Nintendo has just announced that it’s cancelling this year’s Halloween event for Kirby Air Riders due to some serious performance issues that it appears cannot be quickly fixed, Nintendo Life spotted. The 10-month-old game was intending to celebrate its first spooky season with a whole range of Halloween- and fall-themed decorations, with ghostie hats to score though play. But it seems that for some reason this was more than the Switch 2 game could cope with, scared by it all so much it froze.
A passion project from Masahiro Sakurai, who is perhaps better known for helming the Super Smash Bros. series, Kirby Air Ridersis a lightweight but entertainingly bubbly racer. And while it’s splendid to hear the game is still receiving thematic overhauls and in-game events, players quickly reported that things simply stopped working after the Halloween update, which began October 28. It made the game repeatedly freeze up for seconds at a time, which obviously isn’t conducive to racing in the 2025 follow-up to a 2003 GameCube game. You can see footage of this below.
nintendo just canceled the kirby air riders halloween event (no, seriously) because this kept happening lol
As a result, Nintendo’s Japanese X account posted to say the event was being pulled immediately. The Halloween specifics had been intended to remain in the game until November 4, but now aren’t going to make it to the big day itself, according to Nintendo. “We have identified an issue in the currently ongoing ‘Trick or Treat!’ event, where the screen may temporarily freeze during gameplay,” the X post reads (via machine translation). “As a result, we have decided to cancel this event.”
【『カービィのエアライダー』イベント中止のお知らせ】
現在開催中のイベント「トリックオアトリート！」において、プレイ中に画面が一時的に停止してしまう不具合を確認しております。
このため、本イベントは中止させていただきます。…— 任天堂サポート (@nintendo_cs) October 30, 2026
However, there’s an ambiguous promise that it will still occur at some point. “Please note that we plan to hold the event again,” the post continues, “allowing you to obtain the associated rewards. We will provide further details as soon as they are finalized.” It’s not at all clear if this will be soon, or even this year, given the rather final nature of declaring it “cancelled.” We’ve reached out to Nintendo to ask.
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