature is the Zombie Spawn Picker. On respawn, zombies can now choose their spawn point manually, cycling through the available points with the left and right mouse inputs and confirming with jump; if no input is pressed, they respawn automatically after a short time. Zombies can change class while picking a spawn point, and they no longer respawn ÜberCharged.
Four classes received new abilities:
- Zombie Engineer gains an ability that throws a toolbox to erect a respawn point for zombies. Those points are the default in the new Spawn Picker, can be destroyed by Survivors, and each Engineer may keep only one active at a time.
- Zombie Spy inherits the Engineer’s old EMP Grenade. It still disables buildings around the detonation and now highlights Survivors and buildings, as the old Reveal ability did; it no longer detonates instantly on a direct hit and takes half as long to detonate. Reveal and EMP durations drop from 6.5 to 5.5 seconds, reveal range from 1000 to 900 Hammer units (HU) and EMP range from 500 to 450, while max health falls to 125 and melee damage to 69%.
- Zombie Pyro gains Sticky Spew, which fires tar balls that coat Survivors in a liquid that hinders movement-based weapons. In exchange it loses its medium health kit on death, its fire resistance drops from 100% to 70%, and it no longer ignites players on hit or deals bonus damage to burning Survivors.
- Zombie Heavy gains Rock Hurl, which throws a chunk of concrete: Survivors in the radius are knocked back and damaged, those hit directly are stunned and take extra damage, and buildings hit are temporarily disabled. Loud footsteps were added, knockback resistance drops to 85% and building damage to 90.
The shared changes matter as much as the abilities. Players can no longer be picked as the starting zombie two rounds in a row; dying during setup now respawns instantly; and players who are dead or spectating when a round begins are now counted as infected. The B.A.S.E. Jumper can be deployed at any point in the round and jumper weapons no longer carry reduced max ammo. Zombies drop a small ammo pack on death and receive Mini-Crits while their team is below the starting infection quota, respawning zombies no longer play lightning visuals or leave green fog, and zombies can now ragdoll.
Buried halfway down that list is the fix most likely to change how a match feels: zombies were sometimes immune to headshots.
The six maps also got individual passes rather than a shared sweep. zi_blazehattan had its round timer cut from 210 seconds to 180; zi_woods had its raised from 120 to 160; zi_devastation_final1, zi_murky, zi_sanitarium and zi_atoll each had spawns, lighting, collisions or access routes reworked. If you run any of them on a community server, the notes describe a mode patch wearing a map patch’s clothes.
What to finish before 7 November
Three things end with the event. Halloween mode switches off, so cosmetics carrying a holiday restriction can only be equipped again at the next event — or during a full moon, for the items whose restriction reads “Halloween / Full Moon”. The Halloween Contracts leave the ConTracker, taking this year’s Contract rewards with them. And per the Mannco.store guide, the new Halloween Unusual effects stop appearing from cosmetic and taunt Cases.
One thing will not come back at all: new Halloween spells. The guide, citing the Official TF2 Wiki, states that spells were introduced in 2012 and returned during the 2013 and 2014 events, that they have not been obtainable through normal means since 2015, when the Soul Gargoyle replaced Haunted Halloween Gifts, and that unapplied spells became untradable in the December 2015 update. Spells already applied to an item stay on it, which is why a spelled cosmetic is bought as an item rather than assembled.