Valorant 13.04 opens Act 5, swapping Abyss back in for Breeze

Riot Games has released Valorant patch 13.04, the update that opens Season 2026 Act 5. The act started on August 18 and runs through October, Dexerto reports, arriving with a new Battlepass, a competitive map rotation and a short list of Agent bug fixes.

The map pool change is the one that matters most to competitive players: Abyss is back in the Competitive and Deathmatch queues, and Breeze is out of both. The rotation and the bug fixes apply on all platforms; the Premier changes further down the notes are PC only.

Agent and stability fixes

• Cypher's Spycam minimap icon no longer displays rotated incorrectly
• Viper's Snake Bite equip animation no longer appears incorrectly from an enemy's point of view
• Deadlock's GravNet visual effects no longer disappear after a player disconnects and reconnects
• Repeatedly switching between Clove's Meddle and Ruse no longer freezes a player and disconnects them
• Transforming melee weapons such as Kuronami 2.0 and Nocturnum now animate correctly during an inspect

The clean-up follows a busy act. Patch 13.00, which landed in June, brought a set of Agent overhauls, added the Summit map and buffed the Bandit pistol. Riot has since tweaked Phoenix's Ultimate and made adjustments to The Outlaw, and problems with Waylay led the developers to temporarily remove certain Agents from play.

Premier drops to a five-week stage

On PC, Premier opens Stage V26A5 with matches starting August 18, and the stage runs five weeks of matches instead of the usual seven. Teams that finish with a Premier Score of at least 450 qualify for playoffs on September 20.

Contender and Invite qualification is still decided by placement rather than score, with standings deciding who advances, and those two divisions play their playoffs across two days: a first round on September 19, with the teams that advance returning on September 20 for the finals.

The Aeris collection

The act also puts the Riftbound-themed Aeris collection in the store, a card-themed skinline covering the Vandal, Bandit, Guardian and Marshal along with the Suit of Aeris melee. Its interactive Flex has a 10 percent chance of drawing Riftbound cards instead of its own.