Royal Match Events Guide: Royal Pass, Weekly Contest, Hidden Temple and More Explained
Royal Match runs far more than boosters and Team Battle behind the scenes — the Royal Pass, Weekly Contest, Hidden Temple, Element Hunt and more each work differently. Here's what every official Royal Match event actually does and how to get the most from each one.
Royal Match is built around a single match-3 board, but Dream Games wraps that board in a rotating cast of side events, each with its own pace and its own reward track. If you only ever clear the main level map, it is easy to miss what the Royal Pass, the Weekly Contest, or the Hidden Temple actually do — and why they are worth your attention on top of ordinary levels. This guide walks through every event Dream Games lists on Royal Match's official store page, what each one is built around, and how they connect to the castle King Robert is trying to rebuild.
None of this replaces knowing your boosters or understanding how Team Battle works — for that, see our dedicated guides linked throughout this piece. Instead, think of this as the layer that sits on top: the reasons the game keeps handing you new things to do between regular levels.
1. Events vs. Boosters and Team Modes: Where They Fit
Royal Match's official feature list splits into three rough buckets. First are the boosters and power-ups — items like the Rocket, TNT, Cannon, Royal Hammer, Arrow and Jester Hat, created by combining matched pieces on the board itself. Second are the team-based modes — Team Battle, Team Treasure and Team Tournament — which pit your in-game team against others. Third, and the focus of this guide, are the solo and seasonal events: the Royal Pass, Weekly Contest, Hidden Temple, Balloon Rise, Sky Race, Space Mission, Element Hunt and Holiday Collection.
Dream Games describes this whole category simply as "a variety of thrilling events to keep players entertained," and that is the right way to approach them: they are optional detours from the level map that reward the same matching skills with different pacing and different prizes.
2. Royal Pass: The Season-Long Key and Reward Track
The Royal Pass is Royal Match's long-running progression event. Dream Games' own promotional line for it is direct: "Beat the levels and collect the keys to unlock awesome rewards!" In practice, that means the Pass runs as a track of unlockable rewards tied to ordinary level completion — every level you clear while the Pass is active feeds progress toward the next reward on the track, rather than asking you to do anything different from normal play.
Because the Royal Pass draws directly from level completions, the most efficient way to advance it is simply to keep playing your main map with good booster combos rather than saving them. If you are already working through our breakdown of every Royal Match booster combo, the same combos that clear boards fastest are the ones that move the Pass along fastest too.
3. Weekly Contest: Racing for the Leaderboard
The Weekly Contest is Royal Match's recurring competitive event, and Dream Games bills it as a chance to "compete with friends and family" over the course of a week. Unlike the Team modes, which bind you to a fixed group, the Weekly Contest is built around a leaderboard that resets on its own schedule, so each week is a clean slate.
The practical upshot is that steady, consistent play across the week beats a single long session right before the contest ends — since the event measures accumulated progress rather than a one-off score, players who log in daily and clear a few levels tend to out-pace those who try to cram everything into the final hours.
4. Hidden Temple: Matching for a Reveal
Hidden Temple is one of Royal Match's reveal-style events — Dream Games' description says it helps players "reveal satisfying rewards." Events in this style typically work by having your matches on the board chip away at a covered area, gradually uncovering a prize underneath as you make progress through a set number of levels or moves.
These reveal events reward patience more than speed: since the uncovering happens incrementally, there's rarely an advantage to rushing, and it's usually better to play through levels at your normal pace and let the reveal complete naturally alongside your regular progress.
5. Balloon Rise, Sky Race and Space Mission: Solo Milestone Races
Several of Royal Match's events share the same basic shape: a track with milestones that you climb by matching, with Dream Games' marketing copy framing each one around movement. Balloon Rise, as the store listing puts it, lets you "rise to new heights," while Sky Race and Space Mission use similar milestone framing around racing or traveling toward a destination.
What separates these from the Weekly Contest is that they are solo progress events rather than head-to-head leaderboards — your own climb up the track is what matters, not how you stack up against other players. That makes them a good fit for shorter sessions: a handful of levels at a time still moves your position on the track.
6. Element Hunt: The Power-Up Countdown
Element Hunt is the most explicitly booster-driven of Royal Match's events. Dream Games describes it plainly: "Activate power-ups to fill the element bars before time runs out!" That phrasing points to two things worth knowing going in — there's a time limit, and the event specifically wants you activating power-ups (not just making basic matches) to make progress.
If you've been hoarding Rockets, TNT or the Cannon for a tough level, Element Hunt is the event where cashing them in pays off directly, since the bars it tracks respond to power-up activations rather than plain matches. Our guide to Royal Match's booster combos covers which combinations clear the most tiles per move, which is exactly the kind of efficiency this event rewards.
7. Holiday Collection: Seasonal Card Sets
The Holiday Collection is Royal Match's seasonal collectible event. Per Dream Games' own copy: "Collect the cards and complete the Holiday Collection for amazing rewards!" Like other card-collection formats in mobile puzzle games, this event hands out cards as you play and asks you to complete sets rather than hit a single numeric target, which means duplicate cards aren't wasted — they still count toward finishing a set over time.
Because it runs on a seasonal theme, the Holiday Collection tends to appear around specific times of year rather than staying permanently active, so it's worth checking in on your event tray regularly rather than assuming it will still be there next time you open the app.
8. How Events Tie Into King Robert's Castle Renovation
Royal Match's broader story frame is King Robert, his butler Winston and his dog Duke renovating a "glorious summer castle" one room at a time — the game's official description lists rooms including the Throne Room, Library, Theme Park, Music Room, Circus, Atlantis, Bowling Alley, Aqua Room and Candy Shop as part of that renovation. Level progress is what unlocks new rooms and areas, and the events covered above sit alongside that same level progress rather than existing on a separate track.
That's worth keeping in mind if you're chasing a specific room: since both the castle renovation and most events draw from the same pool of completed levels, there's no need to choose between advancing the story and progressing an active event — ordinary play moves both at once.
9. Quick Tips for Getting More Out of Every Event
- Play your normal levels first. Most Royal Match events, including the Royal Pass and the castle renovation itself, draw progress from regular level completions — you don't need a special strategy to advance them.
- Save big boosters for Element Hunt. Since that event specifically tracks power-up activations, it's the best place to spend Rockets, TNT and the Cannon if you've been stockpiling them.
- Log in daily during the Weekly Contest. Because it measures accumulated progress across the week, steady daily play beats a single late push.
- Don't rush reveal-style events like Hidden Temple. They uncover gradually, so normal-paced play is enough to finish them.
- Check your event tray often. Seasonal events like the Holiday Collection don't stay up permanently, so it's easy to miss one if you only open the app sporadically.
For the mechanics that make all of these events possible in the first place, see our guides to Royal Match's power-ups and booster combos and how Team Battle and the Royal League work. For walkthroughs on other current mobile and puzzle titles, browse the full walkthroughs archive.