NetEase Games is pushing the first content update of Season 9 live on July 16, and Marvel Rivals players are getting a lot to dig into. Version 20260716 arrives at 9 AM UTC with zero server downtime, meaning you can download and jump straight back in.
The Van Dyne Couture event is the headline act
The big new addition is the Van Dyne Couture event, running from July 16 through August 13. Complete event missions and you can earn Magneto's Magnetic Vintage costume and its bundle rewards for free. The premium track unlocks Adam Warlock's Tailored Perfection costume and Invisible Woman's Baxter Building Beauty costume, among other rewards.
Here's the thing: this event was already teased in the Season 9 roadmap, so it is not a surprise, but seeing it go live alongside a clean patch is exactly the kind of momentum Season 9 needed after its team-up ability bugs caused friction at launch. If you want the full picture of what is still coming this season, the Marvel Rivals Season 9 roadmap has every upcoming update, skin, and event dated through August 7.
The Chrono-Rush event is also returning this weekend and will run until the season ends, giving players another window to grab any rewards they missed the first time around.
New skins, bundles, and a Pop & Win drop
The store gets a meaningful refresh alongside the patch. Here is what is coming in:
- Gambit gets the Dead Man's Hand Bundle plus a matching emoji bundle, available from July 17 at 2 AM UTC
- Hawkeye gets the Bed-Stuy's Best Bundle, with Teal Trend and Dazzling Drip chromas also arriving July 17
- Invisible Woman gets the Baxter Building Beauty Chroma in Pretty in Pink and Classic Contrast variants, plus an Ultimate Ability VFX, live from July 16 at 9 AM UTC
- Devil Dinosaur gets a Jeff the Dinosaur skin in Playful Pink and Vibrant Violet chromas, available July 17
The Pop & Win event runs from July 17 to August 14, with the Devil Dinosaur Jeff the Dinosaur skin as the prize.
S3 battle pass is back for two weeks
If you missed the Power of the Phoenix battle pass during Season 3, NetEase is giving you a second shot. The S3 rerun is available at the Battle Pass Nexus via Reality Link Points from July 16 at 9 AM UTC through July 30 at 9 AM UTC. Two weeks is a tight window, so you will want to move on this quickly if Phoenix-themed cosmetics are on your wishlist.
Team-up visual clutter gets a serious cleanup
Season 9 shipped with new team-up abilities, and several of them were generating visual noise that made competitive play genuinely harder to read. This patch addresses that with optimized visual effects across more than 20 team-up combinations, including all of Jubilee's base abilities, Mr. & Mrs. X (Rogue and Gambit), Hex Fireworks (Scarlet Witch and Jubilee), and Gods of Thunder (Storm and Thor), among many others.
Beyond the visual cleanup, the patch also fixes a specific Rogue practice range bug where moving bots would still spawn after being toggled off, and a Storm and Thor team-up camera animation that was throwing off player aim. Xbox players also get a fix for trophy progress being desynced from actual achievement completion.
For context on how much the team-up meta has shifted this season compared to earlier patches, the May 28 patch rundown covers the Blood Hunt buffs and Chrono-Rush's original run, which gives a useful baseline for how aggressively NetEase has been iterating.
The Van Dyne Couture event and the S3 battle pass rerun both go live at the same time on July 16, so there is a real case for logging in immediately after the update downloads. Check the full Marvel Rivals guides collection for event mission breakdowns and costume unlock details as they come in.
