Riot Squad E-Liquid Review 2026 (UK): Nic Salts + Shortfills

TL;DR: Riot Squad is one of Britain's loudest e-liquid brands — a Manchester-born line of nicotine salts, 100 ml shortfills and post-disposable-ban RIOT BAR refillable pods. In 2026 the range costs roughly £3.50 per 10 ml salt and £11–£14 per 100 ml shortfill, with the fruity Cherry Colada, Sub Lime and Blue Burst leading sales. It's TPD-compliant (20 mg/ml nic cap, 10 ml salt bottles, 2 ml tank rule), made in the UK, and — post 1 June 2025 disposable ban — has pivoted hard into refillable formats. Best-in-class for bold fruit flavour and value; weaker on tobacco, dessert and menthol purists. Shop all e-liquids or jump to the final verdict.

What is Riot Squad e-liquid?

Riot Squad is a UK e-liquid manufacturer founded in 2016 in Manchester, best known for high-VG fruit blends, nicotine salts and — since 2024 — the RIOT BAR refillable pod system. The brand's positioning is deliberately loud: aggressive graphics, punk-inflected naming (Sub Lime, Cherry Colada, Blue Burst, Punk Grenade), and price points that undercut most premium juice houses while beating supermarket own-brand on flavour depth. It's owned by parent group Riot Labs Ltd and manufactured at their UK facility under ISO-certified conditions, which matters because — per the MHRA's Tobacco and Related Products Regulations (TRPR) — every nicotine-containing product sold in Britain has to be notified, batch-tested and traceable.

You'll find Riot Squad in three main formats in 2026: 10 ml nicotine salts (10 or 20 mg/ml), 100 ml shortfills (0 mg, designed to be topped up with nic shots), and RIOT BAR 2 ml refillable pods sold alongside the RIOT BAR device. There are also periodic limited editions — the Riot X collaboration series, ice/menthol variants, and licensed crossovers with drinks brands.

The 2026 Riot Squad lineup at a glance

The current Riot Squad catalogue covers four core sub-brands: Riot Salts (10 ml nic salts), Riot Shortfills (100 ml 0 mg), Riot Bar Salts (10 ml matched to disposable flavours) and RIOT BAR Pods (2 ml pre-filled refillables). Together they cover about 60 flavour SKUs — big enough to browse, small enough that most convenience stores stock the top 15. Here's how the ranges compare:

Prices above reflect typical UK online RRP in mid-2026 at high-street specialist retailers. Supermarket pricing is usually 10–20% higher; multibuy deals (3 for £10 on salts) are the norm at dedicated vape shops.

Every core flavour, ranked and reviewed

Riot Squad's flavour DNA is fruit — cold, sharp, and often with an ice/menthol kick. If you want tobacco leaf, custard or bakery, look elsewhere (Dinner Lady is stronger there). Here's a working ranking of the 15 flavours you'll actually see stocked in the UK in 2026, based on flavour accuracy, coil life and repeat-purchase data from independent vape retailers.

Tier S — the flavours that built the brand

• Cherry Colada — glacé cherry over pineapple and coconut. Reads like a cocktail, not a cough sweet. Coil-friendly.
• Sub Lime — sharp lime with a gentle sherbet finish. The closest Riot gets to a "clean" flavour.
• Blue Burst — blue-raspberry ice. If you liked the original Elf Bar Blue Razz Lemonade, this is the legal, refillable heir.

Tier A — genuinely good

• Tropical Fury — mango, passionfruit, pineapple. The mango is dominant; not for people who dislike sweet.
• Punk Grenade — blackcurrant + apple + light aniseed. Underrated; polarising.
• Pink Grenade — pink lemonade with grapefruit bitterness. Best summer flavour in the range.
• Strawbacco Raspberry (Riot Bar Salts) — the closest thing to a "strawberry ice cream" hit at this price.

Tier B — competent

• Menthol Blast — respectable but nothing over what ELFLIQ or IVG do.
• Watermelon Ice — accurate, thin.
• Peach Ice — softer than Nasty Juice's version.

Tier C — skip

• Rich Tobacco — thin, one-note. Riot is not a tobacco brand.
• Vanilla Custard — muddled, coil-killer.

Salts vs shortfills: which Riot format is right for you?

Choose Riot Salts if you use a pod kit and inhale mouth-to-lung; choose Riot Shortfills if you use a sub-ohm tank and want to save money per ml. That's the quick answer. The long answer depends on how much you vape and what device you own.

Heavy vapers who go through 20+ ml a day should be on shortfills — the maths gets ugly on salts fast. Pair a Riot 100 ml with a decent sub-ohm kit and a long-battery mod, and you're vaping premium British juice for pennies per ml.

RIOT BAR: the disposable-ban answer

RIOT BAR is Riot Squad's refillable pod system, launched in 2024 and re-engineered ahead of the 1 June 2025 UK single-use disposable ban. It looks like a disposable, feels like a disposable, but the pod pops off and clicks back on — meaning the device is legal to sell, the pods are legal to sell, and both continue to be sold after the ban that wiped Elf Bar 600s, Lost Marys and every other single-use device off UK shelves.

The ban itself, enacted under the Environmental Protection (Single-use Vapes) (England) Regulations 2024, made it illegal to supply, offer to supply, or have in your possession for supply, any single-use vape — including any device that could not be recharged AND refilled. RIOT BAR crossed that line by design: 2 ml refillable pod, USB-C rechargeable battery. What you buy after June 2025:

• The RIOT BAR device (rechargeable, ~£8)
• RIOT BAR Pods — pre-filled 2 ml pods with 20 mg salt in the disposable-familiar flavours (~£3.99 single, ~£5.99 twin-pack)

Cost-wise this destroys single-use economics. A Blue Burst pod delivers roughly the puff count of a 600-puff disposable at about £4, versus the old £5–£6 single-use price. Twin packs bring it below £3 per pod. That's before you factor in the extra range of e-liquid you can use with the device via the refillable pods — see our refillable pods hub for cross-compatible options.

UK regulation context: what applies to Riot in 2026

Every Riot Squad product sold in Britain must comply with the TRPR nic cap (20 mg/ml), the 10 ml salt bottle limit, the 2 ml refillable pod/tank limit, and — for shortfills — the 0 mg nicotine loophole. Riot's UK stock meets all four. But the regulatory picture is shifting fast:

• 1 June 2025 — Disposable ban. Single-use vapes banned in England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland. RIOT BAR's refillable format is the brand's answer. See GOV.UK.
• 1 October 2026 — Vape excise duty starts. HMRC's new Vaping Products Duty adds £2.20 per 10 ml of e-liquid, regardless of nicotine strength. Expect Riot Salts to jump from £3.49 to ~£5.69 and 100 ml shortfills to jump by ~£22 unless the brand absorbs it. Details at GOV.UK Vaping Products Duty.
• Tobacco and Vapes Bill — flavours, packaging, displays. The bill going through Parliament grants ministers power to restrict flavours, limit packaging designs, and hide vapes behind the counter (like tobacco). If flavour restrictions land, Riot's colourful, punk-graphic branding is directly in scope.
• Age of sale — 18+. Existing rule; no change.
• Advertising rules. The ASA/CAP Code section 22 prohibits most consumer vape advertising in the UK. Riot's marketing runs through age-gated web pages and B2B trade press.

For an evidence-based overview of vaping health effects and stop-smoking outcomes, see the NHS's guidance on using e-cigarettes to stop smoking. Adult smoking rates in England fell to ONS-recorded lows during the vape-boom years — a policy backdrop the current government is now rebalancing towards youth-uptake concerns.

Riot Squad vs Elf Bar, IVG, Dinner Lady, Nasty Juice

Riot Squad's competitors on UK shelves are ELFLIQ (Elf Bar's bottled range), IVG, Dinner Lady, Nasty Juice, Vampire Vape, Doozy Vape and Lost Mary's e-liquid line. Here's how they stack up in 2026, focused on the metrics that actually decide a purchase:

Where Riot wins: value on fruit + ice combinations, brand recognition for ex-disposable users, refillable-pod ecosystem post-ban. Where it loses: tobacco (Vampire Vape), dessert (Dinner Lady, IVG), authentic menthol clarity (ELFLIQ).

Best devices to pair with Riot Squad e-liquid

Riot Salts work best in low-power pod kits (10–15 W); Riot Shortfills demand a sub-ohm tank on a 40–80 W device. Match the juice to the hardware or you'll waste both. Here are the pairings we'd actually recommend to a UK vaper in 2026:

For Riot Salts (10 or 20 mg)

• Uwell Caliburn G3 — clean flavour, 2 ml tank compliance, £22 street price.
• SMOK Nord 5 — versatile pod with RPM coils; great for 10 mg salts.
• Vaporesso Xros 4 — the pod that finally beat the Caliburn on airflow control.
• RIOT BAR device — matches Riot Bar Pods, disposable form factor.

For Riot Shortfills (0 mg → 3 mg)

• Vaporesso GEN 200 — heavy-hitting box mod, exceptional battery.
• Voopoo Drag X Pro — 21700 single-battery, pocketable.
• Innokin Kroma-A — starter-friendly for shortfill first-timers.

For deeper hardware buying advice, cross-reference our guide to the best vape kits for long battery life. Full range at Vape Kits.

How to use a Riot 100 ml shortfill (with nic shots)

A "shortfill" is a 120 ml bottle containing 100 ml of 0 mg e-liquid; you add two 10 ml nicotine "shots" (18 or 20 mg) to bring it to 3.0 mg strength across the full 120 ml. This is a workaround to the TPD 10 ml bottle rule — you can't sell nicotine e-liquid in bottles larger than 10 ml, but you can sell 0 mg juice in any size and let the consumer add nicotine. It's fully legal, saves considerable money, and takes two minutes.

1. Buy the Riot 100 ml shortfill (120 ml bottle, 100 ml filled).
2. Buy two 18 or 20 mg nic shots (unflavoured 50/50 or 70/30, matching your shortfill's VG/PG ratio — Riot is high-VG so pick 70/30).
3. Pop the child-lock caps off both nic shots.
4. Empty both nic shots into the shortfill bottle.
5. Cap and shake vigorously for 30 seconds. Ideally let it steep 24 hours for flavour blending.
6. Result: 120 ml of ~3.0 mg fruit shortfill.

Cost breakdown at typical UK prices: Riot shortfill (£11.99) + two nic shots (£1 each) = ~£13.99 for 120 ml of 3 mg juice. That's roughly £1.17 per 10 ml — three times cheaper than an equivalent salt. If you're a sub-ohm vaper going through a shortfill a week, this is a £600/year saving over the salt equivalent.

Are Riot Squad nic salts safer than freebase nicotine?

Nicotine salts and freebase nicotine deliver the same drug — nicotine — but with different pharmacokinetic profiles; neither is meaningfully "safer" than the other at the same daily dose. The "safer" framing comes from marketing, not toxicology. What's actually true:

• Nic salts have benzoic (or similar) acid added, which lowers the pH and makes higher nicotine concentrations tolerable to inhale.
• This delivers nicotine to the brain faster, more like a cigarette — good for recent quitters.
• Freebase nicotine (in shortfills) is harsher at high strengths, which is why shortfills top out at 3 mg.
• Total daily nicotine intake is what matters for dependence and cardiovascular effects — not the salt vs freebase distinction.

The NHS position is that vaping (any format) is substantially less harmful than smoking for adults trying to quit, but is not risk-free and not intended for non-smokers. Public Health England's 2015 "95% less harmful" figure has been debated, but successive UK government reviews (Khan Review 2022; Office for Health Improvement 2022 evidence update) have maintained the harm-reduction stance for adult smokers.

RIOT BAR vs Elf Bar refillable pods (2026)

After the disposable ban, RIOT BAR competes directly with Elf Bar's refillable pod system, Lost Mary's rechargeable range, SKE Crystal Bar Plus and Voopoo Doric. Head-to-head, RIOT BAR trades on flavour breadth and price; Elf Bar trades on brand recognition and coil consistency.

Winner depends on your priority. Best flavour range and coil consistency: Elf Bar. Best value and British-brand loyalty: RIOT BAR. See all refillable pod systems.

Price, value and where to buy in the UK

Riot Squad sits in the mid-lower price bracket — cheaper than IVG or Nasty Juice, on par with Dinner Lady, more expensive than budget own-brand. The typical UK pricing you'll see online in 2026:

Best-value places to buy in 2026: specialist online vape retailers (multibuy deals), directly from Riot Labs' site (full range, guaranteed authentic), and premium high-street chains. Avoid unbranded eBay/AliExpress listings — counterfeit Riot Salts have been flagged repeatedly by Trading Standards. Warning signs: no MHRA notification number on the box, misspelled flavour names, wrong bottle shape.

From October 2026, expect ~£2.20 per 10 ml added by the new HMRC Vaping Products Duty. Multibuy deals will likely be repriced upward. Buying at current prices in September 2026 is the cheapest window before the tax lands.

Riot Squad pros and cons after 2 months of testing

Pros

• Strong, honest fruit flavours — Cherry Colada, Blue Burst, Sub Lime don't taste synthetic.
• Excellent value for money, especially the 3-for-£10 salts and 100 ml shortfills.
• British-made, MHRA-compliant, fully traceable.
• RIOT BAR provides a genuine post-ban alternative to disposables.
• Strong pod-kit compatibility — high VG doesn't clog small coils in the way some cheaper brands do.
• Recognisable packaging that ex-disposable users identify with instantly.

Cons

• Tobacco and dessert ranges are weak — go elsewhere.
• Loud packaging directly in the crosshairs of forthcoming vape marketing restrictions.
• High-sweetener content can shorten coil life in cheaper devices.
• Menthol range is fine but not class-leading.
• Some limited editions vanish quickly and don't return.

Who Riot Squad is for (and who should skip it)

Buy Riot Squad if: you're a fruit-and-ice vaper, you've come off disposables and want cheaper per-ml costs, you use a pod kit, or you want a British brand that's still available after the disposable ban. Riot's whole product line is engineered for exactly this user.

Skip Riot Squad if: you want authentic tobacco (try Vampire Vape, Doozy or Riot's competitor Ohm Brew), you want dessert (Dinner Lady Lemon Tart), or you want ultra-clean menthol (ELFLIQ Menthol is cleaner). Riot's tobacco is one-dimensional, its custard muddies quickly, and its menthol is competent but not class-leading.

Also consider: if you've quit nicotine but miss the ritual, or you're switching from vaping to a lower-harm alternative like nicotine pouches — Riot's parent brand also plays in that space with Riot Squad Pouches, though our nicotine pouch buying guide covers stronger alternatives.

Verdict: is Riot Squad worth buying in 2026?

Yes — Riot Squad remains one of the best-value UK e-liquid brands in 2026, especially if fruit + ice is your flavour lane and you want a manufacturer that's already adapted to the disposable-ban world. The Cherry Colada, Blue Burst and Sub Lime salts alone justify the brand's continued shelf presence, and the RIOT BAR system is a rare example of a British vape brand out-manoeuvring the regulator with genuinely useful hardware rather than gimmicks.

Weaknesses are real but narrow: don't buy Riot for tobacco or dessert, don't buy Riot if you demand ultra-premium juice profiles, and don't buy Riot from unauthorised sellers where counterfeits are common. Everywhere else, it's a strong 8.5/10 brand — up there with Dinner Lady and ELFLIQ, and materially better value than either on shortfills.

Our 2026 rating: 8.5/10. Best product in the range: Cherry Colada 20 mg salt. Best value: Blue Burst 100 ml shortfill. Best post-ban innovation: RIOT BAR twin pack.

Ready to try? Browse the full range at Vape Daily E-Liquids, or pair with a matched vape kit for the best flavour. First order? Start with a 3-for-£10 salts multibuy of Cherry Colada, Blue Burst and Sub Lime — that's the Riot Squad experience in three bottles.

Related reading

• ELFLIQ Review (2026) — Elf Bar's bottled range, Riot's biggest direct rival
• Dinner Lady Review (2026) — the dessert-and-tart specialist
• Best Vape Kits for Long Battery Life (2026) — for pairing with 100 ml shortfills
• Which Nicotine Pouch Should You Pick? — for readers cutting back on vaping

]]>

Frequently asked questions

Is Riot Squad e-liquid made in the UK?

Yes. Riot Squad is manufactured in Manchester by Riot Labs Ltd under ISO-certified conditions, with every SKU MHRA-notified for legal UK sale. Every batch is traceable via the notification number printed on the pack.

What's the strongest Riot Squad nicotine strength?

20 mg/ml — the legal UK maximum under the TRPR regulations. Riot Salts and Riot Bar Salts both come in 10 mg and 20 mg options; shortfills are 0 mg by design, becoming ~3 mg once you add two nic shots.

Is RIOT BAR banned in the UK after the June 2025 disposable ban?

No. RIOT BAR is a refillable pod system with a rechargeable USB-C battery, which puts it outside the definition of a single-use vape under the Environmental Protection (Single-use Vapes) (England) Regulations 2024. It's fully legal to sell and use.

How much will Riot Squad cost after the October 2026 vape tax?

HMRC's Vaping Products Duty adds £2.20 per 10 ml of e-liquid from 1 October 2026. Expect Riot Salts to rise from ~£3.49 to ~£5.69, and 100 ml shortfills to rise by ~£22, unless the manufacturer absorbs part of the cost.

What's the best Riot Squad flavour for ex-disposable users?

Blue Burst (blue-raspberry ice) for former Elf Bar Blue Razz Lemonade users; Cherry Colada for anyone who liked tropical disposables; Sub Lime for former Lost Mary Sour Blueberry fans. All three are in the Riot Bar Salts line, designed to match disposable flavour profiles.

Can I use Riot Squad shortfills in a pod kit?

Not ideally. Shortfills are high-VG, made for sub-ohm tanks with wide airflow and 40–80 W of power. A small pod kit will struggle to vaporise them properly and coils will burn out quickly. Use Riot Salts in pod kits, shortfills in sub-ohm mods.

Are Riot Squad e-liquids safe?

Riot Squad products are manufactured to MHRA-notification standards and use ingredients accepted for inhalation. Vaping is not risk-free — the NHS position is that it's substantially less harmful than smoking for adults trying to quit, but not intended for non-smokers or under-18s.

Where can I buy authentic Riot Squad in the UK?

Buy from specialist vape retailers, high-street vape chains, or directly from the manufacturer. Avoid unbranded eBay and AliExpress listings — Trading Standards has flagged counterfeit Riot Salts. Check for MHRA notification numbers on the pack and correctly spelled flavour names.