Nintendo Cancels Kirby Air Riders Halloween Event

Nintendo has cancelled Kirby Air Riders' "Trick or Treat!" Halloween event on Switch 2, about a day after it began, because of a bug that freezes the screen during play. Nintendo's Japanese support account posted the notice at 08:00 UTC on Friday 30 October (4:00 am ET), saying it had confirmed "an issue where the screen temporarily freezes during play" in the event and was cancelling it.

Nintendo plans to run the event again so players can still earn its rewards, and says it will share dates and other details once they are settled, according to Game*Spark and Nintendo Life. No rerun date has been given.

What the event was

Trick or Treat! put a Halloween twist on City Trial, the mode where riders roam the city of Skyah collecting machines and power-ups before a final Stadium contest. Under the event rules, attacking rivals made more items appear than usual, and riders who took damage could recover by eating sweets. Taking part earned points towards Halloween-themed items, including a Ghost hat for your rider.

Game*Spark, working from the Japanese announcement, gives the schedule as 12:00 JST on 29 October to 12:00 JST on 3 November (03:00 UTC on both days). Nintendo Life reported the window as 28 October to 4 November, so start and end dates may have differed by region. Either way, the event is now over everywhere.

Why it matters

City Trial is the game's busiest mode: up to 16 players online, or 8 over local wireless, all using items and attacks at once. Players' clips of the event show matches stopping for a moment at a time, which in a racing game can decide a match. Pulling the event rather than leaving it running suggests Nintendo couldn't patch the problem fast enough to save the Halloween window.

If your game froze during the event, your console isn't the problem. Nintendo has confirmed the bug in the event itself, so there's no need to reinstall the game or reset your Switch 2. For problems outside this event, our Switch 2 troubleshooting guide and our guide to Switch 2 not detecting 5GHz Wi-Fi cover the common fixes, and our Switch 2 console page has the hardware details.

Confirmed and unconfirmed

• Confirmed: the event has been cancelled because of a screen-freeze bug, and Nintendo plans a rerun where the rewards can be earned.

• Not confirmed: what causes the freeze, whether a patch is needed, when the rerun happens, and whether it will still have a Halloween theme. Nintendo also hasn't said anything about items players already unlocked before the cancellation.

Kirby Air Riders launched on 20 November 2025 as a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive and costs $69.99 on Nintendo's US store. Online play needs a Nintendo Switch Online membership.

In India, the cancellation notice went up at 1:30 pm IST on 30 October. An official INR price for the game is unconfirmed.