Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games has said that Squadron 42 will launch at some point in 2026.
If the game does release then, it will mark an incredible 14 years since CIG first launched its Star Citizen crowdfunding campaign.
Tonight at CitizenCon in Manchester, England, CIG chief Chris Roberts, known for creating the Wing Commander series, took the stage to express that he is “confident” that the long-awaited standalone Star Citizen role-playing game will be released in 2026.
Roberts’ on-stage comments followed a lengthy live gameplay demo that was plagued by numerous crashes, bugs, and graphical issues, but gave viewers a good idea of the first hour of Squadron 42.
CIG demonstrated a Squadron 42 prologue that is intended to set the stage for the player to become a pilot in the sci-fi game. The demo was full of flashy cutscenes with CGI representations of Hollywood stars like Gillian Anderson, Henry Cavill, Gary Oldman and Mark Strong, mixed with turret-on-rails action in a massive space battle. The demo ended with a fragment of a first-person shooter in which an alien enemy boarded the player’s ship.
“We said we were doing it live, risking the demo gods, and they brought their wrath upon us,” Roberts said as he took the stage.
“Then there’s a lot more going on in 42 Squadron, but it depends on where you come from, and from there you become a pilot and go on to serve on a smaller ship, the Stanton. But there is much more to the game than we showed there. As I’ve been playing over the last few weeks, the game has been a lot more stable for me.”
Roberts continued: “Both the team and I are confident that we will give you this game in 2026. Of course, you can see that it’s not going to happen tomorrow because you saw some failures there.
“Thank you for supporting us and allowing us to create such an ambitious game. Crashes aside, there’s probably no other game that has this much action in its prologue. There are basically no movies with so much action. Gladiator has three minutes of battle and eight minutes of prologue. It was an hour of crazy stuff.
“But thank you for giving us the opportunity to build something so amazing, and I can’t wait for you all to be able to play it in the moderate future.”
Star Citizen is considered one of the most controversial projects in all video games. In the 12 years since its crowdfunding campaign began, Star Citizen has been called many things, including a scam, by those who wondered if it would ever launch properly. Its virtual spaceships, some of which cost hundreds of dollars, are often the subject of criticism.
According to CIG data, Star Citizen has already raised over $729 million. The developer makes revenue publicly available on its website websitewhich shows that Star Citizen has raised $729,151,801 at the time of this article’s publication. CIG calls this money “raised funds.”
In March this year CIG has started talking about the upcoming release of Star Citizen 1.0although there is still no release window. According to Roberts, version 1.0 “is what we believe includes a set of features and content that represents a ‘commercial’ release.” Right now, Star Citizen is still in alpha phase.
Wesley is the UK news editor at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. Wesley can be reached at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
