PBA Pro Bowling 2026 news & patch notes

It’s time for the Tournament of Champions! Are you ready to take on the greats?

Let's celebrate the PBA Tournament of Champions! From now through April 26th, 2026, you can use the Promo Code CHAMPIONS2026 to get a mystery Legendary ball in the game.

Try it out and let us know what you got in the comments. Best of luck on the lanes!

Update 2.2 is out now and it’s bringing 6 new balls to the lanes of PBA Pro Bowling 2026!

Our friends at Motiv announced that Venom Hysteria will be released on April 22nd, but you can try it out now on the virtual lanes of PBA Pro Bowling 2026! Redeem the Promo Code 'HYSTERIA' between now and April 22nd, 2026 to get the Motiv Venom Hysteria before it's officially released.

Join our Discord here: discord.gg/pba

Check out our socials here: https://linktr.ee/PBAProBowling2026

This exciting update also includes the following bowling balls: Storm Concept, Storm Bionic, Motiv Apex Jackal, Motiv Evoke Mayhem, and Motiv Supra Sport. Let us know which one you’re most excited to add to your (virtual) arsenal!

Update 2.2 Patch Notes

New Balls:

• Motiv Venom Hysteria (Tier 9)

• Storm Concept (Tier 10)

• Motiv Apex Jackal (Tier 8)

• Storm Bionic (Tier 7)

• Motiv Supra Sport (Tier 6)

• Motiv Evoke Mayhem (Tier 5)

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed several bugs that could cause the arsenal slot indicators in the HUD to break.

Thanks for all your support, and we hope you enjoy Update 2.2!

Shape the future of PBA Pro Bowling!

We take player feedback to heart and use it to continue to improve and expand the game through our updates. As we look to the future of PBA Pro Bowling, we want to make sure we continue to do this and provide updates and new content that our community cares about and wants to see in the game. 

Haven’t joined our Discord yet? Join our community here!

Player Feedback Survey

From now through Monday, March 16th, 2026, we’ve opened a Player Feedback Survey to learn more about what you like in the game currently, what you’d like to see in the future, and how you found out about our game. This will help us to prioritize new features and make sure that future updates are impactful and fun for our players.

Complete the Player Feedback Survey here!

Real Bowling Ball Raffle!

To thank you for your invaluable help with this, everyone who completes the Player Feedback Survey will also be entered into a raffle to win a real life bowling ball of their choice! You can find the details on the raffle in the survey linked above. 

Thank you so much for your continued support! We are beyond grateful for this fantastic community and hope you all know how much we appreciate you.

Misc Improvements/New Features:

• Added a "Redeem Promo Code" option to the Settings UI.

  • Use the code "STRIKEBALL" to get a mystery Legendary ball through March 13th, 2026.

  • Join our Discord and newsletter and follow us on social media to learn about future promotions!

• Improved hitching in the clothing shop UI.

• Improved hitching in the ball shop and ball collection UIs

• Improved hitching between bowl turns in team bowling events.

Oil Patterns:

• Added the 2026 versions of the Badger, Don Johnson, Carmen Salvino, Viper, and Dick Weber oil patterns.

  • The previous (2025) versions are still available for use in Quickplay.

Career Mode:

• Changed the oil pattern on the PBA Players Championship event to Badger (2026).

• Changed the oil pattern on the Tournament of Champions event to Don Johnson (2026).

• Changed the oil pattern on the Illinois Classic event to Carmen Salvino (2026).

• Changed the oil pattern on the Pete Weber Missouri Classic event to be Dick Weber (2026).

Tenpin Bowling:

• Added a "None" Oil Pattern Breakdown option in Gameplay Settings to disable oil pattern breakdown entirely.

  • Note: "Normal" oil pattern breakdown will always be used for online play.

Candlepin Bowling:

• Deadwood past the deadwood line is now properly removed.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed several causes of crashes in online play.

  • If you are still experiencing crashes in online play, please report it on our Discord server!

• Fixed a bug where bowlers could occasionally move outside of the field of play in online play on laggy connections.

• Fixed a bug where hair and beard style options would suddenly re-arrange after selecting an option.

• Fixed a bug where no beard color would be selected by default. It should now match your selected hair color until a different beard color is selected.

• Fixed a bug where half of the Storm PhysiX ball was completely black.

• Removed extra geometry around the pin deck on the PBA Arena and PBA Stadium venues.

Hello PBA superstars! 

Thank you all for the great feedback. We take your insights and ideas to heart, and they guide our focuses for how to improve the game. 

Our aim with this update is to bring you a smoother and more polished gameplay experience based directly on your suggestions. You can read the full update notes below, but the key differences you’ll notice are:

• Improved physics consistency

• New gameplay settings for more player control

• General quality-of-life improvements to make the game even more fun for all players

As we continue to work on more updates and improvements, we want to hear from you! If you haven’t already joined our Discord community, we would love to have you there

https://discord.gg/pba

A huge thank you as well to everyone who has left us a review! It’s thanks to your support that we get to continue improving and updating the game. If you haven’t left one already, it would mean a lot to our team!

Update 2.0 Notes

New Oil Patterns:

• Added "2025 USBC Masters", "2025 U.S. Open (#4)", "Full Oil", and "No Oil" oil patterns.

  • The "Full Oil" and "No Oil" patterns are not in the pool for random selection (for Oil Pattern Roulette or when selecting random pattern).

Tenpin Bowling Improvements:

• Adjusted the tuning of pin action to be more realistic. Pin bounciness has been reduced to prevent unrealistically bouncy pins, but kickplate action has been increased to make for more realistic messenger pins.

  • A new "Pin Action" setting has been added to the Gameplay Settings. "Simulation" (default) is the new tuning; "Arcade" is the old tuning for those that enjoyed the extra bounciness on the pins. Note that online play will always use "Simulation" pin action.

• Reduced pin action when bowling a straight throw (no hook or with a plastic ball) for a strike attempt.

  • Developer's Note: We have heard feedback that throwing the ball straight for strike attempts was resulting in strikes too consistently. Our original intent was for this to be balanced by the difficulty of getting a Perfect/Perfect release, but that is much easier on lower difficulties, and is still possible for skilled players on higher difficulties. With this new tuning change, bowling straight should still be able to get a decent score (180-200), but not the extremely high scores it was capable of before.

• Adjusted the bowling logic of Pete Weber, Andrew Anderson, and François Lavoie to more closely match their real bowling styles. Also improved Pete Weber's shot animations to more closely match his style.

• Made further adjustments to "Simulation" pin action; in particular, single pins hit by the ball should now bounce off the ball less dramatically.

• Adjusted the bowling logic Parker Bohn III uses to more closely match his real bowling style.

• Added the option to swap to "Gradual" oil pattern breakdown in gameplay settings.

  • "Normal" oil pattern breakdown will always be used for online play.

Career Mode Updates:

• Added a confirmation popup to brand sponsor select to avoid accidental selection.

• Changed the U.S. Open event to use the new "2025 U.S. Open (#4)" oil pattern.

• Changed the USBC Masters event to use the new "2025 USBC Masters" oil pattern.

• Added the ability to delete an existing career save from the "Load Career" UI.

More Customization/Apparel:

• Added several new hair/beard styles.

• Added bowling gloves and bowling tape as accessory options.

  • One color option for each is unlocked by default; others are available for purchase throughout the career.

• Added "Blue and White Hoodie" (Tier 6), "Black Relaxed Jeans" (Tier 8), and "Boat Shoes" (Tier 7)

Misc. Improvements/New Features:

• Changed the difficulty of release mechanics (stick release alignment on timing) on Hall-of-Fame difficulty to be the same as on Pro difficulty.

  • Developer's Note: We want to make sure that Hall-of-Fame is a real challenge for even the game's best players, but we agree with feedback that the increased difficulty from the release mechanics was more of a frustrating difficulty than a fun difficulty. With these changes, Hall-of-Fame should still be very challenging due to the increased skill of your opponents but without the frustrating difficulty from touchy release mechanics.

• Improved texture streaming to avoid blurry textures when they are first loaded in (especially pro and custom bowler clothing, ball textures, and venue logos).

• Added a backup save system to avoid save files getting corrupted by the game getting force-closed during an auto-save.

  • Unfortunately, if your save file has already been corrupted this fix may be unable to recover your saved data, but if your game was consistently crashing due to a corrupted save it should now be fixed.

• Reduced how dramatically the AI would improve its performance when it is currently below its target score.

  • Developer's Note: The purpose of this system is to make the AI score more consistently close to its target score; if they are underperforming they will get better, and if they are overperforming they will get worse. However, in extreme cases this would cause the AI to get too good and strike out at the end. This would be to match their target score, but it is frustrating to see for the player, so we decided to make this effect less pronounced. When overperforming, they will get worse at the same rate as before.

• All Daily Objectives will get refreshed each new day (previously only empty slots were filled by new objectives).

• Improved the quality of rewards for the first set of Daily Objectives that a player gets.

• Simulated Stepladder matches will now properly simulate a winner rather than always having the higher seed win, and the scores for previous matches are now visible in the stepladder UI.

• Made several changes to improve menu performance throughout the game. In particular, the event map, ball shop, and ball collection menus should all be much less laggy.

• Improved pinfall detection logic to prevent situations where a pin was about to fall over as the game cuts away but ends up not getting counted as down.

• Added a new gameplay options setting to hide the strike track.

• Added various help tips to the loading screen.

• (PC Only) Added an option to cap FPS to 90. This is now the default (default previously was uncapped).

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a bug where the "Hall-of-Fame unlocked" popup would show even if you were already on Hall-of-Fame difficulty.

• Fixed a typo in the PBA Qualifier unlocked narrative ("Beome" -> "Become").

• Fixed a typo in the ball collection display ("ReactiveResin" -> "Reactive Resin").

• Fixed a bug where the "win spare pickup challenge events" daily objective would not complete if the event was won in a tiebreaker.

• Fixed a bug where the commentators would use lines for other pros when bowling against Packy Hanrahan.

• (Steam Only) Fixed a bug where the game settings would not properly get synchronized for cloud settings.

• The amateur Hannah Stewart has moved and her hometown is no longer "29". We hope you enjoy the new town, Hannah!

• Fixed a bug where all AI opponents in the Tier 1 Sweepers Night event would always bowl 180 on Hall-of-Fame difficulty.

• Fixed a typo on the Southern region regional map ("Colmbia" -> "Columbia").

• Fixed several Roto Grip balls that were incorrectly categorized as under the Storm brand.

• Fixed a bug where Bill O'Neill would occasionally go invisible. InivisiBill is no more!

• (Candlepin/Duckpin Only) fixed some invisible lane geometry that could cause the ball to fly off unexpectedly.

• Fixed a bug where the Motiv Primal Rage had extra finger holes.

• Fixed several reaction animations where the bowler would clip through the floor.

• (Keyboard only) Fixed a bug where navigating the ball shop tiers with the keyboard would also focus a ball.

Tomorrow, January 16th at 12:00pm US Central Time we’re putting a spotlight on all of the awesome custom characters our community has created in the game so far! 

Whether your bowler is:

• Clean and realistic

• Over-the-top and fun

• Inspired by a real person

• Or just your league-night alter ego

Everyone’s character is welcome! No judging, just bowlers and gamers having fun. 

How to participate:

• Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/pba

• Post a screenshot of your custom bowler in the #switch-release-events channel

• Optional: tell us a bit about them (style, patterns you play, inspiration, etc.)

I’ll get things started with mine:

We’re looking forward to seeing all of your cool creations!

• Added the option to change your career info whenever you want, including career difficulty.
  • Developer's Note: You can change your career info now by going to "Edit Bowler" and swapping to "Edit Info" from there. Note that you are still locked into Hall-of-Fame difficulty after swapping to it, as there are exclusive balls and apparel tied to playing on Hall-of-Fame.
• Reduced the maximum speed that the ball can be thrown with no hook to reduce the efficacy of bowling straight (was 25 MPH, now 24 MPH)

• Fixed a bug where the achievement for winning the PBA Playoffs was not unlocking properly, as well as a bug that could cause tier unlock achievements to not unlock properly.
  • Developer's Note: These achievements will be unlocked retroactively when you load a career that has met the conditions. Unfortunately, the playoffs achievement will not unlock retroactively if you have already transitioned to a Hall-of-Fame career and have not yet completed the playoffs on HoF.
• Fixed a bug where the sponsor discount was not being properly applied to ball purchases. This would cause the purchase to fail entirely if you didn't have enough money to buy it without the discount.
• Fixed a bug where the Columbia 300 Chaos Black ball was incorrectly classified as a 1.0 hook plastic ball (now 7.5 hook reactive resin)
• Fixed two event tooltips that would overflow off the screen in the East PBA region
• Fixed several typos in game text
• Fixed a bug where the same bowler was entered twice in the PBA regional qualifier event
• Fixed a bug where one of the bowlers on the opponent's team of the Tier 1 team league event would throw the ball at 28+ MPH (he’s no longer built like a CrossFit champion)

This moment means so much to us. This game was built by a team that genuinely loves bowling, and it was shaped alongside a community that cares just as deeply. Your feedback, playtesting, and ongoing discussions helped us polish and improve the experience throughout development. We’re incredibly grateful to everyone who followed the journey, shared feedback, and believed in what we were building. It’s been a long road, and getting to launch alongside a community this passionate about bowling makes it all worth it. We’re proud of what we’ve built, and even more proud to share it with this community.

If you’re enjoying the game, we have one big ask: please consider leaving a positive review on your platform of choice. Reviews make a huge difference for a small team like ours. They help more players discover the game and directly support our ability to keep improving it and creating even more high-quality bowling content for you in the future.

To celebrate the release of PBA Pro Bowling 2026 on Steam, we are offering 10% off the game between now and December 26th, 2025!

We’re also celebrating release weekend in our Discord, with lots of exciting events planned including livestreams, giveaways, challenges, and more! Join our Discord now through the link below to see the full schedule for this weekend and participate in our community events:

https://discord.gg/pba

Thank you for being part of this community and for supporting the game. We truly couldn’t do this without you. We can’t wait to see your clips, hear your feedback, and keep building what comes next.

Have fun on the lanes! 🎳❤️ - The PBA Pro Bowling 2026 Development Team

The wait is (almost) over! PBA Pro Bowling 2026 will be available for purchase on December 19th, 2025 on Steam, XBox X|S, and PS5. Be sure to wishlist the game here on Steam so you don’t miss the drop!

The game will be released on Switch in mid-January, with no official date set yet. Join our Discord to stay up to date:

https://discord.gg/pba

Thank you to everyone who has been waiting patiently for the game to come out, we can’t wait to share it with you all!

Ready to play PBA Pro Bowling 2026? A demo version of the game will be available to everyone here on Steam for a limited time this weekend - from Friday, December 5th at 12:00pm CST to Monday, December 8th at 12:00pm CST.

We have an exciting line up of community events for this weekend, including livestreams, competitions, and more! The full schedule and updates will be announced in our Discord, so join now to make sure you don’t miss out: https://discord.gg/pba

See you on the lanes soon!

As of November 7th 2025 you can sign up for a chance to join PBA Pro Bowling 2026’s closed beta testing!

We got some great feedback from our closed alpha testing and open demo, and our developers have been hard at work to make this the best and most realistic bowling game ever. Here are some of the updates you can look forward to seeing in the closed alpha and the final game:

• More character customization options

• Improved graphics and art

• More event types including:

  • league matches

  • league sweepers night

  • no tap

  • and doubles!

• And more new features based on recommendations from our Discord community! 

How can I sign up for a chance to join the closed alpha testing for PBA Pro Bowling 2026?