Escape The Backrooms: The Any% True Ending Speedrun Guide 2026

Escape The Backrooms isn't just a cooperative dread simulator: since 2024, Fancy Games' title has established itself as one of the most-watched horror speedruns on speedrun.com. 2026 has accelerated everything. The discovery of the Arcade Skip, the widespread adoption of the Flare Gun Mega Launch and Unpeopled's chained runs — who keeps shattering his own Nightmare record month after month — have brought the flagship category, Any% True Ending Solo, under the symbolic thirty-minute mark. This guide isn't a step-by-step exploration walkthrough: it's a leaderboard attack plan, with targeted splits, glitches allowed per ruleset, in-run entity management and technical setup. The goal is clear: to give an intermediate runner a readable route to aim for a top 10 before the end of the year, and to give a beginner realistic milestones to progress without burning out right away on the most technical skips.

A five-dimensional leaderboard

The Escape The Backrooms leaderboard on speedrun.com is a formidable crossover. Each category combines an ending type (Main Ending, True Ending, All Endings), a difficulty (Easy/Normal or Nightmare), a ruleset (Any%, Glitchless or NMG for No Major Glitches) and a player count (Solo, 2P, 3P, 4P). This ultimately produces dozens of separate boards, and you absolutely must not confuse a Nightmare 4P Glitched top 5 with a Solo True Ending top 5. The community remains focused but very active: as of July 20, 2026, the speedrun.com/etb page had 419 followers, 1,521 verified runs and 315 active runners across all categories. That's more than enough for the slightest skip discovery to bring down a WR within a few weeks. That's exactly what's been happening since the start of the year, and the pace isn't expected to slow down before autumn.

Any% True Ending Solo, the flagship category of 2026

The category drawing all the attention is Any% True Ending Solo on Easy/Normal. The rule is simple: finish the game by reaching the True Ending, meaning the outcome of path 3999, with no glitch restrictions, solo, outside Nightmare. It's the historic reference point for ETB speedrunning and it's also the one that has moved the most in 2026. Before the discovery of the Arcade Skip, a typical run like the 52:24 set by _Dani held the scene; since then, that time has become obsolete and the WR now hovers around 29:01 to 29:33 depending on route variants. To set a clear goal, aiming for a solo top 10 today means targeting between 29 and 31 minutes on the clock. The WR sometimes moves several times a month: you must therefore systematically cross-check with speedrun.com/etb before submitting any run, never cite a fixed time as "final," and check the date of the last validation at the top of the table.

The reference route and targeted splits

The 2026 route reads in one go. Few detours, no unnecessary interactions, every transition has to land without hesitation. Here are the targeted splits for a top-10-compatible run, in solo Any% True Ending. These times don't replace the PB attempt: they describe the pace a runner must maintain to hope for a sub-31-minute finish.

Combined, this plan delivers a target total between 29:00 and 31:00. Every split beyond the upper range should trigger an alert: if you lose thirty seconds on Level 1, you might as well reset and chain into a new attempt rather than force an impossible comeback at the end of the run. Early-reset discipline is probably the most cost-effective skill once glitch mastery has been acquired.

The 2026 meta glitches

Four skips define the current meta in Any% and in Nightmare. You need to know precisely which ones are usable depending on the category you're targeting, or risk having a run rejected during verification.

• Arcade Skip (Level 37.2) — The discovery of the year. Allows triggering the Final Ending well ahead of the normal route, saving nearly 20 minutes on its own compared to historical WRs. Mastering it is mandatory if you want to hope for a top 10 Any%. Banned in Glitchless and NMG.
• Flare Gun Mega Launch (Level 37.2) — Firing the flare gun at the ground and exploiting the explosion to launch yourself at high speed. Estimated gain of about three minutes in Nightmare Any%. This is the tool that allowed Unpeopled to go from 58:16 to 55:21 in a month on Nightmare All Endings. Reliable after practice. Banned in Glitchless and NMG.
• Walkie Talkie Skip (Darkened Suburbs) — Position yourself at the corner of the exit fence, place a walkie-talkie and jump on it to get over the fence. Massive gain — about five minutes by skipping Abandoned Outpost and the rest of the Darkened Suburbs — but the glitch requires a framerate locked exactly at 90 fps. Without a precise cap, the execution window collapses. Banned in Glitchless and NMG.
• Level 5 Door Clip — Pass through the final door with only one key instead of the three required, teleporting directly to Level 3999. The gain is close to four minutes, but consistency drops to 10-15%. To date, no WR has been validated with this clip: too random for a serious run, it remains an interesting gamble for a solo PB attempt outside of WR.

Alongside these heavy skips, two movement techniques remain allowed everywhere, including in Glitchless: the crouch-jump (sprinting, jumping and crouching simultaneously to clear ledges normally out of reach) and the b-hop (bunny hop, a chain of jumps with strafes to maintain a speed higher than sprint over long corridors). These are the two reference building blocks of any route, even without a major skip on the menu, and they require regular practice before becoming stable.

Neutralizing entities mid-run

In a run, an entity is never a fight: it's time lost that needs to be cut short as fast as possible. Four creatures come up regularly in Any% splits.

• Bacteria (Level 2) — Cannot be killed. The only viable strategy is constant sprinting, with tight direction changes at corners to break tracking. If a grab is imminent, slip into a crawlspace. Stopping means dying.
• Smiler (Level 1 and following levels) — Instant kill by pointing the lit flashlight directly at it, provided you preserve stamina by jumping while running. In a run, evasion is prioritized: spending your flashlight on a non-blocking Smiler means losing the resource for a more critical case later.
• Skin-Stealer (Level 3) — Good news, it can't open doors. Use doors as cover, close them behind you and break line of sight at the first corner. Staying in an open corridor with a Skin-Stealer in pursuit is the worst possible scenario.
• Partygoers (Level Fun) — Two techniques dominate. Either you aggro a Partygoer then slip under a table to break contact, or you're already crouched under a table and pop a balloon behind you to turn the entity away, which allows a risk-free crouch-past. In the final room, a runner who still has juice left can run directly behind the last Partygoer with no slow-down. Sprinting upright in Level Fun, on the other hand, means immediate detection.

Runners to watch in 2026

Four names dominate the scene this year. Watching them play in VOD remains the most efficient shortcut to understanding the current meta without spending hours on it.

• Unpeopled — The Nightmare All Endings benchmark. He's held the WR at 55:21 since July 2026 after successively bringing it down from 58:45 to 58:16 within a month. His YouTube channel is the best place to see the Flare Gun Mega Launch executed cleanly in a real run.
• _Dani — Former top True Ending runner with a 52:24 now made obsolete by skip discoveries. Their history remains highly instructive for Glitchless routing: it's a solid fallback plan if your skip execution isn't stable yet.
• questionmrksy, Displict, Wizan, Diamondzz — The quartet that set the CO-OP 4P Glitched WR at 7:19 on the Legacy version. This category remains the historic benchmark for optimized four-player cooperation.
• memunda, Spookleton, StinkmanPro, ThundrFist — The stack that holds the CO-OP 4P Nightmare WR at 9:01. The only stable roster capable of holding up under coop pressure in Nightmare on the current version of the game.

Solo, duo, or 4-player stack: which category to aim for

Your choice of format shapes your entire progression. In solo, you have total control over the route, no desync to manage, and all solo-only glitches are open to you. It's the flagship category for the Any% True Ending WR, but the pressure on execution is at its highest: a single botched reset can sometimes cost the whole session.

In duo (2P), the coop puzzles in Level 3 and Level 5 speed up noticeably and a death can be restarted via the checkpoint. It's the best pace-to-risk ratio for tackling a coop leaderboard without the complexity of a four-player team. In exchange, some skips only work solo and voice coordination becomes mandatory.

In a 4-player stack, the maximum split on multi-player terminals allows for the most aggressive tempo — the 7:19 WR Legacy is proof of that — but recruiting a stable roster is difficult and a single desync costs minutes. The current version of the game, post-Legacy, is also less optimized for 4P. Best reserved for teams that are already well-drilled, with tight voice comms and pre-assigned roles.

The speedrunner's technical setup

A clean ETB run starts with a solid setup. None of these steps are optional if you're aiming for a competitive time.

• LiveSplit with the Escape The Backrooms autosplitter, available under the Resources tab at speedrun.com/etb. Auto-detection of level transitions avoids manual splits and makes PB comparisons far more readable.
• Cap framerate at exactly 90 fps. This isn't a matter of comfort: it's a non-negotiable requirement for the Walkie Talkie Skip. At 60 fps or uncapped, the execution window simply disappears.
• Bindings: bring the Crouch and Jump keys close together to chain the crouch-jump cleanly (Ctrl and Space side by side, or remap crouch to a side mouse button). Fix and calibrate your mouse sensitivity once and for all.
• Official resources: the speedrun.com/etb leaderboard, the community guide at /guides/9frzs, the autosplitter under /resources, and the /forums to follow route and glitch discussions in real time.

Step-by-step progression, from sub-45 to sub-31

Going straight for sub-30 with the Arcade Skip is the best way to burn yourself out mentally. A realistic progression plan unfolds over three successive steps, each locked in before moving on to the next.

• Beginner, aim for sub 45 minutes: start in Glitchless to master the route without relying on skips, memorize the three to four Level 0 layouts, and work exclusively on the crouch-jump. At this stage, consistency saves more time than raw technique.
• Intermediate, aim for sub 35 minutes: incorporate the Walkie Talkie Skip with the 90 fps cap, develop b-hopping on long corridors, and optimize Level Fun with the pop-balloon technique. This is the stage where the gap between runners widens the fastest.
• Advanced, aim for sub 31 minutes: master the Arcade Skip — non-negotiable for a top 10 spot — attempt the Level 5 Door Clip only during PB attempts (never in a WR run), and study VODs from Unpeopled and the top 5 leaderboard to align tempo and micro-optimizations.

In conclusion, seizing the 2026 window

Escape The Backrooms is probably the most dynamic horror speedrun scene of 2026. In just six months, the discovery of the Arcade Skip has rewritten the entire Any% hierarchy, and the Flare Gun Mega Launch pushed Nightmare under 56 minutes. For a runner starting out today, the good news is that the meta is clear: a readable solo route, four glitches to prioritize by difficulty and category, and entity management that fits on a single page. The bad news is that the WR moves fast, sometimes several times a month. So always cross-check the times mentioned here against speedrun.com/etb on the date of your attempt, lock in your 90 fps cap, and launch your first serious PB attempt. The next Any% True Ending Solo WR could be set as early as this quarter, provided you put in the regular sessions it takes. It's yours to take.