Battlefield 6 Portal: the complete guide to creating, publishing and hosting an experience in Season 4

Portal is the part of Battlefield 6 that people talk about the least and the one that's moving the fastest. In about two weeks, EA has officialized an advanced editor program reserved for selected creators, the opening of Tsuru Reef to custom experiences, and the arrival of custom lobbies paired with a spectator mode. The tools that used to be used to tinker with Conquest variants are becoming a tournament platform.

The tipping point has a date: the Top Gun update on August 18, 2026 brings Wake Island to verified experiences — custom experiences will follow later in the season — and activates the Custom Lobbies and Spectator Mode features via Battlefield Labs directly in online play, first on the four-player Battle Royale and Conquest. If you want an experience to be approved and playable that day, now is the time to build it: moderation isn't instant.

What's changing for Portal in Season 4

The community note from August 6 officialized the Advanced Editor Program. Selected creators receive two experimental tools: precomputed lighting, which improves visual rendering and performance, and terrain editing, which allows modification of the height map and painting the ground with materials like grass, dirt, or rock. For this preliminary phase, EA has integrated creator Bellum1988's Custom Operation Metro experience, built with precomputed lighting, into the Portal SDK as a case study. There is no application form yet: EA announces an interest registration for later.

On the maps side, EA confirms that Tsuru Reef, one of the game's largest maps, is opening up to custom experiences, while Wake Island is arriving first in verified experiences on August 18, then in custom experiences later in the season. The July 30 note had already indicated that all Season 4 maps would join both categories, while closing one door: a completely blank map granting access to all of the game's resources isn't feasible for engine reasons.

The rest is a matter of scheduling. The server browser is expected in Season 5 phase 3, as a complement to matchmaking and not a replacement for it, and the 1.4.1.5 update on August 4 was a quality-of-life patch that fixed UI, customization, challenges, and Portal issues.

Finding an experience: the four filters that actually matter

Everything starts from the Community category in the main menu, next to multiplayer and the campaign. The home screen displays featured community experiences, the ones developers have selected for their creativity. The Search button opens the community experience library, which can also be browsed from the Portal website in a browser.

Sorting is done by Most Popular or Featured, and four filters do most of the work:

• Keywords: tags set by creators to describe their experience.
• Maps and modes: to only see Breakthrough or Custom mode, or a specific map like Operation Firestorm or Siege of Cairo.
• Word search: searches the name and the description.
• Experience code: the string of characters unique to each creation. It's the only reliable way to find a specific experience again, so ask the creator for it rather than digging through the library.

From the search screen, the Servers tab switches to a browser-style view: sort by player count, by map, or by ping, filters on the host's region, the maximum number of players, or keywords. This is where you'll find permanent servers, accessible even when their host is offline.

The XP trap: verified experience vs. custom experience

This is the point most players discover too late. Portal earns XP and advances progression like any other multiplayer mode, but not at the same rate depending on the type of experience, and the gap is structural, not incidental.

Custom experiences are also flagged with a Modified XP label in the interface, specifically to avoid confusion. The upshot is simple: if you're leveling up a career rank, unlocking weapon attachments, or completing tasks, stick to verified experiences. Custom ones are worth playing for the novelty, with a more generous end-of-match bonus as compensation.

Another detail noted in the official fine print: stats aren't tracked in Portal modes filled out with AI. A server packed with bots won't inflate your ratio.

Setting up an experience in verified modes in ten minutes

Head to the Portal website, sign in with your EA account, then choose Create New and Verified Modes. You start from an existing official mode—Conquest, Rush, Breakthrough—which you tweak rather than building from scratch: select it, then Start Editing. This is the recommended path for a first attempt, since it preserves full progression.

Four tabs are enough to cover the essential needs:

• Teams: maximum number of players, number of teams, split between human players and AI-controlled players, squad revive settings, PvP or PvE configuration. In some modes, the number of AI-controlled players is capped.
• Modifiers: Soldier settings (prone position, sliding, sprint strafing, health regeneration, unlimited ammo), Vehicle, User Interface, and AI.
• Restrictions: excluded classes, weapons, attachments, and gadgets, but also locked weapons that limit loadouts to certain categories, static weapons like anti-air turrets, aim assist, and friendly fire damage return.
• Map rotation: if you don't set one, the game picks one for you, which is rarely what you wanted.

Three recipes work right away: an infantry-only Conquest (vehicles excluded, static weapons disabled, tighter maps); an old-school variant (class-locked weapons, health regeneration turned off, aim assist removed); a recoil control training ground (unlimited ammo, a single map, AI opponents). Finish with the Publish tab — name, description, image — then Create New.

Moving to Custom Portal: rules, script, and Godot SDK

The Custom Portal starts from an empty template and gives access to the full suite of tools. The process stays the same — Create New, then Custom Portal, then the default template and Start Editing — with an additional Settings tab to choose the Mode and Play Time.

The real difference comes down to three building blocks:

• The Rules Editor, a visual logic system that links events and game conditions to trigger actions, with more than 200 actions available. AI scripts rely on behavior trees (BehaviorTree) allowing you to modify default movement and combat logic.
• The Script tab, which accepts TypeScript for coding your own rules when the visual editor reaches its limits.
• The Portal Gadget, an equippable in-match item used to bind and trigger custom logic at a specific place and moment. It exposes three triggers: OnPortalGadgetAimStart and OnPortalGadgetAimStop when aiming starts and stops, and OnPortalGadgetLaserToggle when the flashlight is toggled on.

To modify a map, you need the Portal development tool, downloadable on PC Windows: it comes bundled with the Godot level-editing tools. The official workflow is to select Import then the Portal SDK folder, to load GodotProject then project.godot, to go through Scene and Open Scene to choose the map, to add, move, or delete objects, then to save via Save Scene As… and Export Current Level. Back on the site: your creation is located in Drafts, then Edit and Map Rotation, where the Import option attaches the spatial JSON file to the map in question; all that's left is to Save from the Publish tab. To test without an audience, use Portal, Browse Server, then Host Locally.

Publishing and hosting without getting rejected

Creating an experience makes it available to you alone. To share it, you need to select Submit for Publishing: it then appears in My Experiences and goes through moderation, a process that takes roughly three hours. The visible statuses range from Unpublished to Published, passing through Pending, Under Review, and Action Required. This last status means something needs to be fixed, usually a violation of the Community Guidelines.

Hosting is launched from the Community menu, then My Experiences and Host. Take care with the name and description: that's what surfaces in the library. Welcome messages and start-of-match messages are optional and display when a player joins and then periodically during the match. A password restricts the session to your friends; the persistent server option keeps your server findable and joinable even when you're offline. For a personalized experience, Host Locally remains the way to test privately.

One piece of advice comes straight from the studio: EA acknowledges that featured experiences sometimes suffer performance issues only at large scale, and says it has tightened its internal testing and selection criteria. If your ambition is to get featured, test at real player counts before submitting.

What to build before August 18

Two projects have immediate value. The first is to prepare an experience in verified modes right now and get it validated, so you can add Wake Island as soon as it arrives on August 18 without going back through the moderation queue just as everyone rushes in. The second is to write a clean rule set — weapon restrictions, team size, squad revives, friendly fire — with an eye toward custom lobbies and spectator mode, which are explicitly aimed at private sessions, community tournaments, and creator events, with initial support for four-player Battle Royale and Conquest. EA has promised a dedicated article on these two features before the update launches: the final English labels for Custom Lobbies and Spectator Mode won't appear until then.

And if you're aiming for the advanced publisher program, the only viable strategy remains to produce: publish, get people playing, fix, repeat. Selection is based on existing creations, not on a form.