THE FINALS Update 11.9.0 Brings a Dragon Event and Grand Major Qualification Details

The Grand Major 2026 field has 3 confirmed teams, and Twitch Drops remain available through Sept. 24, 2026.

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Three masked THE FINALS contestants in tactical armor holding rifles

THE FINALS Update 11.9.0 brings a dragon-themed Scorch Protocol event to World Tour, adds a time-limited event pass and Twitch Drops, and adjusts several tools and Specializations. Embark detailed the changes in its Steam announcement.

Scorch Protocol is currently running in World Tour on Kyoto, Las Vegas, Bernal, and Monaco. The event places a roaming dragon over the Arena, meaning teams must watch the sky while defending their Cashout Stations.

Right To Strike and Silent Cypher arrive

The Right To Strike Event Pass is available for purchase through Oct. 1, 2026. Players can complete it at their own pace, with a Legendary Item waiting at the end of the reward track.

Contestant wearing the Right To Strike Event Pass outfit

The Silent Cypher Set also joins the store with a full outfit, the Legendary Decryptor Edge Sword, an Epic Emote, a Charm, and 2,400 Multibucks. The ZolGabar Command store section adds another Starbounder-themed offering built around the character’s archenemies.

Contestant holding the Decryptor Edge Sword

The Red Broadcast Blaze Twitch Drops campaign runs through Sept. 24, 2026. Watching THE FINALS streams with Drops Enabled awards the Red Broadcast Blaze Hover Pad after 1 hour, the Red Broadcast Blaze Barricade after 2 hours, and the Red Broadcast Blaze Tracking Dart after 4 hours.

Red Broadcast Blaze cosmetics for a hover pad, rifle, and barricade

Three teams qualify for The Grand Major 2026

The Online Series has finished, sending Five Fears, Luminon Gaming, and KingZero to The Grand Major 2026 at Dreamhack Stockholm. Sixteen teams will compete for $150,000 from Nov. 27 to 29.

Five Fears earned the EMEA spot after winning the second and third events and reaching every podium during the season. Luminon Gaming took the Americas place after improving from fourth to third, second, and first across the four events. The roster previously competed as Team ED.

KingZero claimed the APAC invitation with a third-place finish in the final cycle, which was enough to move back ahead of HIBOO and Ape Squad in the standings. KingZero reached the podium in all four cycles.

Thirteen places remain open. Closed Qualifiers will decide those spots, with teams from the Online Series facing challengers from the Open Qualifiers in the Americas and EMEA.

Patch Notes for THE FINALS Update 11.9.0

Update 11.9.0 focuses its combat changes on mobility, traversal, and the visibility of cloaked players. The patch also includes fixes for crashes and hangs on PC, PS5, and Xbox, along with adjustments to performance, rendering, audio, the tutorial, and several UI elements.

Balance Changes

Gadgets

Zipline

Decreased cooldown from 37s to 30s
Increased max placement distance from 40m to 50m

Dev Note: The Zipline has struggled to find relevance in the meta for a while now compared to the Jumppad and Gateway. These changes aim to close that gap a little.

Specializations

Evasive Dash

Decreased cooldown from 6s to 5s per charge

Dev Note: We decreased the cooldown from 6.5s to 6s in the 11.6 update, but our feeling is this didn’t have the level of impact we wanted once we saw it being played in the live game. This further reduction of one second to the cooldown hopefully helps to balance out the Evasive Dash versus alternatives like the Cloaking Device.

Cloaking Device

Increased the visibility of the Cloaking Device when stationary by decreasing how much it blends in with the surrounding environment, making cloaked players slightly easier to spot

Dev Note: We’re aware that a lot of players find it frustrating to face cloaked players, so this adjustment aims to make them slightly easier to find than they have been in recent months. We’re not 100% convinced this is the only change we’ll need to make to this aspect of the game to get it to a better place for all players, and we’re continuing to explore other ideas around the combat loop when it comes to cloaking, but any additional changes will come in later releases, when we’ve had a chance to see how this change plays.

Content and Bug Fixes

Audio

Fixed missing destruction sound effects for several office props in Skyway Stadium
Improved audio mix for the Rhythm & Bruise Emote so its music plays at the intended level|

Contract

Fixed the “Detect 5 opponents” contract not counting tracking darts

Cosmetic

The Purple Reign jacket no longer clips with bandoliers and emblems

Game Modes

Tutorial

Updated location of the 2nd Cashout in the tutorial away from the construction site

Rendering

Fixed an issue that made some materials noisier when anti-aliasing was disabled

Performance

Fixed an issue that caused some textures to use more memory than intended
Fixed an issue that caused a minor regression in CPU performance of rendering work
Optimized the time it takes to change Overall and Effects quality settings in-game

Stability

Fixed a rare server hang that could occur when processing corrupt network data
Fixed a PS5 crash that could occur shortly after entering the Arena
Fixed a crash that could occur when saving replay checkpoints
Mitigated a game hang that occurred more frequently when NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation was enabled
Fixed an issue that caused the game to hang when being suspended on Xbox

UI

Fixed an issue where the revive statue progress bar icon didn’t animate with the respawn timer

Scorch Protocol gives World Tour teams another hazard to track, while the shorter Evasive Dash cooldown and more visible Cloaking Device should change how Light players approach fights. Share your thoughts in the comments, and follow us on X, Bluesky, YouTube, Instagram, Steam, and Telegram.

The Finals is the world’s first Dynamism Shooter, a free-to-play, fast-paced, physics-driven, first-person shooter set on the stage of the biggest Gameshow of the future! Fight for Fans and fortune in fully-destructible, virtual Arenas that guarantee no two rounds will ever play the same!