The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth: the 2026 guide with Repentance+ — best items, S-tier characters, and unlocking the game's endings

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth celebrates, in 2026, its twelfth year and its final pass on the workbench. Since 2014 and the release of the remake by Edmund McMillen and Nicalis, the top-down roguelike has stacked up four DLCs — Afterbirth (2015), Afterbirth+ (2017), Repentance (2021) and Repentance+ (2024). This latest iteration, promised by Edmund as the finishing update, marks the end of development: no more major patches to come. The content is complete, the balancing is set in stone — over 800 items, 34 characters (17 classic + 17 "tainted"), 12 branching floors, around a dozen alternate endings. This guide sums up what matters when starting a run in 2026, from character choice to the game's final boss.

The 17 characters: overview and current tier list

The French client keeps nearly all the names in English — Sacred Heart, Brimstone, Mom's Knife: the French localization never touched the naming. Here are the 17 classic characters (each also has a tainted version unlockable via a puzzle on the Home level).

• S-Tier: Azazel (built-in short-range Brimstone, flight, 3 black hearts — the fastest run in the game), Tainted Lost (no HP but 4 guaranteed items from the start), Bethany (Book of Virtues + unlimited soul charges), Apollyon (Void absorbs items and converts them into permanent stats).
• A-Tier: Isaac (the D6, the best active item in the game, lets you reroll any questionable item), Judas (base damage +1, Book of Belial), Cain (boosted luck + Lucky Foot), Samson (Bloody Lust — damage that climbs with every hit taken), Lilith (Incubus that shoots for her).
• B-Tier: Magdalene (2 bonus hearts but slow), Eve (Whore of Babylon transforms at low HP), Lazarus (guaranteed second life), The Forgotten (bone club melee + ranged Soul).
• C-Tier / atypical: The Lost (spectral and flight from the start but one hit = death), The Keeper (coin hearts, very fragile), ??? aka Blue Baby (soul hearts only), Eden (100% random stats and items).
• Unique duo: Jacob & Esau — two characters controlled simultaneously, high difficulty but possible synergies with Anima Sola.

In 2026, the meta revolves around Azazel for unlock speedruns, Tainted Lazarus for long Dead God runs, and Bethany for beginners aiming for Greedier Mode.

The 15 S-tier items you should never turn down

An S-tier item alone justifies picking the run back up right where you were. The following fifteen turn any build into a Boss Rush-finishing machine.

1. Sacred Heart — 2.3x damage, homing tears, slight tears down. The best passive item in the game since Rebirth. Found exclusively in Angel Rooms.
2. Godhead — tears that leave a damaging aura + homing. The only item that rivals Sacred Heart in Angel Room.
3. Brimstone — charged black laser, devastating monoshot. Combines with Tammy's Head, Cricket's Head, Anti-Gravity for legendary synergies.
4. Mom's Knife — replaces tears with a thrown knife. Scales linearly with damage: every damage up item becomes a multiplier.
5. Tech X — charged ring laser that pierces through everything. Ignores obstacles, handles crowds, shines in Boss Rush.
6. Epic Fetus — mouse-guided missile. Banned in competitive seeds because it one-shots bosses so hard.
7. Ipecac — poisoned tear-bombs. Devastating on bosses, dangerous for you — must be paired with Host Hat or Pyromaniac.
8. Polyphemus — a single giant tear per volley, multiplied damage. Becomes absurd with Soy Milk or Almond Milk (watch out for fire rate).
9. C Section — replaces tears with charged ghost fetuses. Homing, spectral, contact damage. A Repentance addition that redefined S-tier.
10. Death Certificate — teleports you to a room containing every item in the game. A guaranteed pick per run: the equivalent of a granted wish.
11. Chaos — merges all item pools (Angel, Devil, Boss, Treasure). Multiplies your chances of running into a Sacred Heart in a Boss Room.
12. R Key — restarts the game at the beginning of the Basement while keeping all your items. The ultimate combo with Death Certificate or Chaos to stack two runs' worth of synergies.
13. Twisted Pair — two demonic familiars that deal 40% of your damage. Two free floating damage sources, with no downside.
14. Abyss — turns pedestal items into permanent attacking locusts. Every item in the game becomes a source of bonus DPS.
15. D6 — Isaac's own active item: rerolls any pedestal item. Six charges per use, available from the start, the foundation of any optimized run.

On the margins: Cricket's Head (+50% flat damage), Rock Bottom (locks your stats at the highest level reached — a Repentance addition) and Book of Virtues paired with a charged item (the wisps become a second source of shots).

Troll items you should know to refuse

Some passives are worse than nothing. Here are the false friends to avoid, especially early in a run.

• Cursed Eye — teleports you to the start of the floor if you're hit while charging. One hit, and it's all over. Only combine it with Black Candle (cancels curses), or leave it on the pedestal.
• Guppy's Tail (alone) — increases chest drops, but removes items from treasure rooms. Only makes sense with the full Guppy set (Head + Collar + Tail + Paw + Hairball).
• Chocolate Milk — charged tears, but without a simultaneous damage up, you lose more in DPS than you gain in burst.
• Soy Milk — tears rate multiplied, damage divided by 3. Becomes a deadly trap if you have neither damage up nor shot speed. On Azazel, catastrophic.
• Bad Trip / Sharp Plug / Blood Rights — items that cost you health with every use. Avoid without active heart farming.
• Missing No. — rerolls your items and stats with every floor change. Destroys any stable build.
• Ouija Board — spectral tears, but removes them from any existing non-spectral build (Mom's Knife, Brimstone, Ipecac). Always check your synergies beforehand.
• Isaac's Heart — a familiar heart that follows you and kills you if an enemy touches it. Nearly permanent malus in open areas.
• The Bean — a unique flatulent pet. Purely cosmetic 99% of the time.

Golden rule: on Bethany, Tainted Lost, or Keeper, a « troll » passive can end the run all by itself. On Azazel or Judas, the safety margin allows for more experimentation.

Unlocking the main ends: the map of the full path

Isaac doesn't « end » at a single boss. Each alternate ending unlocks the next according to an order the community has dubbed the Great Progression. Here is the minimum chain to follow to see everything in 2026:

1. Mom (Depths II) — the first real boss. Defeating her unlocks the Womb and It Lives!.
2. It Lives! / Mom's Heart (Womb II) — after eleven accumulated victories, the Womb room leads to It Lives!, opening the doors to the Cathedral and Sheol.
3. Isaac (Cathedral) — obtain the Polaroid by defeating Mom, continue through Cathedral, defeat Isaac to unlock The Chest.
4. Satan (Sheol) — same logic through the dark side via the Negative. Defeating Satan unlocks Dark Room.
5. Boss Rush — reach Depths II before 20 minutes of play time, and the Boss Rush room opens. Unlocks many items including Head of the Keeper.
6. ??? aka Blue Baby (The Chest) — accessible via the Polaroid. Defeating him unlocks several characters and elite items.
7. The Lamb (Dark Room) — accessible via the Negative. Mirror ending of Blue Baby.
8. Mega Satan — assemble Key Pieces 1 & 2 (dropped by certain angels), open the giant door at the end of the Chest or the Dark Room. The second phase deals massive damage.
9. Hush — reach Blue Womb by defeating Mom's Heart in under 30 minutes. Opens access to Delirium.
10. Delirium (The Void) — after Hush, the entrance to Void opens. Delirium constantly changes shape, mimics your items, and remains one of the most technical fights in the game.
11. Mother (Corpse II) — Repentance alternate path: descend Downpour → Mines → Mausoleum → Corpse via hidden trapdoors, obtain the Knife Pieces from Mausoleum II. Defeating Mother makes the final path accessible.
12. The Beast (Home) — after Mother, return to Home (the very first floor transformed) and challenge The Beast, canonically the game's ultimate boss, with its three horsemen as a preamble.

A player discovering Isaac in 2026 can expect to spend 60 to 100 hours to complete the full chain. Veterans go through it in about ten hours, seed in hand.

The 5 most twisted achievements to unlock

• Real Platinum God — obtain all completion marks for all classic characters AND Repentance. Amounts to several hundred hours of grinding.
• Dead God — the ultimate grail: 100% Repentance completion, meaning all marks (Boss Rush, ??? heart, Isaac heart, Satan heart, Lamb heart, Delirium, Mother, Beast) across all 34 characters, tainted included. You literally have to finish everything.
• Beat Boss Rush with Tainted Lost — Tainted Lost has no Holy Mantle and is permanently one hit from death. Boss Rush strings together 15 boss fights in a row in an enclosed room. One of the most punishing runs ever designed.
• Beat Delirium with Keeper — Keeper starts with a max of 2 coin-hearts and can only heal by finding coins. Delirium hits hard. An achievement feared even by the world's top speedrunners.
• Beat Greed Mode and Greedier Mode with every character — the true end of the grind, essential for Dead God. Greedier stacks ten waves per floor with doubled bosses.

Interesting seeds to try in 2026

An Isaac seed is an eight-character string that locks in procedural generation. Note: using a seed disables achievements. They're meant for fun, challenge, and learning.

• "Items row" seeds — generate several pedestals side by side right from Basement I. Handy for testing synergies without farming.
• "Challenge" seeds — Isaac offers 45 numbered challenges since Repentance+, each with a fixed seed and mandatory items. "Ultra Hard", "Delete This", and "April Fools" remain the trickiest.
• Daily runs — a unique seed each day, shared by every player in the world. The global leaderboard decides the best run of the day: an excellent way to measure yourself against others without investing 500 hours.

For one-off seeds worth noting in your notebook, check the pinned threads on the r/bindingofisaac subreddit, where the community validates the most spectacular runs of the Repentance+ patch every week.

Conclusion

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth remains, in 2026, the gold standard of the modern roguelike. Twelve years after its release, with Repentance+ as a finishing touch update, it offers more content than any other game of its genre — and its now-settled balancing finally allows newcomers to join a stable meta. Whether you're aiming for your first win against Mom, your first Sacred Heart, or the Dead God medal, Edmund McMillen's formula hasn't lost any of its power: the same run will make you scream in frustration and burst out laughing. Open the trapdoor, grab the D6, and head down.