u/Status-Impression766

In today's portal news update TNT has shared some info pertaining to how Battle Pass will look for the remaining site events of 2026.

They also provided some additional comments and info suggesting this will be integrated into more site events and that no final long term decision has been made on what will be included with Premium.

The main info I'm sure people are more curious about is:

>For this year’s remaining events, we’ll be trying a mix of Battle Pass formats:

>Battle Pass Included with Premium:
- Festival of Fears Halloween Event (October)
- Neopets Birthday Event (November)

>Separate Pass
- Winter Starlight Celebration (December)

In today's September Newsletter drop TNT included info about this year's Faerie Festival saying in part:

>2026 is the biggest year for the Faerie Festival yet! Following the end of The Void Within when Fyora stepped down, this year's festival will be hosted by Iridesia and Luxinia. Not only can you donate items in exchange for capsules and prize shop points, but this year players will vote to seat the new Faerie Council. In addition to the fabulous wearables in the regularly scheduled Free the Faeries NC event, look forward to a battle pass, new avatar, and more later this month!

Based on the image it appears this event is scheduled to take place from Sept 15 - 29th!

Edit / Update - Sat Aug 15th: it appears this item is no longer available in the NC Mall.

NC Mall appears to have a freebie available right now.

The Action Figures Companion Foreground appears to allow users to claim it despite the text saying the item is gone. Uncertain if this is a mistake / will last long due to the confusing text and ability to claim, or if any fixes have occurred after this has been posted, but can confirm this item has been claimable at time of posting!

The NC Mall 19th Pretty in Peach Daifuku Cake is the latest freebie available from the NC Mall

ETA: Thanks to u/Bruni91 for sharing the results of feeding this item to their pet!

You are allowed to claim these on your side accounts too

There's been a lot of questions about this on the Megathread and we finally have an answer for how the trophies will work for this year's AC thanks to TNT updating the FAQ

>If you earn a certain amount of points throughout the Altador Cup, you'll be able to earn a trophy to be awarded at the end of the event. 250 points will get you a Bronze Trophy, 500 points will earn a Silver Trophy, and earning 1000 points earns a Gold Trophy! Any amount of points under 250 will grant a participation ribbon.

The NC Mall 19th Interdimensional Kitty Cake is the latest birthday freebie in the NC Mall

TNT Luna shared on Discord last week that they will be conducting scheduled site maintenance on Thursday July 9th at 9AM NST. Maintenance is expected to last approximately 1 hour.

Annual NC Mall Birthday Cake freebie is available! You can claim it here: https://ncmall.neopets.com/mall/shop.phtml?layout=new

A new announcement in the portal this morning from TNT has introduced a new monthly contest called #Neopets. It's inspired by the old Random Contest!

>We’re excited to introduce #NEOPETS, a new creative contest inspired by the spirit of the classic Random Contest, now reimagined for the modern Neopets community. Each month, we’ll announce a new, themed challenge where you can show off your creativity in fun, surprising, and very Neopian ways.

>Whether you love to draw, craft, cosplay, bake, film, photograph, build, or decorate, this contest is your chance to bring Neopets into the real world and share what you create with the community. The only requirement is that your submission must be in a digital format we can share on our social media. 

>Each round will feature a new theme and a new entry form right here on this page. Your creation can take many forms, but entries should be submitted in a digital format, such as a photo, video, scan, or image file, so we can review and celebrate selected submissions with the community.

>And don’t worry: while winners may be featured on Neopets social media, you do not need a social media account to enter. All entries will be submitted through the official contest form, which is updated monthly on this page. If you would like to be tagged when winners are shared, you’ll have the option to include your social handle.

For more information on this please give the article a read here:
https://portal.neopets.com/news/hashtag-neopets-contest

TNT shared the following Trading Post update in today's news release:

>Trading Post Update: To ensure a safer economy, we’ve introduced a 100,000,000 NP daily receiving cap on the Trading Post. This rolling 24-hour limit only applies to the total Neopoints you receive across your trades, and item-only transfers remain completely unaffected. If you hit the cap, you'll see a friendly "Hold your Kadoaties!" reminder to take your higher-value deals over to the Auction House!

DO NOT PARTICIPATE IN THIS EVENT ON YOUR SIDE ACCOUNT(S)

We will be removing individual posts about this topic from the main feed and directing everyone to use this megathread instead. This helps keep the main feed less cluttered with similar posts and allow other topics to be seen. This post will be pinned in the Community Highlights section and comments are default sorted by new here, so your comments will be seen!

----------

LINKS

Kiko Match Madness Homepage

Kiko Match Madness Official FAQ

Jellyneo's Kiko Match Madness Event Guide

Jellyneo's Kiko Match III Game Guide

----------

WHAT IS KIKO MATCH MADNESS?

Kiko Match Madness will run for 15 days, from June 22 to July 6th 2026 at 11:59pm NST. This is during the press tour + sign-up period of Altador Cup this year so there shouldn't be overlap in gameplay.

Similar to the Sakhmet Soiree event earlier this year, Kiko Match Madness is an event focused around the all new Kiko Match sensation, Kiko Match III! Every 3 days, a new challenge will be revealed where you will either have to reach a specific score, or beat a certain board size within a time limit. Submit your scores to beat these challenges and win exclusive event prizes!

----------

PARTICIPATION & PRIZE INFO

Kiko Match Madness is an event that releases new challenges every 3 days. Visit the hub page to see what the challenges are, then work towards completing them! All you have to do is submit a score to Kiko Match III while the event is running and the challenges are active and all scores will automatically count towards completing the challenges that have been revealed so far.

You can play on the main site, or on the Companion App if you’ve connected your Companion App to NeoPass. Both methods will work! Neopass is not required for this event if you are playing on-site.

As with all games, you get 3 score submissions per day to count toward challenges for this event – unless you have Premium, or use an Extra Score Submission Fortune Cookie, which will let you submit 4 times!

Every time you complete a challenge, you’ll be able to collect the rewards for that challenge. Just visit (or refresh) the Kiko Match Madness hub page and you’ll see the button allowing you to collect!

There will also be trophies and avatars granted at the end of the event.

Avatar Info:
A new avatar will be rewarded for completing at least one challenge during this event.

Trophy Info:
- Participant Ribbon: Submit a score to Kiko Match III 1 or more times over the course of the event
- Bronze Trophy: Complete 1-4 challenges during the course of the event to upgrade Ribbon to Bronze Trophy!
- Silver Trophy: Complete all 5 challenges over the course of the event to earn the Silver Trophy!
- Gold Trophy: Complete all 5 challenges within their initial 3-day timeframes to earn the Gold Trophy!

All rewards can be claimed at any point during or after the event. That means you can log on weeks or months or years after the event ends and still be able to claim your rewards! (We recommend collecting them quickly though.)

Please note there might be some delay in granting your post-event rewards, so don’t be alarmed if they don’t appear right away. They’ll get to you as soon as possible!

It may take some time for the challenges to update, so please be patient! If your challenge hasn’t updated within 48 hours of submitting your challenge-winning score, please send in a ticket.

----------

KIKO MATCH MADNESS CHALLENGES

Every 3 days, a new challenge will be revealed where you will either have to reach a specific score, or beat a certain board size within a time limit. Submit your scores to beat these challenges and win exclusive event prizes!

For the first 3 days after a challenge has been revealed, you will earn a bonus prize for completing it. You can complete a challenge at any time during the event, but completing them quickly as they are revealed will grant extra prizes. As long as you complete the challenges within the timeframe, the rewards can be claimed whenever you like – even after the event ends!

Once revealed, all challenges will be available until the event ends on July 6th, 2026 at 11:59pm NST. There is a 3-day period after each challenge is revealed that will grant you an extra prize

Technically you can complete a challenge as many times as you like, but you will only be rewarded once. The more you play, the better you’ll get, though, so keep practicing so you can ace every challenge as they increase in difficulty!

----------

DO NOT PARTICIPATE IN THIS EVENT ON YOUR SIDE ACCOUNT(S)

DO NOT PARTICIPATE IN THIS EVENT ON YOUR SIDE ACCOUNT(S)

We will be removing individual posts about this topic from the main feed and directing everyone to use this megathread instead. This helps keep the main feed less cluttered with similar posts and allow other topics to be seen. This post will be pinned in the Community Highlights section and comments are default sorted by new here, so your comments will be seen!

----------

LINKS

Altador Cup Homepage

Jellyneo's Altador Cup Coverage

Official Altador Cup FAQ

Challenge Track FAQ

Altador From The Clouds (NC Event)

Jellyneo's Altador From The Clouds NC Event Guide

Official Altador From The Clouds NC Event FAQ

----------

ALTADOR CUP XX GENERAL INFO

Altador Cup (AC) is Neopia's largest annual sports competition! Taking place each summer, players will have an opportunity to learn about the different teams competing via the pre-tournament press tour, pick a team to back during the sign-up period, and then support them by playing games such as Yooyuball and side games such as Slushie Slinger, Make Some Noise, and Shootout Showdown! This year will also feature a new side game called Obstacle Course Caper.

----------

PRESS TOUR

Press tour starts June 22nd. This will last 1 week, either ending June 28th at the end of the day or June 29th mid-morning NST.

Every day during this period of the event, you will get new information on some of the various teams competing in the cup, including the team roster, a short story about what they've been up to, and in some cases, even an interview in the Neopian Times editorial called Quick Questions! There will also be trivia questions every day regarding some of the information found in that day's press tour reveals, which you can answer to earn both Prize Points and Neopoints

Daily trivia answers can be found here

----------

SIGN-UPS

Team sign-ups are set to start June 29th. This will last 1 week, either ending July 5th at the end of the day or July 6th mid-morning NST.

This is the time in which you can choose the team you want to support for the Altador Cup, and sign up with them to contribute to their overall score and placement! The Sign-up period lasts one week. If you don't sign up for a team within that week, you won't be able to earn points for any teams or contribute to overall tournament scores. If you miss up on sign-ups you can still participate. Your scores just won't contribute to an official Altador Cup team's score. You'll still be able to earn Prize Points by playing games, and you can spend those Prize Points in the Prize Shop that will be open for the duration of the tournament and after.

You cannot change teams once you have picked.

Who is everyone signing up for? Are you loyal to your team or do you like to play on different teams each AC?

----------

ALTADOR CUP

Tournament play will start July 6th taking place after the sign up period and last for 9 days. TNT has shared there will be a new game called Obstacle Course Caper, a battle-pass style feature, as well as Team Neopia Central, making for 20 total teams. We’ll update this post as more info becomes available, so stay tuned!

The Altador Cup Tournament Period is 9 days long and consists of 3 rounds in which you can play the available Altador Cup games: Yooyuball, Shootout Showdown, Slushie Slinger, Make Some Noise, and Obstacle Course Caper.

The first two rounds determine the teams' brackets, and the final round determines final placements in the tournament. They work as follows:

Round 1: Teams will be randomly paired up to compete against each other. Each team will only face one other team. Winners of this round will be placed in the Upper Mid bracket, and the losers of this round will be placed in the Mid bracket. There will be a 1-day Round Break following this Round to calculate final scores and determine the next Round's brackets.

Round 2: Teams within the Upper Mid and Mid brackets will be randomly paired up to compete against each other. Each team will face only one other team. Winners in the Upper Mid bracket will be placed in the Top bracket, while the losers will remain in the Upper Mid bracket; winners in the Mid bracket will stay in the Mid bracket, while the losers will move down to the Lower bracket. There will be a 1-day Round Break following this Round to calculate final scores and determine the final Round's brackets.

Round 3: Brackets have been fully determined, and each team will play every other team in the bracket, for a total of 4 days/games and 1 bye day. The teams with the overall highest score will place in the #1 spot in their bracket, and all other teams will place 2nd-5th in their respective brackets according to final scores.

There will be 1-day breaks between each round to calculate and verify score totals, and 1 bye day per team in the 3rd Round, but that doesn't mean you can't play on those days! All Altador Cup games will be available to play throughout the tournament. If you play them on a day your team isn't competing (such as during a Round Break), or you didn't sign up for a team at all, you will still be able to play and earn prize points and NP.

Practice rounds are held during Round Breaks and on Bye Days, or are for those who did not sign up for an Altador Cup team. These "practice rounds" are when you can practice playing all of the Altador Cup games. Since these are practice rounds and do not take place during actual tournament Rounds, the scores will not support your team, but they WILL grant you Prize Points to use in the Altador Cup Prize Shop! You can also earn Neopoints by playing during the practice rounds.

All Prize Point amounts are calculated and balanced based on only playing on actual game days (so not including the breaks or bye days) to make sure they can be earned without interfering with your lives or causing strain or injury through excessive grinding. Of course, you'll still have to work hard to get all the prizes, but you should be able to earn more by grinding less.

During the course of the Altador Cup, you will also be able to access the Prize Shop. In the Prize Shop, you can exchange points earned through playing games in the Tournament period for exclusive, Altador Cup-only prizes! As always, you will have access to the Prize Shop until next year's Altador Cup starts.

The Prize Shop will open on July 6th, when the tournament starts, but points start being earned during the Press Tour period.

The Winner's Announcement will take place on July 15th.

----------

ACHIEVEMENTS

Achievements are small, optional goals you can meet while playing the Altador Cup that can earn you extra Prize Points and exclusive prizes! They're small challenges that add to the difficulty of various games, but are not necessary to achieve in order to earn points for your team. They're just bonuses you can gain on top of the Prize Points and team points you are already earning. Once you've completed an Achievement, you will be able to claim the reward for it on the main Altador Cup Tournament page. Achievement prizes can be claimed at any point during the tournament or after it, but must be claimed before the following year's Altador Cup, or they'll disappear along with the Prize Shop!

----------

CHALLENGE TRACK

The Challenge Track is a new way to earn more prizes for participating in the Altador Cup! It is a Battlepass-style system that keeps track of points you've earned during the Altador Cup. The more points you earn, the more prizes you can win!

There are two versions of the Challenge Track: the default, free-to-play Challenge Track, and the Champion's Track. The Champion's Track is included in Premium Subscriptions, or a Pass must be purchased by those who don't have Premium in order to access it. The Champion's Track grants additional prizes alongside the ones that are earned in the baseline Challenge Track.

For more information, please see the Challenge Track FAQ!

----------

OTHER INFO

You do not have to play all of the games if you don't want, but it's important for your team to win the match-ups across all games, as all the games contribute to your team's standing in the tournament

There are no more rankings: "Because the Altador Cup has undergone so many changes for 2026, and there has been feedback regarding how stressful it is to achieve the highest rank, in addition to how much players need to grind in order to achieve the highest rank, it was decided that the Ranking system would be omitted. Instead, we brought back Achievements"

There will be no Staff Tournament this year

----------

ALTADOR FROM THE CLOUDS (NC EVENT)

This year is hosted by Krawk Island! There are 14 days of items available

This portion of the event works similar to other site NC events where users may purchase items from the NC Mall to use to get exclusive NC items.

Boarding passes for the event will be available in the NC Mall until July 22nd, 2026. You can purchase and activate your boarding passes until this date; however, you can claim your prizes when you visit the hub page up until the next Altador Cup NC Event.

----------

Want to get in some practice before things start up?

Jellyneo's game guides can be found below and the guides contain links to play the games:

Yooyuball

Slushie Slinger

Make Some Noise

Shootout Showdown

----------

DO NOT PARTICIPATE IN THIS EVENT ON YOUR SIDE ACCOUNT(S)

In today's June Newsletter email TNT mentioned the Altador Cup Press Tour will begin June 22nd. As a reminder this is seen as a lead up to the actual AC in which teams are introduced before signups open.

In today's June Newsletter email TNT has shared info on a planned update for the AH in which they say:

We’re working on updating the Auction House page! Here’s a quick look at some planned improvements.

• Start an auction from within the house, not just your inventory
• Increase the maximum number of items that can be auctioned at a time
• Increase starting price and minimum bid increments
• Implement a toggle for Neomail alerts
• Expand auction filters to have a “Guild Members Only” option
• Add anti-botting measures
• Adding the ability to cancel active auctions

TNT shared a news update in the portal today announcing the 2026-2027 community ambassador applications are now open! They will remain open for 2 weeks (June 14th) with TNT expecting to notify and onboard the new ambassadors in July.

For more information and to apply if interested check out the announcement: https://portal.neopets.com/news/2026-ca-application

As JN mentioned, they're in the process of updating their guide which can be found here: https://www.jellyneo.net/?go=haunted_woods_hunt