The Curtain Rises: Post Malone’s Murder Circus Encore Goes Live on 11th December, 2025
Update 2.6 also boasts all new features for Hunt players including Player Profile Cards, Story Challenges and more!
November 26, 2025
Today, Crytek announces the upcoming and highly anticipated in-game event Post Malone’s Murder Circus Encore will descend upon Hunt: Showdown 1896 from December 11th 2025 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S!
Featuring a legendary collaboration with 9x Diamond Certified artist and Hunt superfan Post Malone, Update 2.6 introduces a host of new features including Player Profile Customization, brand new Story Challenges and tons more. The threads of madness unravel once again under a new midwinter moon in Post Malone’s Murder Circus Encore!
Watch the cinematic trailer now:
The Stage is Set for an Encore
This holiday season, the Deposed King and former Ringmaster, portrayed by the world renowned artist Post Malone, returns as the brutal Disciple of Death.
Having honed his skills in the shadows, he seeks to reclaim his Corrupted domain, but the fabled HelioStone – a key to his victory, remains lost.
The impossible has happened: the malevolent carnival has rematerialized, bleeding its surreal terror into the bayou and the gulch once more. Old foes and new alliances gather to face or benefit from the Corruption in it’s most festive shape to date.
New Features & Content
Accompanying Post Malone’s Murder Circus Encore on stage is Update 2.6. It brings with a plethora of novelties as well as heaps of fixes, tweaks and balance changes. New gameplay systems and remade old friends will make an appearance:
- Story Challenges: Dive into narrative-driven quests in a new way. Learn the story of the Hunters, unlock valuable rewards. Story Challenges are structured into Chapters each containing a set of thematical challenges. Update 2.6 launces with two stories: On the Winds of Midwinter and An Acquired Taste, each with a thematic Hunter and rewards.
- Player Profile Customization: A unique new system allows players to showcase their identity, stats and achievement badges. Customizable with avatars, titles, frames, and visible in lobbies and the death screen. Put your prowess on display, see the faces of your rivals.
- A fiercer Ursa Mortis: The two-headed charmer brute returns with increased damage, health and has learned new tricks. It can smash through fences, is immune to explosive knock-downs, and its roar can trigger traps from a distance. Go on a bear hunt, and try to survive it.
- Reworked Shredder weapon: The iconic rotary sawblade launcher is back as a Scarce weapon. Featuring manual charging after each shot, physics base blade bounces and blades that stick into targets instead of piercing through them. Rebuilt, adjusted, oiled, all according to the community feedback. A dangerous toy to play with!
Update 2.6 delivers a massive wave of polish, addressing over many community-reported issues. Key fixes eliminate crashes, improve matchmaking stability, and resolve party and UI bugs. Gameplay is refined with targeted adjustments to AI behavior, boss mechanics, and the removal of animation exploits. Numerous map exploits and stuck spots have been sealed, and a host of visual and audio glitches across weapons, hunters, and environments have been corrected. This comprehensive patch enhances the overall stability and fairness of the Hunt experience.
Compass & Ping markers as well as Map Screen have received a rework, new "Doused" status effect for Hunters along with a new Water bottle item, adjustments to Burn traits, and lots more will be fully revealed at the time of launch of Post Malone’s Murder Circus Encore.
Mark your Calendars!
Update 2.6 is a love letter to the Hunt community, blending thrilling new content of Post Malone’s Murder Circus Encore with long requested features and essential polish. The bayou has never been more dynamic or dangerous. See you under the big top this holiday season, on December 11th 2025.
Follow our channels for more information and be ready to step into the limelight when the stage calls.
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Hunt: Showdown 1896 official website at https://www.huntshowdown.com
Find out more about Crytek at https://www.crytek.com/
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About Hunt: Showdown 1896
Hunt: Showdown 1896 is the new era of the competitive first-person bounty hunting game, packing the thrill of survival and the reward of profit into a horror match-based format. Set in Colorado and the Louisiana bayou in 1896, the game boasts a mixture of PvP and PvE elements that create a uniquely tense experience. It's not just the monsters who are a threat—it's every Hunter on the map. In the classic Bounty Hunt game mode, a match pits 12 players—playing solo or in teams of two or three—against each other as they race to take out gruesome creatures for a Bounty Token they must collect and extract from the map. Hunt's Soul Survivor mode offers a shorter match for solo players to scavenge for weapons as they compete for a diminishing pool of bounty. The higher the risk, the higher the reward—but a single mistake could cost you everything. Hunt: Showdown 1896 is out now on PC, PlayStation 5, and Series X|S. For more information, visit http://www.huntshowdown.com