War Thunder players have been asking Gaijin to “decompress” the top of the game’s matchmaking for years, and today they got it. The October 2026 Battle Rating changes raise the top Battle Rating for jets to 15.0 and for tanks to 13.3, giving the newest vehicles room to separate from the older ones they have been crammed in with.
Planned Battle Ratings Changes (October 2026)
byu/steave44 inWarthunder
“In this round of planned Battle Rating changes, we’ve decided to raise the upper limits for the Battle Ratings of aircraft in Air and Ground Battles, as well as for ground vehicles in Ground Battles,” community manager Stona wrote on the official War Thunder forum.
What’s changing
- Jets: the top Battle Rating in Air Arcade and Air Realistic goes from 14.7 to 15.0. Fighters like the Eurofighter Typhoon (AESA), Su-30SM2 and J-16 move up to 15.0.
- Aircraft in Ground Battles: the cap for planes in tank matches rises from 13.0 to 14.0.
- Tanks: the top Ground Battles rating goes from 12.7 to 13.3. Main battle tanks like the Leopard 2A7V, M1A2 SEPv3, T-90M and Strv 122B PLSS all move to 13.3.
- Scale: the published table lists about 260 ground vehicle changes and more than 360 aircraft changes, almost all of them increases of 0.3 to 0.7. A handful of naval vessels move too, including four US destroyers that drop from 5.3 to 5.0.
Gaijin has not given a date for the changes to go live. As with past rounds, these are the planned changes, and the forum thread is where players are sending feedback first.
How players are reacting
Mostly relieved, with plenty of nitpicks. “Finally some decompression,” one of the top comments on Reddit reads, though the same player points out that it “mainly will affect the mid tier vehicles, as everything in the upper tiers is moving up together.” The forum thread passed 300 replies within hours.
The loudest complaints are about specific vehicles. Several players object to subsonic strike aircraft like the AV-8B (NA) Harrier moving up to 12.3 in Ground Battles, where they will face stronger air defenses, and the M247 anti-air gun jumping from 9.3 to 10.0. Others want Gaijin to use the extra room to separate vehicles that are clearly weaker than their neighbors.
Still, raising the ceiling is a change players have been asking for in forum threads for years, including proposals for exactly this 15.0 top tier. It’s good to see Gaijin take that step, and the feedback round is the chance to fix the outliers before it lands.
