Battlefield 6 Top Gun crossover brings Carrier Strike mode and a free trial weekend

Battlefield 6's Season 4 second half kicks off with a Top Gun crossover event, a free-to-play trial running through August 25, and two new game modes headlining the update. The timing puts it in direct competition with the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 beta, which runs August 21–25.

Carrier Strike is the standout addition — a reimagining of Battlefield 2142's beloved Titan mode, played on a newly reworked Wake Island. The mode pits two teams of 32 against each other, each trying to capture missile batteries around the map and use them to chip away at the enemy's aircraft carrier. Once a carrier's defenses are breached, the fight moves inside. The jet takeoff sequence is a direct Top Gun nod: instead of a standard runway roll, players get a cockpit cutscene as they're catapulted off the carrier deck. The second new mode, Fighter Sweep, is an air-superiority deathmatch with its own twists. The free trial also includes Tsuru Reef, Cairo Bazaar, Hagental Base, and Wake Island. The Top Gun event brings character and vehicle skins alongside the modes, though those cost money.

Carrier Strike draws an obvious comparison to Battlefield 4's Carrier Assault, which tried and largely failed to recapture the Titan mode magic. Eurogamer's preview calls this iteration a fully-fledged mode that retains and evolves the original's core escalation loop — the sense that every capture point matters because it directly fires missiles at the enemy carrier. Battlefield 6 has had a strong year commercially: it finished as the No. 1 best-selling game in the US in 2025, beating out Black Ops 7, which posted Call of Duty's lowest annual sales since 2008.

The MW4 beta requires a preorder this weekend but opens to everyone August 28–September 1, also expanding to Switch 2. Whether Carrier Strike sticks around after the limited-time event wraps is the question fans are already asking — Eurogamer argues the mode is strong enough to go permanent.