If you are seeing Royal Road Error 526, the site is not “down” in the traditional sense (crashed). Instead, this is a specific security handshake failure between Cloudflare (Royal Road’s protector) and the Royal Road servers.
What “Error 526” Means
The Technical Issue: Cloudflare cannot validate the SSL certificate on Royal Road’s end. This usually means the site’s security certificate just expired or is misconfigured on the specific server node you are trying to reach.
The Result: Cloudflare blocks the connection to protect you, thinking the server might be unsafe or an impersonator.
How to Fix It (User Side)
Since this is a server-side configuration error, you mostly have to wait for Royal Road’s admins to fix the certificate. However, you can try these steps to bypass a “stuck” bad connection:
Turn Off Your VPN (Most Likely Fix)
Royal Road often flags or has handshake issues with specific VPN IP addresses. If you are using a VPN, disable it and refresh the page. This resolves the error for many users.
Hard Refresh the Page
Windows:
Ctrl + F5Mac:
Cmd + Shift + RWhy: This forces your browser to ignore its cache and request a fresh SSL handshake.
Try “Incognito” or “Private” Mode
If it works in Incognito, your main browser has a corrupted cookie or cache file. Clear your cookies for
royalroad.com.
Check the URL
Ensure you are typing
https://www.royalroad.com. Sometimes old bookmarks pointing tohttp://or specific subdomains can trigger SSL errors during the redirect.
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Summary:
If turning off your VPN and a hard refresh don’t work, the issue is on Royal Road’s end. You will likely need to wait 15–30 minutes for their automated systems to renew the certificate or for the bad server node to be cycled out.
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