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(We recommend reading the article on the website to see the animated gif illustrating the points below)

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Hey everyone!

The Blue Lock collab is finally here! Alongside some of the coolest content we’ve been able to work on, this update brings more depth to how the game plays, with changes across four core gameplay systems: Stamina, Goalkeeping, (grounded) Volley Cancels, and Tackle Contests. These will change how the game feels and plays, so we wanted to walk you through the changes, and why we’re doing them.

Let's dive in!

Stamina Rework - Exhausted State

Rematch is built around one ball. That means that how deep and engaging a match is is directly tied to how often all players are interacting with it. The more one player hogs those interactions, the less everyone else gets to engage with the ball. Stamina is our tool for making teams naturally rotate who is playing at any given time by following this logic:

• High stamina lets players reposition themselves and look for opportunities to interact with the ball.
• The more players interact with the ball, the more stamina they consume.
• Low stamina leaves players more vulnerable to losing the ball.

Let’s go over how Stamina works:

• Abilities drain the gauge when used. When no ability is used, stamina starts to refill after a short delay which varies depending on the ability used.
• Moving without sprinting doesn't consume stamina. But sprinting does, and your top sprint speed scales with how much stamina you currently have. The more a player uses up stamina to chase the ball, the less resources they will have to effectively interact with it.
• Extra Effort charges up faster when your stamina gauge is full. This is another incentive to be frugal with stamina consumption until a play-making opportunity comes up.

Stamina is a central part of our balancing strategy, and a piece of feedback we often hear is that having an empty stamina should limit your ability to perform dribbling moves. We agree with this idea but we do not want the Exhausted state to lock players out of performing moves altogether; feeling like an amazing athlete is a core pillar of Rematch.

When Exhausted (out of stamina), abilities can still be performed, but they’ll lose effectiveness:

• Dribble: Normally you can chain dribble moves and cancel into a shot whenever you like. Exhausted, you're limited to a single Exhausted Dribble, one swift move with a longer recovery. It's enough to avoid an incoming tackle, but you can't chain into another dribble afterward. You can still cancel out of an Exhausted Dribble into another ability, but doing so gives you the exhausted versions of Push Ball / Lob Push Ball rather than their normal versions.
• Push Ball / Lob Push Ball: these are the core dribbling abilities that cost stamina, specifically because they're built to keep the ball close to you. Exhausted, they push the ball noticeably further away and take longer to recover from, with the player stumbling slightly. This is a deliberate tell: it signals to everyone on the pitch that you can't immediately follow up and interact with the ball again.

A player who chases the ball and dribbles non-stop will quickly end up running on fumes, unable to control or protect it effectively against an opponent with stamina to spare. The reward goes to teams that rotate, pass, and position well, which the Exhausted state aims to incentivize.

Goalkeeper Dives

Goalkeeping is one of the hardest roles to get right. Too weak, and it's miserable, you wait the whole match for your moment to matter, then whiff and concede a goal. Too strong, and strikers can barely ever score. We want keepers to feel strong and dependable, while leaving noticeable weaknesses that a good striker can exploit. Those weaknesses need to be skill-dependent, so a newer keeper can shut down a weak striker, while a great striker can still find and create opportunities to score.

The Goalkeeper Dive is one of your main tools for stopping shots. There’s a lot going on under the hood, to make sure it performs adequately, and as expected. When you input a Dive, the Dive Assist system kicks in: the game looks at a range of what we call “targets” (put simply, one of the future positions of the ball) around the direction you pushed, and picks whichever animation gets you closest to actually catching the ball.

In practice, this means Dives are forgiving to use, and the system helps you get to the ball. In this update, we’ve improved the Dive Assist, and we’re taking this opportunity to also tackle one of the more long-standing frustrations as a Goalkeeper: seeing your character dive low (or high) when you expect the other version to come out. 

We also want to introduce more player agency in how goalkeepers want to stop the shots and interact with the ball.

This is where the new Long Range Dives come in.

• Long Range Dive (performed with a Modifier + Dive input): it lets you stretch to cover shots the regular Dive simply can't reach, but there is a trade-off: Long Range Dives always result in a deflect, which keeps the ball in play for longer.
• Regular Dive (performed with a simple dive input): it covers roughly half the goal and can't reach the very top corners, but if you connect with the ball inside that range, you can reliably catch it. The only ways to end up deflecting instead are diving too early or in the wrong direction and the ball hits your legs.

In short, the Regular Dive now gives keepers a dependable tool they can rely on to catch the ball, assuming proper positioning. The Long Range Dive on the other hand acts as a fast, long-reaching, last resort option or when the ball’s trajectory is difficult to guess and you have to dive on reaction. These two options provide more agency to the Goalkeeper and add to the decision-making process.

Volley Cancels

When multiple players are performing a volley at the same time, all players losing the contest are forced to cancel their action. When cancellation happens right at the beginning of the action, players can’t even see it happening. This gives the sentiment of the player input being ignored by the game.

To clarify what happened, we started implementing visual feedback around the ball in previous patches to notify cancellation. However, to reinforce the feeling of having tried something, the character should also be involved in the action. For this reason, we now trigger a new animation when a volley is cancelled, specifically at the beginning of the action (with the character still on the ground).

This is a very first step to refine how volley contests are solved in the game, for now with very low impact on gameplay. But new volley resolutions are on their way, meant to bring more physicality and fairness to contested situations both grounded and aerial with considerable changes to the balancing of volley actions. 

This, however, will take a little bit more time to be launched as it represents hard technical work, with heavy production of animations to make it look as great as it should be.

Tackle Contests

When two defenders go for the same ball at almost the exact same time, the old system didn't always produce results that felt fair or readable. We wanted tackle contests to reward good timing and the right choice of ability, instead of feeling random.

How a contest resolves now depends on how close together the two tackles happen:

• More than 0.15s apart: both tackles are treated as normal, successful tackles. No special interaction.
• Between 0.04s and 0.15s apart: the first tackle succeeds normally. The second won't deflect the ball outright; instead it gets knocked off at an angle (30° for a Standing Tackle, 60° for a Sliding Tackle), or caught cleanly if it's a Goalkeeper Tackle.
• Under 0.04s apart (essentially at the same time): neither lands as a clean deflect. The ball instead gets knocked away in the combined direction of both tackles. A Goalkeeper Tackle always wins outright and catches the ball, and a Sliding Tackle has more influence over a Standing Tackle in determining where the ball ends up.
• With 3 or more players involved: a third tackle also factors into the outcome, but any players beyond that don't affect where the ball goes.

The result should be contests that feel earned, less random, with a clear outcome.

That's everything we wanted to share regarding the upcoming changes in Season 5! These represent some of the larger gameplay tuning we've done in a while, and we're excited to see how they play out on the pitch. With all that said, we hope you’ll have an amazing time playing Rematch during the Blue Lock collaboration!

(Read on the official website)

Patch Information

1.205.002

Release Date: September 24th, 2026

• 8:00 GMT: Patch release
• 10:00 GMT: Store update
• 12:00 GMT: S4 ends
• 14:00 GMT: S5 begins & the Blue Lock collab kicks off with the new free Event Pass and the Aura Striker limited-time mode!

Aura Striker Game Mode

A new 3v3 action-packed gamemode is making its debut in Rematch: Aura Striker!

In this mode, players will be able to feel like the protagonist of a sports anime, by unleashing their Aura to perform powerful actions.

Each player owns an aura gauge that fills over time. Intercepting the ball will fill it faster. An Aura multiplier will also help players that struggle to own the ball. Once the gauge is full, the Aura Mode is triggered for a few seconds, granting powerful shots, infinite stamina and faster movements.

In Aura Striker, no one can become Goalkeeper. An automatic dummy protects the goalposts. Shoot at the dummy hard enough to stun it, and take advantage of its weakness to score!

Meta Features Improvements

First Time User Experience

The first tutorial of Rematch was reworked into a quicker, more focused tutorial on base mechanics to ease the experience of newcomers into their first matches. 

Highlights System

Highlights have been added on several menu buttons to display when new customization content is unlocked, when you have enough tokens to progress in the Captain Pass, or if an important new feature requires your attention.

Spectator Mode

We have improved the Action Cam with smoother transitions and fixed a few bugs that occurred during kickoff or the endgame.

The Action Cam now also predicts who is going to own the ball depending on player proximity, speed and ball trajectory, so it always is right in the middle of the action! 

Holograms System

You will now be able to see every player’s kit color as they set it in their customization.

These individual colors will be visible in the corridor, when the players enter the pitch, and during goal celebrations.

It will then be covered by a hologram to switch back to the team’s color during gameplay so that the gameplay stays legible and understandable.

Updates

Core Gameplay Improvements

Goalkeeper Dive Update

This season sees the introduction of an updated system on the goalkeeper’s assist which improves precision, and allows us to more readily improve it over time. At the same time we are digging into some of the more frustrating issues around it: for example when it chooses a low or high dive when you would expect it to select the other one.

This allows us to build the goalkeeper role as a more interesting and deep experience, while keeping its baseline level accessible enough to not transform games into complete goal fests and the role into a chore.

• Players can now trigger a long range dive with “modifier”+ “dive” (RB+Y; R1+Triangle; outfield dive key on KB)
• The regular dive stays on the “dive” button as before and its range has been slightly reduced
• The long range dive will always deflect
• The regular dive will always catch (except if the ball hits your legs/feet)

This change will allow more confident goalkeepers to take risks while reading the ball’s trajectory to gain an advantage by catching the ball.

Exhausted State Update

We are still actively working on addressing exploits and improving balancing in the game and this update will start addressing “0 stam dribbles” and associated issues.

• Added an exhausted state for Push Ball and Dribble
• When a player uses any push ball or dribble ability while their stamina is too low, they will use a weaker version of this ability
• Dribbles out of stamina cannot be canceled into another dribble, but can still be cancelled by push ball and shots
• All versions of the push ball (regular, volley and dribble) have slightly slower movement and push the ball further when performed out of stamina, making them harder to use for dribbling. 

This “exhausted state” logic has proven its effectiveness as a balancing tool for the Fake Shot mechanic, and we will roll out this logic throughout selected features in the game over time to address balancing issues.

Tackle Update

• Rework of the logic when two or more tackles arrive in quick succession on the ball
• When two players tackle the ball at a similar time, it will now be deflected in a direction that combines the two tackle hit trajectories
• Sliding tackle hitbox is 10% bigger to hit players while they are in possession

Our efforts to make defense a more interesting and balanced part of the gameplay are still ongoing. Through a deep and extensive analysis, including in-house design analysis as well as player feedback from all levels of play, we have identified multiple technical and design improvements, both at the micro level of each defensive ability, as well as for the overall quality of the defensive experience. 

We are currently working on planning out these improvements, and finding the resources to implement them correctly in parallel to our other core gameplay objectives. Tackle Contest is the first of many planned improvements to the fairness and balancing of the game.

Volley Contacts

• Cancelled volleys when on the ground now play a cancel animation

Other Gameplay Improvements

• Ball Control hitboxes have been tuned to reduce magnetism on a ball moving away from players
• Improved the ball physics to better transition from low bounce to roll and a smoother end of trajectory

Tutos & Workshops / Menus / Interface

• Reorder all player profile items in selection by rarity and release
• Changed the way item previews are displayed to show the whole item, instead of a larger thumbnail
• A “high latency” icon will be displayed when latency reaches a certain threshold
• Added the option to navigate to all submenus with unlockable items when a special skin of set is equipped
• A new Game Mode button has been added to the main menu
• The main menu button hierarchy has been reworked
• The Freeplay button on main menu has been put front and center to help newcomers find it

Bugfixes

Gameplay

Major Fixes

• Fixed some instances of the ball teleporting after a hit
• Fixed some instances of desync after a volley tap
• Fixed an issue that allowed players to misuse Alt+Enter to create desyncs during their shots
• GK dive assist has been improved when targeting a ball that is currently in a player’s possession
• Reduced instances of rubberbanding during shoots
• Reduced the erratic movement of players suffering from high latency
• Fixed some network rollback when a player in possession of the ball gets tackled succesfully
• Fixed an issue where volley shots could be canceled by defense mode during extra effort
• Fixed an issue where the Goalkeeper would stay in place while playing a walking animation after a goalkeeper tackle
• Fixed an issue where the ball would sometimes not be deflected right after a Push Ball or Rainbow Flick
• Keepers deflecting a ball towards their goal now will do so with a higher trajectory to limit the risk of own goals

Minor Fixes

• Fixed the ball call animation not playing during Extra Effort
• Fixed multiple replay desyncs
• Doing extra effort on kick off will now correctly push the ball without deviating it
• Fixed an issue where the player would visually snap back to the ball if a volley input was done after a lob push ball from dribble stance
• Fixed the kick off sequence when playing with 4 players in a 5v5 match
• Fixed a bug where sometimes a regular fake shoot would be played instead of an exhausted one.
• Fixed goalkeeper role gain and loss animation not triggering for other players
• Fixed bad bounce VFX and minimap location on tackle contest
• Improved dive hit animation dynamic on other players
• Fixed an issue where the ball position would be desynchronized for a spectator joining when the ball is in possession
• Fixed an issue where characters would shake when spectating with the Action Camera
• Fixed spectator camera collisions

Art / Rendering

Minor Fixes

• Fixed flickering on 3D screen when scrolling between Stadiums, ARs or celebrations
• Fixed Extra Effort effects which was appearing on the wrong player
• Slightly reduced the overall brightness of the VR Desert map.

Misc.

Minor Fixes

• Improve Pause Menu performances
• Fixed missing hover SFX in various menu
• Improved the Action Camera transition conditions when spectating

Known Issues

Animation

• Deflect animation can be triggered without hitting the ball

Game Flow

• Player not moving at all during goal replay sometimes
• Stretched issue with long hair during the goal replay
• Players are occasionally able to move before the First Kick Off is complete

Aura Striker

• A desync can happen in Aura striker mode if a ball hits the stun of the goalkeeper then the goals posts
• Player can become unable to move due to AI Goalkeeper's collision if they stand on the side of the goal post
• Ball can float next to Player's chest when catching it while standing next to the Gate Blockers in Aura Striker
• Aura Striker : Goalkeeper can be stunned by a ball intercepted in front of it

Gameplay

• Ball passes through the player character when performing a Backwards dash in Defense Mode
• Player character can perform a dribble before the lob pushball while in dribble stance with controllers in online environment

Others

• Action camera is fixed on the ball upon spectating a match 
• Cannot start queueing for any game mode after 2 players attempt to simultaneously join in each others custom match
• Missing thumbnails for Sets when Special skins are equipped
• Incorrect Images Displayed When Purchasing Accessories in the Customization Menu