Rust Update & Patch Notes: Latest Update, Next Update Date & 2026 History

The latest Rust update is the Livestock update, which went live on Thursday, October 1, 2026 with that month’s forced wipe. It added cows and sheep you can breed, the Biofuel Generator, Heavy Fuse loot rooms and a faster map generator. The next Rust update is due on Thursday, November 5, 2026, at 2 PM ET (7 PM UK), and it will wipe every official server again.

Before that, the Darkness Falls Halloween update landed on October 22, 2026 as a mandatory patch with no wipe: Halloween rifts, the scarecrow dungeons, 36 limited store items and Round 54 Twitch drops.

This page is our running hub for every Rust update and its patch notes: what is live now, when the next one drops in your time zone, what each 2026 and 2025 update changed, what gets wiped on update day, and where to read the official notes. It is checked against Facepunch’s devblogs, the Steam news feed and the public commit log every month. For the exact minute of the next wipe, keep the Rust force wipe countdown on our home page open.

• Latest Update
• Next Update
• Update Schedule
• 2026 Updates
• 2025 Updates
• What Gets Wiped
• Staging and Hotfixes
• Where to Read Patch Notes
• Console Updates
• Update Day Tips
• FAQ

Latest Rust Update: Livestock (October 2026)

The October 2026 Rust update is the Livestock update, released on Thursday, October 1, 2026. It is the biggest farming change since chickens and bees arrived in 2025, and it came with a forced wipe on every server.

• Cows and sheep. Farm animals you keep at your base and breed. Cows give milk, sheep give wool, and both drop dung. Our livestock guide covers breeding and yields, and the milk and cream guide covers the new foods.
• Biofuel Generator. A new power source that runs on farm waste. See the Biofuel Generator guide.
• Ranch vendor. Grown animals and wool can be sold to a new vendor.
• Heavy Fuse loot rooms. Locked rooms at 13 monuments that open with a Heavy Fuse, building on the Power Plant grid from August. On low-population servers (10 players or fewer) fuses now last four times longer.
• Air Wolf helipad. The pad at Bandit Camp starts each wipe in disrepair and has to be repaired.
• New NPC navigation. With the new navmesh switched on, NPCs can follow players into buildings and respect doors.
• Faster maps. The new Rust Render Pipeline arrived, and procedural map generation is about 18% faster.

Next Rust Update: November 5, 2026

The next Rust update is on Thursday, November 5, 2026, the first Thursday of the month. It lands at 19:00 UTC: 2 PM Eastern, 11 AM Pacific and 7 PM in the UK. Clocks have gone back in both the UK (October 25) and the US (November 1) by then, so the usual times line up.

The full devblog lands on the day, but the changes are already on staging and in the public commit log. The headliners are a blueprint rework (tech tree nodes cost Blueprint Fragments, Pages and Books instead of scrap), the loot-only Uzi SMG that works with shields, a lighthouse you repair to open the deep sea, scientist boats patrolling the main island, and a nailgun refresh with skin support. Read every confirmed change in our Rust November 2026 update guide.

Rust Update Schedule: When Does Rust Update?

Rust updates on a fixed rhythm. Facepunch’s Surviving 12 Years post on January 1, 2026 promised a guaranteed monthly update on the first Thursday of every month, and that schedule has held all year.

• Day: the first Thursday of the month, every month, holidays included (January 1, 2026 still wiped on the day).
• Time: 7 PM UK clock time. That is 18:00 UTC in British Summer Time and 19:00 UTC in winter, which works out to 2 PM ET and 11 AM PT in most months.
• Size: one big content update with its patch notes, then smaller fixes during the month.

Every Rust Update in 2026

These are the official monthly updates of 2026, each released on the first Thursday with a forced wipe. The links go to our guides for the biggest additions.

Want the bigger picture going back to 2013? Our Rust release date and history page has every landmark update from the first alpha to today.

Rust Updates in 2025

2025 was the year Facepunch reshaped progression. If a guide quotes research costs of 75 or 125 scrap, or says workbenches need scrap, it was written before Pivot or Die.

What a Rust Update Wipes

Every monthly update changes the game’s network protocol and map generation, so every server has to update and start a new map. That is why update day and force wipe day are the same day.

• Map and bases: always wiped. Every base, box and deployable on the old map is gone.
• Blueprints: only wiped when Facepunch forces a blueprint wipe, as it did with Pivot or Die (November 2025) and Built Different (June 2026). Many community servers wipe blueprints on their own schedule. Our blueprints guide explains the difference.
• Skins, DLC and stats: never wiped. They live on your Steam account.
• Modded servers: often come back a little later, once Oxide or Carbon is updated for the new build.

Staging Branch, Hotfixes and Small Patches

Rust’s content does not appear out of nowhere on update day. It goes through three stages:

1. Commits. Every change the developers make shows up on Facepunch’s public commit log, often weeks ahead.
2. Staging branch. A public test build anyone who owns Rust can install free on Steam (see our Rust staging branch guide). New features usually land there one to three weeks before release, with test servers to try them.
3. Release and hotfixes. The update goes live on the first Thursday, and a hotfix or two often follows in the next few days. Hotfixes restart servers but do not wipe them.

Where to Read Official Rust Patch Notes

Rust Console Edition Updates

Rust Console Edition on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S is built by Double Eleven, and it does not follow the PC update schedule. Console patches are numbered (for example patch 1.16 on September 24, 2026), they arrive on their own dates, and console content usually lands months after PC. Official console servers wipe on the last Thursday of the month at 18:00 UTC.

Our Rust Console Edition hub tracks console patches and the console roadmap, and the Rust console wipe schedule has every console wipe date.

Rust Update Day Tips

1. Update Steam before the wipe. The new build downloads at release time. Restart Steam if it does not start on its own.
2. Read the notes first. Recipes, upkeep and loot tables change often, as with the group upkeep change in Breach and Clear. Our base designs guide covers how upkeep works now.
3. Expect queues. Popular servers fill in minutes. Have two or three picked from our server list.
4. Check your settings. Big engine updates, like the June move to Unity 6, can change performance. Our best settings and console commands guide helps you get your FPS back.
5. Watch for hotfixes. If something feels broken on day one, a fix is usually out within a few days.

Rust Update FAQ

Sources and Further Reading

• Official devblogs and patch notes: Facepunch, Rust news
• 2026 schedule and roadmap: Facepunch, Surviving 12 Years
• Power Trip: Facepunch, Power Trip
• Every change as it is made: Facepunch Commits, Rust
• Patch notes on Steam: Steam, Rust news
• Naval delay: PCGamesN, Rust Naval update delayed into 2026