Full Moon

“

It is a full moon! I have turned into a robot again! Awoo-ooh!

Click to listen

— The Soldier

”

We're not currently in a full moon.
The next full moon is from December 13, 2024 at 07:48 UTC through to December 15, 2024 at 07:48 UTC (UTC)

The Full Moon restriction was introduced with the 2011 Very Scary Halloween Special. All previous items that were restricted to Halloween were updated to be equipable during both Halloween events and full moons. These items are available for use during full moons according to a formula within the game that approximates the lunar calendar. During this period, the main menu background becomes a full-color image of Double Cross, the menu class portrait sometimes wears their Halloween Costumes, the default message of the day states "Welcome and Enjoy the Full Moon!", and Strange weapons equipped with Strange Part: Full Moon Kills count kills performed during this timespan.

Note: The dates provided in this article are computed by formulas internal to this wiki and so are not directly coupled to the game and are provided as estimates only.

Note: The times that the game sets for each of its Full Moon holidays can be a day or more before or after the real world Full Moons.

Recent Full Moons

October 15, 2024 at 06:22 UTC through to October 17, 2024 at 06:22 UTC
November 13, 2024 at 19:05 UTC through to November 15, 2024 at 19:05 UTC

Upcoming Full Moons

December 13, 2024 at 07:48 UTC through to December 15, 2024 at 07:48 UTC
January 11, 2025 at 20:31 UTC through to January 13, 2025 at 20:31 UTC
February 10, 2025 at 09:14 UTC through to February 12, 2025 at 09:14 UTC
March 11, 2025 at 21:58 UTC through to March 13, 2025 at 21:58 UTC
April 10, 2025 at 10:41 UTC through to April 12, 2025 at 10:41 UTC
May 9, 2025 at 23:24 UTC through to May 11, 2025 at 23:24 UTC

If you would like to keep up on Full Moon event times, you can view this website to be ahead by one year.

Formula

When the Full Moon restriction was introduced with the 2011 Very Scary Halloween Special, the formula was set such that the Full Moon event occurred every 29.5 days starting Midday, October 12, 2011. The periods lasted for a full day before and after the time calculated, so the very first Full Moon event was one day either side of 12am (Midnight) on November 10, 2011. However, the actual synodic month is close to 44 minutes and 3 seconds longer than the 29.5 day approximation. The effect of this was that after about four years, the TF2 Full Moon schedule was about one and a half days ahead of the actual lunar phase -- by June 2, 2015, the game (and the Fmp calculations at that time) would close Full Moon events hours before the real Moon was actually full. However, by September 2015 and in subsequent months, the in-game Full Moon event was observed to be more centered on the real full moon time, indicating that the previous game schedule had been changed.

The formulation computing the Full Moon dates for this page was changed in November 2015 to more closely track the observed Full Moon events, largely by changing the period to be closer to the actual average Lunar period. However, any computation using a fixed constant period does not account for the various oscillations seen in the Lunar period, so the present formula runs several hours ahead or behind the actual event for several months at a time.

In the 2020 leaked source code, presumed from 2016-2017, the Full Moon Holiday was configured as a Cyclical Holiday with a period of 29.53 days starting from 2016-05-21 with a duration of 48 hours.^[1] The activation of the holiday effects is computed from the server's time, not from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) or any other basis, such that the holiday starts and ends at different times for players around the world.^[2]