Escape From Tarkov is getting a battle pass with the start of its first season, Kord Breach, and Battlestate Games has confirmed it costs nothing. Every reward can be unlocked through normal play, so there is no premium track and no microtransaction gate standing between you and the loot.
Quick answer: The Kord Breach battle pass is free. You progress by finding and turning in TerraGroup documentation during raids, and it works across seasonal, PvP, and PvE modes with a single shared progression.
How the battle pass is unlocked
Progress comes from a new loot type called TerraGroup documentation. You collect it during raids and hand it in to claim rewards. Each reward is tied to a specific kind of documentation, so unlocking a given item means turning in the matching type.
The documentation behaves like task items rather than standard loot. That means every player can pick up the same piece, even if someone else in the raid has already grabbed it. You can find it while running as a PMC or a Scav, and it drops regardless of which game mode you are playing.
If you are short on a particular type, Battlestate says you will be able to exchange one type of documentation for another. The exact trade-in rate for that swap has not been confirmed.
Where each documentation type drops
Documentation comes in several types, and each is tied to specific maps. Battlestate gave two examples of how the pool is split across locations.
| Documentation type | Where it appears |
|---|---|
| One type | Streets of Tarkov and Customs |
| Another type | Factory and The Lab |
Because rewards are locked to matching documentation, the map you run affects what you can unlock. If a particular reward is on your list, target the locations that carry the type it needs, or use the exchange option to convert what you already have.
Shared progression across all modes
The pass is available in seasonal, PvP, and PvE play. Progression and rewards are shared between them, so time spent in one mode counts toward the same pass you continue in another. There is no separate track to grind for each mode.
Kord Breach season modifiers
The battle pass launches alongside the Kord Breach season, which reworks the traditional wipe into an opt-in league. Joining starts you with a fresh character and commits you to a set of modifiers that you pick before you begin.
Personal modifiers include both positive and negative traits, and each carries a points value you have to balance. For every helpful boon you take, you have to accept a matching weight of drawbacks. Positive picks let you move through vegetation like an expert, run faster, level bolt-action rifles more quickly, or gain painkiller effects from drinking juice. To pay for those, you might make yourself allergic to certain food or medication, or lock yourself out of trading on the Flea Market.
Global perks apply to everyone in the league. They ban pre-raid insurance, strip found-in-raid status from hideout zones, cut armor availability, make crafting stronger, hand out more raid experience, and drop Black Division operatives across the map. Nikita Buyanov noted that some modifier values may still change in the final build for balance.
Release date and patch 1.1
Escape From Tarkov Season 1: Kord Breach begins on Monday, August 3, 2026, alongside patch 1.1, after a short slip from a planned late-July release. The update brings new weapons and gear plus a range of quality-of-life changes.
- A rework to the task system
- Rebalancing for hideout progression and insurance
- An observer camera
- Shared kill objectives across groups
- Improvements to game stability and anti-cheat
The takeaway is straightforward. The battle pass adds long-term goals without a paywall, and the only real cost is the raid time you spend hunting TerraGroup documentation on the right maps.
