This Month in Marble Blast - January 2026

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Written by: Nockess

Category: News

Published: 02 February 2026

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This title seems a little familiar…

 

2026 begins with the revival of This Month in Marble Blast! The five-year-old video series that never made it past its pilot episode has evolved into a newsletter, cutting out a substantial amount of production effort to make, frankly, a better product. This will be much more manageable to keep up on a continuous basis, and those who are not active participants in the community (particularly the Discord server) can keep up with the times. With that said…

 

January kicked off the new year with full steam ahead. From long-running traditions, celebrating an important birthday, catching fire on the leaderboards, and previewing a packed competitive calendar ahead, here’s everything that went down to start the year.

 

Time Capsule

If somehow you’ve missed it, the Time Capsule is one of our favorite traditions hosted on the forums. Every January 1st, it opens for three weeks, giving everyone a chance to scribble down predictions, resolutions, or whatever thoughts they want to leave behind for the future. With 2026 underway, last year’s participants were able to revisit their predictions and see which ones aged well—and which ones absolutely did not.

 

Here are some personal favorites looking ahead to the coming year:

• “The number 61 will feature prominently in a major political scandal.” - Doomblah

• “I will buy my first house.” - Hyran

• “... if I do visit the badly famed neighborhoods [of Bucharest], I will hopefully not be in a situation where I’m chased around by druggies in Ferentari.” - Connie

• “Connie does not release fusion+” - A-Game

• “Platinum Quest will be the title of an undertaking I will undertake assisting with the excavation of bountiful platinum reserves in South Africa only to smuggle a small portion to my friend in Cape Town.” - Joey

• “The pair of maroon corduroy pants I’ve had since around 2015 will finally break and I’ll be able to throw them out.” - NF

• “You idiot did you forget to get vaxxed again” - HiGuy

 

Level of the Year

2025 saw the rise of custom levels made with Blender, as an alternative to the notorious, but still beloved, Torque Constructor. As more people started creating, the best levels got even better, and the decision to find the cream of the crop became harder to make—one of over 450 custom levels had to be crowned. Just like in previous years, voting began with a larger pool of levels that were rated on a like-to-dislike scale, and the ten levels with the highest average advanced to a final round, where voters rank them favorite to least favorite.

 

After the initial round of 33 entries, and a top 10 that omitted some still-spectacular entries, the community-selected Level of the Year is… "Blue Thrill" by Wilchz!!

 

 

This is Wilchz’s first win! The final standings can be found in the original thread.

https://marbleblast.com/index.php/forum/mb-custom-levels/20863-level-of-the-year-2025 

 

Customs Roll Call

On the topic of custom levels, now presenting a new speedrunning event! Organized by yours truly, Customs Roll Call takes place during the entire year to shine some light on some lesser-known creations.

 

The entire event consists of 144 custom levels, none of which are already featured in any of the custom level packs on the leaderboards, and instead are accessed via the integrated Marbleland. At the start of every month, twelve new levels are revealed; players have that month to grind for the best time and submit their recordings. Once the month wraps up, a compilation featuring the best runs is released alongside the next batch of levels.

 

With January behind us, here is the video! February’s levels are found at the end of the post.

 

 

New Custom Levels

 

Lastly on custom levels, let’s take a look at some new releases. 30 custom levels were published during the month of January. Here are some notable highlights:

• "Blueberry Roads" (enderman0125)
• "Inside the Grass Tesseract" (TrueSlayer74)
• "RandomityGuy’s REM Radiance" (SummerArmy)
• "Atoll" (Marson)
• "No Hesitation" (berserk)
• "Condensed" (Jaxx)

 

20th Anniversary of Marble Blast Ultra

January 25th marked two decades since Marble Blast Ultra originally released on Xbox Live Arcade. As has become tradition, Yoshicraft224 hosted the annual Marble Blast Ultra Anniversary event for its sixth occasion since 2019. Players gathered into a single server on the leaderboards and tore through the entire game using co-op mode. The final time came in at 14:35.108, the third-fastest completion since results were first tracked in 2022.

 

Additionally, speedrunning efforts of the past five years culminated in the third World Record Rampage for the game (performed in PlatinumQuest). Ten speedrunners took part, seven of whom made their first appearances in the series. m2k and berserk continued the pattern of two runners featuring in the majority of the runs, following Cobalt and DKman00 the last time around, and Regislian and Kalle29 in the first.

 

All sixty levels were new records over the previous rampage, totaling over ten seconds of improvement!

 

 

Those with keen eyes may have noticed a level missing from the second rampage. With PlatinumQuest 2.11’s release, “Hypercube” was moved to a new Bonus difficulty that includes nine other levels from Marble Blast Gold’s Xbox release. The update also included a new Bonus difficulty for Ultra itself, consisting of ten levels from Marble Blast Mobile. The two categories will instead feature in a future Bonus Levels rampage.

 

New World Records

The speedrunning scene has otherwise been off to a hot start this year, with two standout runs being featured on the Marble Blast Community channel.

 

HappyTreeX1 landed a run on “Monster Speedway” where the timer did not restart after collecting the first Time Travel, pushing the record even further below the already absurd 4-second mark. The record has since been beaten by HappyTreeX1 himself.

 

On “Work in Progress”, August discovered a wild new skip, disregarding over half of the entire level with a tight edge hit up to the bumper section near the end. August also found a new tweak on “Fly the Coop” that finally pushed the level under 12 seconds, though the record has also been beaten by Powerjohn25—his most notable achievement, however, was a major improvement on “Pathways” that beat Xelna’s former record by over 0.25 seconds.

 

A list of every new record achieved in January, excluding those which have been beaten:

 

Marble Blast Gold:

• Monster Speedway Qualifying – 12.713 (HappyTreeX1)

• Monster Speedway – 3.684 (HappyTreeX1)

• Pathways – 16.689 (Powerjohn25)

Marble Blast Ultra:

• Bunny Slope – 1.775 (bobirika12)

• First Flight – 6.480 (m2k)

• Tree House – 25.334 (Powerjohn25)

• Ramps Reloaded – 11.664 (berserk)

• Under Construction – 2.377 (bobirika12)

• Tornado – 19.757 (Powerjohn25)

• Half Pipe Extreme – 9.646 (Powerjohn25)

Marble Blast Platinum:

• Medieval Maze – 22.844 (August)

• Technoropes – 8.041 (August)

• Sprint – 10.211 (August)

• Double LoopLoop – 16.493 (August)

PlatinumQuest:

• Gems Ahoy – 1:19.237 (Xedron)

• Work in Progress – 11.979 (August)

• Tricks in the Air – 15.380 (Powerjohn25)

• Fly the Coop – 11.767 (Powerjohn25)

• Miscalculation – 4.782 (Xedron)

Custom Levels:

• Turning Point – 17.430 (Powerjohn25)

• Beyond – 44.617 (Powerjohn25)

• Parhelion – 25.085 (Battlecube314)

• Knock, Knock – 2.746 (bobirika12)

• DA HOUSE – 0.617 (bobirika12)

• The Dragon Room – 202 (Charlix)

• Oiled Oranges – 13.838 (Powerjohn25)

• Standoff – 10.771 (Charlix)

January also saw a big spike in Easter Egg speedrunning activity, which saw over 150 new records! m2k accounts for nearly two-thirds of those records (including his own improvements), while Charlix, Stormson, and beso all hovered around a dozen each for the month.

 

2026 Multiplayer Season Preview

ShadowVisions shared a preview of what the competitive Gem Hunt scene will look like in 2026, featuring the likely return of four competitions and some new format changes.

 

February will host the second annual Winter Warm-Up, once again taking place over a single day. The event will follow the same core structure as last year—a solo pre-seed round on three maps chosen blindly, followed by a double-elimination bracket—however, the tournament will also serve to trial new maps and formats for the competitive season.

 

The flagship Summer Premier will return from June through August. For the first time since 2023, the regular season format (a.k.a. the Swiss Rounds) will receive a significant overhaul in hopes to minimize unbalanced matchups:

• Two leagues will be introduced. The Contender Division will consist of 16 players, taken from last year’s Summer Premier, this year’s Winter Warm-Up, and the pre-seed round from this year’s Summer Premier. The Open Division will include all other players, intended for newcomers and less hardcore competitors.

• Both divisions will feed into a single playoff bracket, which means players in the Open Division will still have a path to win the Summer Premier.

• The shortened regular season will likely allow for a double-elimination playoff bracket.

Later in the year, the Solo Hunt tournament will return in October, followed by the 2v2 Hunt tournament in December, both for their second occasions.

 

Miscellaneous

RandomityGuy set up a new dedicated server for PlatinumQuest called Divergence, which is based in Frankfurt, Germany. Contrary to the other dedicated servers, Divergence runs on a native Linux server.

 

Marble Blast Ultra was featured on GDQ Hotfix! As it did not make an appearance during AGDQ over the summer, it was instead part of the backups showcase. It was run by thearst3rd, with m2k on commentary.

 

February Preview

That wraps up everything to mention about January! Given that it’s the start of the year, there was more happening than most months with some of the annual traditions, so expect a lighter load next time around. A couple things to look out for in February:

 

As mentioned earlier, February will see the second Winter Warm-Up; expect signups to be posted soon!

 

Be sure to hang around Valentine’s Day. There may be a little goodie for you to grab if you’re feeling loving enough.

 

Finally, the next set of levels for Customs Roll Call!

• "Sectional Evanescence" (technostick)

• "Boxes" (Andrew Sears)

• "Gyro Test 2" (Xelna)

• "Colmesh level" (CyberFox)

• "The Dive (no. 2)" (Phil)

• "Steal the Gem" (Ottomarble)

• "PlatformPro" (AlexThePMG)

• "My Short Level" (MadMarioSkills)

• "Gem Stealer" (El_Robert)

• "Friction Land" (Arnie Gape)

• "Green Ascention" (James Colsey)

• "Rampix" (Brixar)