Rivian’s Halloween software update will come “early” this year, the company’s chief software officer said on X on Monday, confirming a fifth consecutive year of the tradition and answering owner doubt about whether it would happen at all.
Every previous release has landed in the second half of October.
“Halloween will be epic this year… and early,” Wassym Bensaid wrote, replying to a post from the owner site RivianTrackr that had pressed him to bring the update forward.
He gave no date, no features and no version number.
What Early Would Mean
Two clocks have always run on these releases. The software reaches the vehicle on one date and the Halloween features unlock on another, and the gap has been as long as three weeks.
On the date that matters to owners, the unlock, Rivian has never gone earlier than the third week of October.
The features went live on October 24 or 25 in 2022, depending on the source, on October 21 in 2023, on October 18 in 2024 and on October 21 last year.
That is a range rather than a trend. The 2024 release was the earliest at 13 days before Halloween, and last year moved back to 21 October.
The software has arrived much earlier than that. Parts of the 2024 release were on Gen 2 vehicles in late September, more than three weeks before the costumes could be used. So an unlock before October 18 would be a first.
The end dates have moved less. The 2022 and 2023 features both ran through Halloween night. In 2024 they stretched to November 4, and last year to November 1. If 2026 arrives early and still ends around November 1, the period is longer rather than shifted.
The doubt was real enough that RivianTrackr hedged on September 6, writing: “It’s uncertain if Rivian will have Halloween content this year but let’s just pretend for a moment they are.”
Bensaid replied to that post the following day with an eyes emoji and nothing else.
The Tradition
The first Halloween mode, in 2022, turned the interior accent lights blood red, replaced the lock and unlock chirps with an owl hoot and a wolf howl, dressed the Gear Guard mascot as a skeleton and rendered pedestrians on the driver display as zombies.
In 2023, update 2023.38.0, the accents went green, the lock sound became the organ piece associated with Halloween, cyclists and motorcyclists became witches on brooms, and opening a door, the frunk, the liftgate or the Gear Tunnel made a pumpkin roll out of that opening on the visualisation.
In 2024, update 2024.39, Rivian licensed outside intellectual property for the first time, and it did not go smoothly. Bensaid had to pause the Gen 2 costumes on the day they launched.
Car Costumes turned the R1 into K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider, with the show’s diagnostic panel on the centre screen and a cascading red scanner on the Gen 2 light bar, or into the Back to the Future DeLorean, with an 88 mph button that triggered a light show.
A third option, Haunted Rivian, offered eight sound effects and three colour themes. David Hasselhoff appeared in the promotion.
Last year, update 2025.38, brought an original Spooky Swamp theme with four Gen 2 exterior routines named Swamp Gas, Player Piano, Bayou Blast and Scary Spirit, and a motion setting that fired them through the Gear Guard cameras when someone walked past.
The Halloween features have always ridden alongside ordinary improvements. The 2023 release carried towing changes and a retuned drive modes app, and last year’s added Plug and Charge at Electrify America and IONNA fast chargers.
The Open Questions
Rivian has never run the tradition on anything but the R1T and R1S, and whether the R2 is included this year is the open question.
The software case for including it is now stronger than it has ever been.
Version 2026.31, released on September 4, moved both R1 generations onto RivianOS 2 and put the entire lineup on what Rivian calls one unified software stack with the R2 for the first time.
Connect+ lists priority software updates among its benefits, and rollout data compiled by the tracking site RivianRoamer indicates that the first wave of last year’s Spooky Swamp release went almost entirely to subscribers, with non-subscribers arriving in volume the following week.
