Haunted by Daylight returns on 13 October 2026, and for the first time since the Void was introduced in 2022, you will not be able to walk into it. Behaviour has closed the separate Void Realm. Void Energy, Void Rifts, Haunts and Void Crystals all stay — but the Rifts now stay on the live map and turn into Void Portals that teleport you across the Trial you are already playing.
That single change rewrites the entire event loop. Four years of "bank energy, open the Void, hide in the other dimension" muscle memory is dead. This guide covers what Void Energy does in the fifth iteration, how Portals and Crystals work, which numbers Behaviour has published for 2026 versus which ones are carried over from 2025, and the one date claim you should not trust yet.
Quick answer: Void Energy in Haunted by Daylight 2026
- Event window: starts Tuesday 13 October 2026 at 9am PDT / 12pm EDT / 5pm BST. The start date comes off Behaviour's own on-screen date card in its 1 October trailer. The official wiki and the community both list 3 November 2026 as the end, which matches a three-week run, but Behaviour has not published an end date in writing.
- The Void Realm is gone. No separate dimension, no entering it, no overworld-versus-Void split.
- Void Rifts remain on normal maps. Once opened, a Rift becomes a Void Portal you can teleport through to move across the map.
- Teleporting costs Void Energy. Both roles can use Portals; Killers additionally get a teleport toward Survivors who are collecting energy.
- Haunts stay, in two types — one slows Survivors who come too close, one moves noticeably faster.
- Void Crystals are still the Survivor-side consumable, and the 1 October broadcast indicated Survivors now start the match holding one rather than buying it mid-Trial.
- Dark Trinkets remain the event currency for the cosmetic track.
- The whole event wears a heavy orange Halloween filter, replacing the teal-purple look of previous years.
What is Void Energy in Dead by Daylight?
Void Energy is the event-only resource Haunted by Daylight layers on top of a normal Trial. It is not a perk, it is not an add-on, and it does not carry between matches. You pick it up from event objects scattered across the map, you hold a limited amount, and you spend it on event-only abilities that only exist while the event is live.
Historically you collected it three ways: releasing Haunts (the floating entities that drift around the map), kicking or breaking the event pumpkins, and in some years passively, from normal actions like repairing. The 2024 iteration paid 2 energy per second of generator progress with a 250 total cap, and pumpkins awarded +12 each. Both of those are historical values — treat them as the shape of the system, not as this year's numbers.
The important structural point for 2026: energy used to be a key. You banked it, the Void opened, and the actual payoff happened somewhere else. Now energy is a currency you spend in the Trial you are standing in, which means every point of it competes directly with chase, generator and hook pressure rather than pausing it.
Where do Void Rifts spawn, and what changed for 2026?
Void Rifts are the glowing tears that appear on the map once the event starts. In every previous iteration they were doors: stabilise enough of them, bank enough energy, and the Void Realm opened for a limited window.
For 2026 the door leads nowhere, because there is nothing on the other side. Instead, an opened Rift becomes a Void Portal, and a Portal is a traversal tool. Spend Void Energy, enter the Portal, come out somewhere else on the same map. Bleeding Cool's write-up of the 1 October reveal put it plainly: the Void Realm itself is closed, "despite its signature Rifts remaining," and those Rifts "once opened, become Void Portals and can be used to teleport around the Map."
Behaviour has not published Rift spawn counts, Portal cooldowns or the exact energy cost of a teleport. Previous years ran up to four Rifts on a map and required three of them to be stabilised after one opened for free at Trial start. That is a reasonable expectation and a terrible thing to state as fact, so do not build a strategy around a specific number until the patch notes land.
Why did Behaviour remove the Void Realm?
Because players said the event stopped feeling like Dead by Daylight. GamesRadar's event explainer, published the day of the reveal broadcast, is the cleanest statement of the reason on record:
"The biggest thing to note this year is that there is no Void dimension, so there'll be no disappearing into portals and running around the extra location, which feedback showed left players feeling like gameplay was a little disjointed."
"Disjointed" is doing a lot of work there. A Survivor in the old Void was Broken and Exhausted, could not touch Generators, Pallets, Lockers, Chests or Totems, and a hook sent them straight back to the overworld. A Killer in the Void was Undetectable and could see Survivor positions. Functionally, two players disappeared into a side game for a minute and the Trial they left behind froze.
The removal is not universally popular. The reaction on the subreddit skews towards "this is less, not different," with one of the better-upvoted takes reading: "it's more simple as an event makes it look like they kinda gave up on trying something new, instead they removed features." Another compared it unfavourably to the anniversary event — "this event as of right now just sounds like the anniversary event but without the dishes and only the portals."
The orange filter is catching separate flak, including a legitimate accessibility complaint that heavy colour grading hurts colour-blind players. Worth watching whether Behaviour ships an intensity slider.
How do Void Portals and the Killer counter-teleport work?
This is the part that decides whether 2026 is balanced, and it is also the part with the least published detail.
The community recap of the 1 October "October of Horror" broadcast — widely circulated and consistent across write-ups, but not a first-party document — describes the system like this: Void Energy grants powers to both sides, Survivors teleport using Void Portals by spending energy, and Killers can teleport near Survivors who are trying to collect Void Energy. Haunts split into two types, one applying a slow to Survivors who get too close and one that simply moves faster. Survivors are described as starting the match with a Void Crystal already in hand, with varying properties.
Read that as a design intent rather than a spec sheet. The important asymmetry is clear enough: a Survivor Portal is an escape tool mid-chase, and the Killer teleport is the answer to Survivors farming energy on the far side of the map. Whether the Killer teleport has a cost, a cooldown, a range limit or a tell is unpublished.
The same recap notes Behaviour explicitly referenced feedback from the Black Banquet event and said it wants "fun powers for both sides while reducing frustration." That is the design brief for the whole iteration.
What does a Void Crystal actually do?
The last published Crystal spec is the 2025 one, and it is worth knowing because it is the baseline the 2026 version is being built off. Label these as 2025 values — Behaviour has not re-published them for the fifth iteration:
- A Void Crystal cost 70 Void Energy at a Well and held 1 Charge.
- Used as a repair tool, it auto-progressed a generator at 0.8% per second for up to 30 seconds — 24% of a generator from one Charge.
- The payout was asymmetric: Survivors got 1 Void Crystal per deposit, Killers got 3 Captured Haunts charges, and Captured Haunts paid +30% action speed.
- Haunts travelled up to 5 m/s and inflicted Hindered, measured at −12% for 7 seconds.
The 24% figure is the one to keep. If the 2026 Crystal keeps anything close to that payout and Survivors now start with one, the event's effective generator economy shifts noticeably in Survivor favour before a single Rift is touched. If Behaviour nerfed the Charge to compensate, that will be in the patch notes.
What can you earn, and what does it cost?
The free, earnable 2026 track confirmed by Behaviour's own roster card and the event explainers:
- A Shane Wiigwaas outfit and a The Hillbilly outfit — the two characters headlining the event's date card.
- A set of Survivor shirts and a set of Killer masks unlocked through event quests.
Dark Trinkets are the event currency you spend in the event's cosmetic section. They debuted at Haunted by Daylight 2023 and they have a quiet property most guides omit: leftovers are not wasted. Behaviour's own documentation states that "any left-over Trinkets not spent on Cosmetics are automatically converted into Bloodpoints," and the conversion rate was raised from 125 Bloodpoints per Trinket to 500 per Trinket with Twisted Masquerade 2024. There is no reason to hoard them past the event's end, but there is also no penalty for over-earning.
One thing to be precise about: a seasonal event is not a Bloodpoint multiplier. Blood Hunt and Blood Feast are separate, separately announced events, and Behaviour has announced no multiplier attached to Haunted by Daylight 2026. If you are planning a grind around the event, the maths that matters is the per-match and per-bloodweb ceiling, which we broke down in our Bloodpoints cap and farming guide.
Where this sits in October 2026
Haunted by Daylight is the third of six October drops. The Hallowed Blight Collection landed 1 October, headlined by a Blighted Jason Voorhees. The Academia Rift opened 6 October — we covered its full roster and the retroactive unlock quirk that makes buying the Pass late strictly free in our Academia Rift guide. Haunted by Daylight follows on 13 October, then the Diablo Collection, the Terrifier PTB with Art the Clown, and a November Days Ghost Face cosmetic. Behaviour has not put date cards on the last three, so treat any specific day for those as a guess.
The event also lands on top of the live 10.2.0 build, which shipped on 6 October with the Survivor Intent System and 58 perk changes. If your event builds are coming out of a tier list written in September, they are out of date — the full change set is in our 10.2.0 patch notes breakdown.
The date claim to be careful with
Behaviour has published the start date on screen, in its own trailer, and GamesRadar has the launch time down to the hour. The end date is a different story: the official wiki lists 13 October to 3 November 2026 and the community consensus is "three weeks," but Behaviour's own news feed carries no 2026 Haunted by Daylight article at all as of 9 October. Every previous iteration got one, usually on or just before launch day.
That matters because the recycled-calendar error is everywhere this year. Several trackers published "18 October to 6 November 2026" — that is 2023's calendar, verbatim. There is also a first-party page at deadbydaylight.com titled "Haunted by Daylight live stream recap" that quotes 18 October to 6 November and describes entering the Void Realm; it is the 2023 recap, not a 2026 document. If you land on it while researching, check the dates against the 2023 event before you believe anything on it.
Our standing tracker for what is and is not confirmed about this year's Halloween content is the Dead by Daylight Halloween event 2026 explainer, which we update as Behaviour publishes.
FAQ
When does Haunted by Daylight 2026 start? Tuesday 13 October 2026, at 9am PDT / 12pm EDT / 5pm BST. The date comes from Behaviour's on-screen NEW RELEASE card in its 1 October "October of Horror" trailer, and the time from GamesRadar's launch-day explainer.
When does Haunted by Daylight 2026 end? The official wiki lists 3 November 2026 and the community recap of the reveal says the event runs three weeks, which agrees. Behaviour itself has published no end date in writing, so treat 3 November as a strong expectation rather than a confirmed fact.
Is the Void Realm still in Dead by Daylight? No. The separate Void dimension is closed for the 2026 event. Void Energy, Void Rifts, Haunts and Void Crystals all remain on the normal maps, but there is no second location to enter.
What is a Void Portal? An opened Void Rift. Spending Void Energy on it teleports you to another point on the same map. Both roles can use Portals, and Killers additionally get a teleport toward Survivors collecting Void Energy.
How much Void Energy does a Void Crystal cost? In 2025 it cost 70 Void Energy for one Charge. Behaviour has published no 2026 cost, and the reveal broadcast indicated Survivors may simply start the match holding a Crystal, so do not assume the 70 figure still applies.
Do leftover Dark Trinkets go to waste? No. Unspent Trinkets convert automatically into Bloodpoints at 500 Bloodpoints per Trinket, a rate raised from 125 with Twisted Masquerade 2024.
Does Haunted by Daylight include a Bloodpoint multiplier? Not by default. Blood Hunt and Blood Feast are separate, separately announced events. Behaviour has announced no multiplier attached to Haunted by Daylight 2026.
Are there event codes for Haunted by Daylight 2026? Historically the Halloween code appears when the event goes live, not before. Every past Halloween code is expired. We track live ones in our DBD codes guide.
More Dead by Daylight guides from Timesaver:
- Dead by Daylight Halloween Event 2026: What Is Actually Confirmed
- Dead by Daylight Bloodpoints: Cap, Limits and Fast Farming
This guide applies to Haunted by Daylight 2026 on live patch 10.2.0, written 9 October 2026, four days before the event starts. Values labelled 2025 or earlier are historical and have not been re-published by Behaviour for this iteration.
