What’s new

Stages

The stage changes apply from 9 November. Earlier stages keep the roads they had, so their times, replays and ghosts still match.

• Finland’s big rolling hills: the lakeland now climbs and drops in long hills about a kilometre apart, roughly twice the height they were, with crest after crest on the straights.
• Finland’s big jumps go on the straights: the big yumps are no longer in front of corners. Each one has room to land and settle before the next bend: about 30 m before a flat-out kink or fast sweep, 60 m before a medium bend and 90 m before anything sharp.
• Wider streets in Italy: the tarmac through the hill towns and on the hill road between them is half as wide again.
• Wider lanes in Germany: the tarmac lanes through the vineyards and the village cobbles are half as wide again.
• More grip on Italy’s gravel: the gravel lane through the olive groves is dry and well packed. It grips better through the turns, steps out later, slides less on the throttle and stops shorter.

Phones & tablets

• Wider view: the race camera has a wider field of view on touch screens, more so with the phone held upright, so you see more of the road ahead.
• If the game can’t start on your device, it now says so, with a Reload button, instead of showing a menu that does nothing. The error is sent to us so we can fix it.
• A device that can’t run the 3D graphics (for example an iPad in Lockdown Mode) now gets a “Graphics unavailable” card that explains what to do, with a Try again button, instead of a black screen.

Changes & fixes

• On a network that blocks our servers, the game now says “Can’t reach RALLY52’s servers” instead of waiting on “Get ready…” for good.
• The results screen of a past stage shows which stage it was and its date.
• The yearly Rally Pass now shows its price per month.

Sound

• New engine sounds: every car has its own exhaust voice, set by its engine layout, size and era. Each firing barks, there is a harder rasp on the throttle and a hollower note off it. The boxers burble, the five warbles and the V6 rasps, and the 1970s cars have a lumpy idle.
• Anti-lag: the turbo cars from 1990 on bang and crackle when you lift, and their turbo stays spooled. Older turbos keep their blow-off flutter.
• Shift cut: cars with a sequential gearbox (1995 on) cut the ignition for a moment on every upshift.
• Softer gravel: no more crackle that grew with speed. The stones are smoother and darker, and you still feel the surface.

Pacenotes

• Jump + bend pacenotes: a jump with a bend just after it is one note, the bend’s arrow with the jump in the corner, called before the jump. Before, the jump took a note of its own and the bend’s came up with the car already in the air. Finland’s fast bends after its yumps now get a note too.
• No more “dip” card for the hollow a jump lands in.
• Pacenote cards are about 22% bigger and stay clear of the road. When space is short, the notes furthest ahead wait, never the next bend.

Stages & scenery

• No big hairpin cuts in Chile and Portugal (from 5 November): the inside of every slow corner is planted with pines and eucalyptus, or granite boulders and gorse on the ridges. You can still clip the apex.
• Log stacks, parked cars, tractors, the Chile log truck and the Swiss cows sit on the ground instead of floating or digging in, with more detailed models. Bushes are leafier.

Changes & fixes

• Past stages at a glance: pick any day for its time of day and weather, surface and length, your best time and rank, and a Board button for that day’s leaderboard.
• Same stage on every graphics setting: on low scenery detail some tyre walls, log piles, buildings, fences and parked cars were missing and trees stood in different places, so you could hit things other players drove through, or the other way round. Every setting now has the same solid scenery.
• Small hops off the camber no longer cost 10% of your speed on landing. Real jumps are unchanged.
• Fixed the Goof (Rally Pass) being refused at the start, or swapped for the Fester.
• In replays, every car shows its own livery, including two players in the same model.
• “A new version is ready” now only shows on the title screen, and copies of the game left open from before an update are asked to reload.

General

• Improved cheat & invalid run detection, including guest runs claimed after signing up.
• Linked accounts share the 12 ranked attempts per stage.

Five new countries

• Portugal (1 November): sandy gravel through the Minho hills, with ruts that deepen through the stage, solid granite ravines and the Fafe jump at the finish.
• Chile (3 November): narrow, dusty gravel through the pine and eucalyptus plantations, ridge-top roads and blind hairpins, the Andes on the horizon.
• Finland (4 November): the fastest stages in the game. Wide, hard-packed gravel, crest after crest and big yumps before fast corners.
• Italy (6 November): narrow tarmac streets through the hill towns above Sanremo, houses wall to wall, closed junctions packed with fans, olive terraces between the towns.
• Germany (7 November): the Panzerplatte. Slick concrete slabs lined with solid cubes, tarmac lanes and a cobbled street through the barracks, wrecked tanks out in the grass.
• See every country on the stages page.

New car: Volksvegan Goof

• The 1986 Volksvegan Goof joins the Rally Pass line-up: a Group A hot hatch with a 1.8-litre four-cylinder. It’s first in the Rally Pass row of the garage, with a NEW tag.
• Update sale: 25% off your first month of Rally Pass, until 8 November.

Teams

• Team standings: the leaderboard has a third tab, Teams. Each team scores its drivers’ season points added together. Rows are tinted in the team’s colour.
• Team chat in Your team: one message a minute per driver, with the same word filter as profiles.
• Your team now lists every team too.

Customise

• Download your skin as a PNG from Customise → More. One pixel is one paint cell, so you can edit it in any paint app.
• Upload a skin (Rally Pass): bring a PNG back in. Up to 1 MB and 64 colours; glass and locked parts stay as they are.
• Paint the whole car in one tap, trim included.

Calendar

• Twelve countries from 1 November. The first week brings Portugal, Japan, Chile, Finland, USA, Italy and Germany; for the rest of November the new countries come up more often. From 1 December every twelve days hold each country once.
• Stage ranks: each day you drove shows your final rank (P4), and the day’s card under the calendar shows the stage, your rank, your time and Drive.
• Country flags in the calendar, the legend and the stage info. The red outline follows the day you pick; today keeps a yellow date.
• Every stage up to 31 October is unchanged, so past times and replays still count.

Driving

• Drive through leaves: on trees whose leaves hang down to the road, only the trunk is solid. The leaves drag at the car, shake it and rustle.
• Trunks and thin posts are solid at any speed, even on slower phones.
• Germany: a drumming rumble and a shiver through the camera on the cobbles, and slightly slicker concrete.
• These apply from the 1 November stage on, so earlier leaderboards keep their physics.

Game & menus

• Ghosts stay: a ghost you picked on the leaderboard stays (STILL CHASING) until you beat its time.
• More variety in the weather: clear, sunny days are rarer, with more sunsets and nights.
• Pacenotes run in a row on landscape phones so they don’t cover the road, wait for GO!, and are clean icons with thicker lines.
• Yellow buttons stay yellow when you hover them.
• A game left open past midnight offers to reload for the new stage, never mid-run.

Scenery fixes

• Wales: fewer mud patches and timber signs, and a new, centred dragon on the flag.
• Poland: doors, windows and road signs no longer blink against the walls.
• Monte Carlo: the snow on the walls no longer floats above them.
• The countries’ flags on the fans’ poles show properly (they were drawn off the edge of their texture).

Fixes

• Phones that came back with black or missing textures after the graphics reset now reload at the next menu or run start, never mid-run.
• The username check no longer gets stuck on “Checking…”.
• The name filter catches more offensive spellings.
• Halloween (31 October): the Mystery stage became Dracula’s Pass, a haunted mountain road in Transylvania at midnight.

Halloween

• 🎃 31 October: Haunted Hollow. The Mystery stage, at midnight, through a black forest past haunted mansions.
• Drive it on the day to earn the Halloween 2026 badge on your profile. It’s yours to keep.
• Halloween sale: 25% off your first month of Rally Pass, until 1 November.
• Tomorrow’s stage, and your streak, now show on the results screen.

Stages & scenery

• New stage design from 24 October: shorter, tighter stages with more corners and more variety: hairpins, chicanes, fast sweepers and bends that tighten or open. Every country plays differently.
• Past stages are unchanged, so old times and replays still count.
• New buildings everywhere: proper houses, farms, chalets, barns, a church and a Swedish sauna with real walls, windows and roofs instead of plain boxes.
• Poland: new industrial halls and apartment blocks, no more doubled speed signs, and no more flickering barriers.
• Rock and cliff faces (Switzerland, Monte Carlo and more) are now one solid, layered surface.
• No more hay bales or tyre walls stacked behind guard rails.
• Trees close to the road now stand on proper trunks.

Driving

• Livelier car: the body leans out of corners and the lean swaps quickly when you flick left-right, so you can feel the weight move. This changes how the car looks only: handling and times are unchanged.
• More sense of speed: the camera sways, the view widens and the chase camera closes in as you go faster, and roadside posts rush past.
• Barriers and walls are solid exactly where you see them, including Poland’s red-and-white barriers.
• Guard rails now stop you from behind too: no more being teleported back onto the road.

Pacenotes

• New: visual pacenotes at the top of the screen, inspired by rally co-driver notes: every bend from 6 (fast) to 1 (very slow), plus hairpins, square and acute corners, crests, dips, jumps and the finish.
• Coloured symbols show tightens, opens, “into”, don’t cut, caution and over crest, so you can read them out of the corner of your eye.
• Each note appears as you reach the corner before it. When corners come thick and fast, the newest call is on top and the earlier ones sit below it, smaller.
• Turn them off in Settings → Pacenotes.

Accounts & sign-up

• A clearer sign-up screen when you try to customise your car as a guest. It shows what a free account gets you, with Google or a one-tap email link.
• After signing up you’re taken straight back to Customise.
• Email sign-in: a “Did you mean gmail.com?” check for common typos, a button to open your inbox, and a resend button with a countdown.

Fair play

• Guests can no longer open window after window on one device for unlimited practice. After a few guest sessions on a device in a day you’re asked to sign up free, which gives you your own daily attempts. Groups playing together at the same time aren’t affected.
• Guest runs carried over when you sign up count on the leaderboard only if that device had a single guest session that day.
• Better detection of one player taking several leaderboard places with linked accounts, and of cars faster than the game allows. Times are held for a person to review, never removed automatically.

Changes & fixes

• Fixed guard rails and walls appearing on the opposite side of the road for roughly 75% of players (anyone who started the stage straight after opening the game, on 14 and 19 October).
• Purple sectors are now given for the fastest time anyone on the day’s leaderboard has set in that sector, not a sector that matches your last one.
• Increased visual body roll slightly: the car now leans out of corners.
• Wall hits are more consistent: brushing a wall costs a little, a head-on hit costs the most, and bouncing along walls is never faster than braking.
• Lag spikes no longer cost you time.
• Fixed small hops at the edge of the road.
• Starting a run on a slow connection no longer uses an extra attempt.
• Fixed a Rally Pass ending early after a failed payment attempt.
• Guest runs now count on the leaderboard once you sign up.
• Runs held for review now show the reason.
• Share your personal best from the results screen, with sector squares.
• Continue with Google after a run as a guest.
• Rally Pass prices in your own currency in Poland, Sweden, Norway, Czechia, Hungary, Romania and Switzerland.
• Optional streak reminder emails.
• New home page with a gameplay clip.

General

• Improved cheat & invalid run detection.
• Improved performance on slower devices, and graphics quality is no longer lowered on screens capped at 30 fps.
• Faster stage loading.
• Improved menu responsiveness.
• A/B testing some menu layouts.
• Some backend and storage optimisations.

The scenery fights back, walls cost you time, jumps behave, and something has appeared in the calendar for 31 October.

New content & events

• Something’s coming on 31 October. A mystery stage has appeared in the calendar: look for the purple box with the yellow question mark. We’re not saying any more yet, except that drivers who take it on that day get a special badge on their profile.
• Mystery stages in the calendar. A new “Mystery stage” entry in the calendar key, so you know what the question mark means.
• Real signs. Fan messages, fan-club banners, sponsor boards and road signs are redrawn, sharp and readable, and no longer flicker.
• Mud in Wales. Mud now lies on the road edges and forestry tracks of Welsh stages.

Gameplay improvements

• Consistent jumps. The same crest at the same speed now gives the same jump on every device and at any frame rate.
• Walls cost time. Riding along walls or bouncing off them is now slower than braking and taking the bend. Knocks cost a little more.
• Solid scenery. Trees, lamp posts, rocks, huts and parked cars near the road are now solid.
• Spectators react. Hit a spectator and they fall over. You can switch this off in Settings > Video > Spectator hits.
• More sense of speed. Faint air streaks rush past at speed (off with reduced motion), and the camera eases back under hard acceleration.
• Clearer chase camera. Scenery between the camera and your car fades out instead of the camera jumping in close.

Major fixes

• Attempts are counted reliably. The counter no longer repeats the same number, and every run uses an attempt.
• Restarting during the resume countdown no longer starts the run paused or gives a wrong time.
• Controls no longer get stuck when you switch to another window or app, or lift your last finger.
• If the graphics stop working mid-run, the run now pauses and tells you.
• Guest prompts no longer suggest that guest times go on the leaderboard.
• Steadier sign-in and time saving at busy times, after the outage on 15 October.

Website & account changes

• A Rally Pass bought as a guest now moves to your account when you sign up or sign in.
• You are told when one of your runs is held for review, and why its time isn’t showing yet.
• Clearer messages if your account can’t start runs.
• Follow RALLY52 on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Discord: links on the website, the title screen and the menu.
• Tidier title screen: even spacing between the menu, links and social icons, and nothing cut off on short screens. Version 0.9.1 shown on the title screen.
• Fair play, terms and privacy pages updated.
• This changelog page.

Technical improvements

• Faster loading: car models stay cached between visits and leaderboard car pictures load only when needed.
• Less data used in the background, especially in hidden tabs.
• Guest runs no longer save a replay. Other replays are kept for 3 days.
• Improved fair-play checks and better monitoring, so problems are spotted and fixed sooner.