Halo: Campaign Evolved Firefight Update Is Free This Winter

Halo: Campaign Evolved is getting Firefight, and it is coming free. Halo Studios announced on November 12, 2026 that the four-player cooperative PvE mode is on the way to the remake as a free update this winter. The announcement went up on Halo Waypoint and Xbox Wire, written by Tahir Hasangjekaj, the studio’s director of competitive engagement. Halo Studios says it will share more detail at Halo Fest, which runs December 12-13 in Seattle, Washington.

The post opens on why the mode is coming back: for nearly two decades, Firefight has been a Halo favorite, with Spartans teaming up, holding the line and surviving wave after wave of enemies. On November 12, attendees at Xbox FanFest were the first to jump in, on new maps and armed with what the studio calls plenty of weapons to help even the odds.

The mode lands on a game that is already a co-op campaign title. Steam’s own store description for Halo: Campaign Evolved sells it as solo or up to 4-player online co-op, with full crossplay and cross-progression support. Steam lists the PC release as July 28, 2026. The remake is also on PlayStation 5, where PlayStation Blog covered it in July. Seattle is already the Halo home this winter: the Halo: The Great Journey exhibition is running at the Museum of Pop Culture through May 16, 2027.

Prices are not part of the update, but they are worth having next to it. Steam lists the base game at $49.99, and the Premium Edition upgrade at $20.00 on top of it.

For players, the useful part of this announcement is what it does not say. There is no date, no platform list and no description of the mode itself, so the honest reading is a promise with a deadline attached: Halo Fest on December 12-13 is where Halo Studios says it will share more, and where Firefight will be playable all weekend. The timing is deliberate. It lands the same night as Xbox FanFest, a month before Halo Fest, and it is billed as part of 25 years of Halo and Xbox together. A free update with no price attached is the cheapest way to add the mode the series is remembered for, and owners of the remake on PlayStation 5 and PC are waiting on the same two answers as everyone else, such as when it lands and what it looks like.

If you bought the remake for the campaign, a free wave mode is a bonus. If you bought it for the co-op, Firefight is the piece that was missing, and December 12-13 is when you will find out how it plays.

Edited by Kerwin Stewart, Editor-in-Chief · How we report