ARC Raiders Headwinds Update Launches January 27, 2026 With Bird City Map Condition, Solos vs Squads Queue and more
Embark Studios is kicking off the first leg of its January to April 2026 roadmap for ARC Raiders with a brand new update titled Headwinds, scheduled to roll out to all players on January 27, 2026. This drop is positioned as a meaningful momentum shift after last year’s Cold Snap update, adding a fresh map condition to change how runs play out, a new buildable progression project, and a highly targeted matchmaking option designed to raise the skill ceiling for high confidence players.
The headline gameplay twist is the new map condition called Bird City. With the Rust Belt thawing out, the Buried City becomes a hotspot for flocks of birds gathering resources in nests perched on high chimneys. Those nests become opportunistic loot points, but Embark is framing them as intentional risk magnets. The moment you commit to a climb, you are broadcasting your position and funneling your movement, which creates a clean ambush window for another Raider holding an angle. For extraction shooter players, this is the kind of environmental layer that can meaningfully reshape tempo and route selection, especially when squads start timing rotations around predictable nest paths.
For the competitive crowd, the major systems update is Solos vs Squads matchmaking. If you are above level 40 and want to take on full enemy teams alone, this queue is designed as a high volatility ladder for bigger XP and loot payouts. From a meta perspective, it is also a smart retention lever: it gives strong solo players a structured way to chase higher reward density without relying on random squad fill quality, while also generating highlight worthy moments that naturally feed streaming and clip culture.
Headwinds also expands long term progression with the Trophy Display project, letting players build out a trophy case based on the ARC machines they have taken down. This is a subtle but effective motivator for completionists and PvE minded hunters, because it turns machine kills into visible account identity rather than just background stats. Rounding out the update is a cosmetics injection via the Sandwalker Set, giving players another style lane to flex during drops.
Embark’s entry into the extraction shooter space continues to scale aggressively, with the game reportedly surpassing 12,000,000 copies sold since its launch in October 2025, plus multiple DICE Award nominations including Game of the Year. Headwinds lands at a key timing window where content cadence matters, and this update reads like a deliberate blend of system depth, PvP challenge routing, and collectible driven progression to keep the Rust Belt ecosystem sticky through early 2026.
What part of Headwinds matters most to your playstyle, the Bird City risk routes, the Solos vs Squads challenge queue, or the Trophy Display progression grind?
