r/webtoons • u/Raijinili • 9d ago

News [WEBTOON][locks] 1+1 Titles become Ad Pass / Coin-only on 2026-10-15 and 2026-10-22

(Next post: 1+10 Titles become Ad Pass / Coin-only on 2026-10-22 and 2026-10-29)

(Previous post: 8+3 Titles become Ad Pass on 2026-09-24 and 2026-10-01)

Also, on 2026-08-16, WEBTOON announced "WEBTOON Account" for 2026-09-14 2026-10-13 2026-10-12. This probably breaks older versions of the app for logged-in users, so I'm not looking forward to all the new changes. I meant to make a post about possible consequences of this, but forgot + busy.

  • A user account is currently needed to read Mature comics (in English, though not in some other language platforms), and to unlock Ad Pass and Coin episodes (including temporarily-free Pass, when there's a Binge).

(Also in WEBTOON lock news: [WEBTOON][unlocks] "Lone" and "Live With Yourself" are free again)

Locking on 2026-10-15 (announced last week):

  • Here U Are - 149 episodes, latest Sep 16, 2026.
    • Changed from "ads or coins" to just "coins" around 2026-10-08.

Locking on 2026-10-22 (NEW):

You may also be interested in this list of completed but not-locked titles (as of 2026-01-16).

No Spanish locks at this time.

French locks (no date given, but these have been here for months)

They've probably been forgotten, haven't they...

Indonesia has a Relaunch active.

Indonesian locks 2026-10-24:

Indonesian locks 2026-09-24 (still not locked):

Indonesian locks 2026-08-24 (still not locked):

Indonesian Relaunches

"Baca ulang cerita asli dari drama "The Remarried Empress", 5 episode gratis per hari hingga tamat!"

I will update if there are more. I plan to trigger a scan every day after daily reset, or (if I miss it) before the reset the next day.

Since 2026-03-26 (which is during DST), titles tend to lock at the time of new episode release, and one hour before the time of the Daily Pass (now Ad Pass) reset, which is 18:00 Pacific Time (01:00 UTC during US daylight saving time, and 02:00 UTC during US standard time).

[2026-02-27] There MAY be a new pattern of putting most of the locks at the end of the month.

[2026-03-12] They seemed to have moved two weeks of locks, 03-12 and 03-19, to 03-26. This may be part of a new strategy, to confuse us.

  • 2026-03-19: They decided to announce "Hanlin Gym", so they're at least not fully sticking with the end-of-month lock strategy.

Tip: The day before a title locks, you can use the Download feature for all of the chapters, giving you thirty more days to read them. You won't be able to use the Like and Comment features, and the UI for downloaded chapters seems to be an earlier version (which you might prefer). Note that downloading takes time and can fail, so watch this process for failures. Audio must be downloaded within an hour or two (not sure which) of queuing them, or the episode with audio will fail and cancel the rest of the series's download.

If a title doesn't allow you to download but it isn't locked yet, open an episode and see if it has a Download button in the triple dot menu. (I've seen this in Spanish and Indonesian.)

I also crosspost these lock posts on my profile (u/Raijinili), if you want to have a way to get some notifications. I don't know how profile posts work, so good luck with that.

There was a section here about Ad Binge which I've removed, as it is no longer relevant (since ALMOST all "Ad Pass" titles have unlimited ads now).

Check this post for a snapshot (not updated) of which titles DON'T have Ad Passes: List of coin-only completed titles

In summary, titles which were originally in a language/region NOT Korean or English (e.g. Spanish, Japanese, Indonesia (yes, officially labeled "Indonesia")) don't have Ad Pass, and there are a few Korean/English outliers.

WEBTOON lock history is now on its own wiki page.

New additions:

  • 10-08: "Here U Are" (Korean) had its banner edited less than 7 days into its 14-day warning, removing "Watch ads or", and leaving "Use coins".

WEBTOON isn't properly communicating about this, and aren't following any consistent set of rules. If locks matter to you, you may want to check in on this post during the month to see if I make any updates.

Banners used to appear about 30 days before lock. Please direct complaints to https://webtoon.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new . (Remember that customer service has no power to make these decisions, so be kind to your messenger.)

Watch out for free coin events

There were two reading events in 2024 October, giving 10 coins each (lasts 30 days). Watch out for those. The coins last one week each.

There was another reading event in 2024 November, for 7 coins. There were a few more since then.

There's a free reading event which just started a few hours ago (2025-02-13 to 2025-02-20) for 7 coins. You might want to delay until the last two days, to extend the expiration date.

I posted tips here.

Note that creators don't benefit from free coins.

2025-02: Most of the coin events in recent months were "Spend 21 coins to get 7 coins". There was a free CANVAS one, but it didn't work and then they took it down early.

2025-10: "Falling for It" had a "read 3 episodes for 5 coins" event, but it only lasted for about 24 hours. This was the first free coins event I've seen since February.

2025-11-08: "Watch Guys Catch Feelings" 7-days Event From Nov 8 01:00 UTC to Nov 15 01:00 UTC. "Read any 6 Episodes from any of the 4 listed series and get 8 Free Coins."

  • Ctrl+Alt+Resign
  • Who's That Girl?
  • Back to Chanbi
  • Girl Friend

2025-11-25 (around): "Marriages Gone Wild": 8 coins for reading.

2025-12-10 - 2025-12-16: "Wild Marriages": 8 coins for reading.

2025-12-25 - 2025-12-23 to 12-31: Two reading events: Read 30 episodes for 15 coins, each. Nice.

2026-04-05 - "April's Making it Rain!" (once a week for three weeks): Read (i.e. reach the bottom of) 35 episodes of four specific titles for 10 Coins, but they expire in one day after you get them.

2026-09-10 - There are two coin events active right now:

  • [expired] Read 8 episodes of "Onimusha: Way of the Sword" for 5 coins.
  • [expired] "A Spell For A Smith" promotion: 3 coins if you Subscribe. (Never seen this before.)
    • These coins will expire less than 2 days after you get them.
    • You don't need to stay subscribed.
    • I don't know what happens if you're already subscribed. Maybe check if you have the 3 coins, and then try unsubscribing and resubscribing.

2026-10-08 - "Daily Reading Event": "Read Daily & Get Coins! ✨". The Promotion doesn't go to an actual link, so I can't find any details about it.

- Update: The Promotion now opens a page (though it's a little misleading in wording). You should get the 1 Coin if you scroll to the bottom of an episode which was released in the latest day, i.e. one marked "NEW". The Coin opportunity resets during the standard WEBTOON reset time, so you can get one every day.

Note that I will NOT generally be tracking these, so pay attention in-app for these events.

Subscribing to my posts

Some users have asked whether they could get updates when I post here. I try to remember to repost on my profile, u/Raijinili, but that's not ideal.

It looks like u/UpdateMeBot can be used to subscribe to my posts (not comments) in this sub, but it requires enough people to use the service on a subreddit to start scraping. (As of 2025-02, I've been told by a subscriber that there are still not enough subscribers for this to be on.)

Each subreddit it checks takes several seconds, so I have to limit the number of subreddits or the bot will get overloaded. New subreddits are automatically added once they get enough requests. [src]

To subscribe, post this as a comment (possibly needs to be top-level), and the bot will send you a private message:

SubscribeMe!

(If you post it as a comment, I may downvote you, to keep your comment from bubbling up over discussion comments.)

Or, to do so privately, message u/UpdateMeBot with:

SubscribeMe! r/webtoons u/Raijinili

(Click here to send the message.)

(This also means I can't just post non-update meta stuff to r/webtoons, or else I will cause trivial alerts.)

Reddit is restricting Old Reddit to logged-in users, supposedly as an anti-scraping measure, and I'm questioning how much more I want to contribute to this site. Reddit is trying to guard against AI to protect the monetary value of the info we produce, and it doesn't care if that also affects real humans. That sucks.

As soon as I get around to doing the work of deciding where, and setting up the transfer...

If you also want Old Reddit, tomjwatson's "Old Reddit Redirect" extension for Firefox has a workaround that works for now.

24 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

24 comments sorted by

3

u/Raijinili 9d ago

This comment tree will hold updates or something.

Specific banners:

"Watch ads or use Coins to unlock episodes beginning October 15th, 2026." (2026-10-02T01:00Z)

  • Here U Are - 149 episodes, latest Sep 16, 2026.
    • Modified between 2026-10-08T03:11 and 2026-10-09T00:58, to: "Use Coins to unlock episodes beginning October 15th, 2026."

"Watch ads or use Coins to unlock episodes beginning October 22nd, 2026." (2026-10-09T01:00Z)

No Spanish banners at this time.

French banners (appeared some time before 2026-04-18 or whatever):

"Brass & Sass" passera bientôt en Daily Pass. Merci de votre compréhension.

"Edith" passera bientôt en Daily Pass. Merci de votre compréhension.

  • Edith - 122 episodes, latest 2 oct. 2022.

"Lilas 200%" passera bientôt en Daily Pass. Merci de votre compréhension.

"The Genius Gamer's Livestream" passera bientôt en Daily Pass. Merci de votre compréhension.

Indonesian banners:

"Serial ini dapat dibaca gratis hingga 24 Oktober 2026 jam 20:59 WIB!" (between 2026-09-24T00:08 and 2026-09-25T00:24) (two spaces after "jam")

"Baca ulang cerita asli dari drama "The Remarried Empress", 5 episode gratis per hari hingga tamat!"

3

u/Raijinili 6d ago

Added the details for the free Coin promo:

  • Update: The Promotion now opens a page (though it's a little misleading in wording). You should get the 1 Coin if you scroll to the bottom of an episode which was released in the latest day, i.e. one marked "NEW". The Coin opportunity resets during the standard WEBTOON reset time, so you can get one every day.

Thanks to u/DiAnastasia20 and u/getintherobotali.

2

u/getintherobotali 6d ago

Sure thing, glad if it helped! Thanks for always making and sharing these upcoming locked series posts, too!

1

u/DiAnastasia20 6d ago

You should get the 1 Coin if you scroll to the bottom of an episode which was released in the latest day, i.e. one marked "NEW".

You're welcome. But regarding that point, every coin I got was by speed scrolling the first episode of a random webtoon. 1 coin from the first episode of a webtoon that was updated with a new episode on that day. The other 2 were just ongoing webtoons that were not updated on their respective days. For example, the coin I got today is from the first episode of The Patron of Villains which updates every Friday.

I feel like this promo is all over the place. I even used all 3 coins I got to unlock an old webtoon episode that isn't a Fast Pass episode.

2

u/Raijinili 6d ago edited 6d ago

I think that the line about 7 coins for a Fast Pass was informative, and not a rule of the event.

Maybe I can't get coins from Completed webtoons.

1

u/DiAnastasia20 5d ago edited 5d ago

I decided to check out the newest version of the app and installed it on a separate device to check the Webtoon Account thing. I don't know if they forgot about it but that doesn't matter.

I don't know if this will be the same for you, but if you are interested, when I logged into the new app there was a small pop-up on the bottom right of the screen offering 5 free coins by reading a single episode of The Bad Son. It said the offer is only valid for 24 hours.

Anyways, I didn't switch my main reading device to this one, I tried reading an episode on my actual main device that still has an old version of the app. It didn't give me the 5 coins. So I switched temporally to the new and earned the coins there, which also expires the next day btw.

Not sure if everyone got this offer or it's just a random freebie. No banner or anything, just a tiny floating pop-up that disappeared after I claimed it.

1

u/Raijinili 4d ago

I didn't see this message in time, so I could not check. You can make a new Post to see if anyone else got it, if you captured the banner.

Probably a random one for a new account.

1

u/DiAnastasia20 3d ago

I mentioned it in case you wanted the free coins. My account is several years old. I've never seen a tiny banner like this before, maybe because I don't use the new app redesign. It was more a button/badge floating on the side of the screen.

1

u/Raijinili 2d ago

Oh, you logged into the same account on a new device. That might mean they incorrectly check for device identity instead of user account.

1

u/DiAnastasia20 2d ago

In case you weren't aware, when you log into a new device with your same account, you first need to go into the app setting and set that device as your main reding device to be able to read on it. You can switch main reading device a few times per month, 5 iirc. That's what I did here to earn the 5 coins on my spare device that had the latest app; then switched back to the old app on my main device and the coins carried over.

I just wasn't aware the new app gave out freebies like that. I also managed to agree to the new terms on the website (Webtoon Account). For some reason, they didn't show up for me on the old or new app.

3

u/Raijinili 4d ago

"Here U Are" is a Chinese webtoon which was translated to Korean, and the Korean version was translated to English. Since it was not originally Korean or English, it fits the rule for Coin-only locks. The odd thing is that they're actually bothering to announce the Coin lock.

I thought it was Korean because of the Korean character names, but that was just because of the double translation.

1

u/Raijinili 6d ago

Spanish banners, with more than 7 days notice!

"Esta serie se convertirá a una serie con pago el 21 de octubre de 2026." (between 2026-10-11T05:13 and 2026-10-12T04:54)

tag: u/RoiniStar

4

u/DiAnastasia20 8d ago

2026-10-08 - "Daily Reading Event": "Read Daily & Get Coins! ✨". The Promotion doesn't go to an actual link, so I can't find any details about it.

For this, just read a chapter and you'll find a free coin in your wallet. No pop up or anything. The coin ends in 7 days. So, I assume it's a 7 day event.

3

u/Raijinili 8d ago

Maybe it doesn't work on old app versions.

3

u/DiAnastasia20 8d ago

Just to be clear. I'm using an old app version. After reaching the end of a chapter (of any webtoon) to the comments, I got a free coin in my wallet. If you meant the pop up might not be showing because of the version, then maybe. The coin is awarded all the same; unless it isn't for you?

2

u/Raijinili 8d ago

I didn't get the coin from the usual reaching the end.

Does the event banner open a page for you, or does it just refresh the main page?

2

u/DiAnastasia20 8d ago edited 8d ago

The banner opens now. And it kind of sounds ridiculous? It says: Read an Episode a day for 1 coin till you reach 7 coins. You then have seven days to use these coins to unlock only 1 Fast Pass episode from a webtoon that got updated on the day you want to use the coin (between 9pm to 8:59pm ET).

I'm not sure about the whole seven days to use the coins before they expire. The timer on each coin starts when you earn it. So by the seventh day, you either use the coins or start losing 1 each day passes. Unless they reset the timer on all coins when you earn the seventh coin.

Another thing, some webtoons weren't giving me a coin just now. I tried 3 until it worked. The event does not specify any webtoons in particular. Also, there is a pop up this time when you earn a coin.

1

u/Raijinili 7d ago

Seems to be on newly-uploaded episodes.

I don't keep up with those anymore, so I wasn't even trying them.

Tried it on the new Adventures of God and it worked.

1

u/DiAnastasia20 8d ago edited 8d ago

It doesn't even flinch. Clicking it does nothing for me. (Check my other comment for an update)

I "read" the first chapter of It Rhymes With Takei. Just scrolling fast to the bottom.

1

u/Raijinili 7d ago

The Binge banners above were refreshing.

3

u/getintherobotali 8d ago

I’m also on a deprecated version and it’s been working, at least as long as it’s a newly uploaded episode since I haven’t tested otherwise yet. The event banner shows for me on the promo section of the main page, too, fwiw

3

u/Raijinili 7d ago

Seems to be on newly-uploaded episodes.

I don't keep up with those anymore, so I wasn't even trying them.

3

u/webtoonfreakyhere9 3d ago

I will give you the most rotten one - is this any good, cause I read some chapters and I didn't like the art style that much but the story kept me curious that's why asking, should I give another try? Will it get better?