THE FINALS Update 12.3.0: TGM26 Pass and Balance Changes

Embark Studios shipped THE FINALS Update 12.3.0 on November 12, 2026, and it's built almost entirely around The Grand Major 2026. Alongside a fresh wave of esports content, the build tunes several Gadgets, reworks how burning damage lands, and clears out a long list of bugs ahead of the season's biggest event.

01TGM26 Grand Major Takes the Spotlight

The Grand Major 2026 runs November 27 through 29 in Stockholm, and Update 12.3.0 treats it as the season's centerpiece. Sixteen teams have qualified for the live event, and THE FINALS Pick'em opened on November 12 at 11:00 CET, running until November 27 at 00:00 CET. You pick which five of the sixteen teams reach The Throne on Day 3, call the order they qualify in, then answer ten questions about how the event plays out with Scotty and June. Complete all three sections and you earn an in-game badge, with higher-accuracy tiers named Gold, Platinum and Diamond for picks that land closer to the real bracket.

02Esport Bundles and the TGM26 Event Pass Arrive in the Store

Each of the sixteen Grand Major teams, including Aimerz+, Alliance, Ape Squad, Elevate, ENVY, Five Fears, FYR, KCP, KingZero, LUMINON, Moon Theory, Nfinite, NTMR, RAD, Take Flyte and Vanguard, now has its own Esport Bundle in the store. Every bundle packs a full outfit, three Equipment skins, a team VFX, an emote, a charm, sticker and spray, and a player card, so you can kit out a Contestant in a specific team's colors before the live bracket starts.

The TGM26 Event Pass sits alongside the bundles, buyable with Multibucks and spread across two pages and sixteen levels of rewards, including a Legendary outfit and weapon skins. Embark is treating it as a limited-time pickup you can still finish at your own pace rather than one tied to a hard deadline.

Celebrate the coming The Grand Major 2026 in style! Grab the TGM26 Event Pass and work your way through two pages of rewards including a Legendary outfit, weapon skins and more 💪 The Pass is available to grab for a limited time, but yours to complete at your own pace!

— THE FINALS (@reachthefinals) on X

03Head Hunter Returns as a Limited-Time Mode

Update 12.3.0 also brings back Head Hunter, a bounty-based LTM where the top eliminator on each team has a target painted on them. Eliminate that Contestant and they drop coins for your team to collect; survive to the end of the event with the bounty still on your back and the cash is yours instead. It's a mode built for exactly the kind of chaotic, momentum-swinging finishes THE FINALS is known for, and its return this close to the Grand Major gives the Arena a reason to stay unpredictable while everyone's attention turns to Stockholm.

Head Hunter's official return trailer, posted to THE FINALS' own channel the day before this patch.

04Balance Changes: Dome Shield, Healing Emitter and Burning

Away from the esports content, 12.3.0 makes a deliberate pass at breaching tools and the Medium archetype's healing kit. The Dome Shield's health drops from 600 to 400 and its decay rate falls from 100 to 66 per second, a change Embark frames as keeping the shield's total uptime the same while making an undamaged one faster to break down once you commit to it. The Healing Emitter's max healing per second falls from 20 to 15, and the H+ Infuser now deals 7 health per shot instead of 10 but carries 30 ammo instead of 20, a straight trade of burst healing for sustained output that's meant to stop the two Gadgets from overlapping so heavily with the Healing Beam's role.

Breaching Gadgets also got more reliable: the patch updates environmental damage for the C4, Breach Charge and Breach Drill so they punch through surfaces more consistently under the newer destruction system, and the Breach Drill's blast and flash radii are now properly aligned. Burning itself changes shape rather than strength, with a slightly wider heat range around Oil Barrels, one extra damage tick added to a full burn, and per-tick damage trimmed from 16 to 15; together, Embark says, that raises the maximum possible burn damage from 32 to 45. The Translocator's deploy time also rises from instant to 0.3 seconds, a small buffer Embark calls a stopgap ahead of a bigger rework still in progress, and the Shockwave Specialization loses building-fracture power, gains a longer cooldown, and has its Glitch effect duration cut in half after players flagged how spammy it felt to be hit by repeatedly.

05Bug Fixes and Quality-of-Life Worth Knowing

The patch also fixes an "insta-nuke" Oil Barrel interaction that let thrown, already-burning barrels explode instantly on impact, something Embark confirms was never intended behavior from Update 12.0. The Mimic Device gets several correctness fixes, including blocking aim assist and assisted melee lunges from locking onto disguised Contestants and revealing them, and Solo Showdown now awards Fans and XP for qualifying into the next round, which previously gave nothing. Elsewhere, ultrawide monitor support improves with side black bars removed while the interface stays locked to 16:9, and AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution updates to version 4.1.1.

None of this week's changes touch ranked point totals or ban rates directly, so if you're mid-climb in ranked right now, treat 12.3.0 as a quieter patch on that front while the balance focus sits with Mediums and breaching tools instead.