📰 This Week in Star Citizen – January 2026 (Week 1)

Updates, Events & What’s Ahead in the ‘Verse

Welcome to the first This Week in Star Citizen of 2026!
After the holiday break, the teams are back in full force, sharing updates on Alpha 4.6, community events, upcoming bundles, and new experiments in the Persistent Universe.

❄️ Back From the Holiday Break

The team hopes everyone enjoyed a great holiday season — whether that meant time with family and friends, relaxing at home, or exploring the frozen reaches of the Glaciem Belt in Nyx.

The year 2025 concluded with Star Citizen Alpha 4.5 – Dawn of Engineering.
Since then, many players have been diving deep into multicrew gameplay, taking on engineering roles, managing ship systems, and sometimes going down with their ships like true captains.

Behind the scenes, the development teams continued to work on:

• Tracking gameplay data and performance metrics
• Reviewing player feedback across all channels
• Delivering a steady stream of hotfixes and balance tweaks
• Investigating bugs and unintended behaviors

More updates on these efforts will be shared soon.

🚀 Focus Shifts to Alpha 4.6 & Core Systems

With everyone back in the studio, attention is now firmly on Alpha 4.6
(current build: 4.6.0 EVO 11019052).

Building on the lessons learned from Alpha 4.5, 2026 will focus on further expanding the depth and playability of Star Citizen.

Key areas of development include:

• Engineering & multicrew systems
• Inventory & item recovery
• Genesis planets
• Crafting
• Social tools
• Dynamic server meshing
• Insurance & cross-patch persistence

Modernization of long-running core systems continues in parallel.

🛠️ Crafting & Tech Preview

Work is well underway to bring Crafting to the Tech Preview servers.
The next testing phase is planned for Evocati, marking an important step toward rolling this system out more broadly in 2026.

📊 Feedback Survey & Reward

The recent Feedback Survey received an overwhelming response:

• Nearly 34,000 responses (and counting)
• Players can still update their answers, especially after spending more time in Alpha 4.5

🎁 Reward:
Everyone who completes the survey will receive a light-up Café Musain hangar flair,
which will be attributed to accounts after January 15.

🎄 Community Contests & Creative Highlights

• Strong participation in the Luminalia 2955 Greeting Card Contest
• The Community Hub is filled with creative submissions
• Winners will be announced soon

🏁 Community Events: Racing & Esports

🏜️ Daymar Rally 2956

• Starts Saturday, January 24, 2026
• One of the toughest races in the ‘verse
• Pilots and drivers battle for every second and every meter of sand
• Live broadcast and full details available on the official Daymar Rally page

🎮 Enter ATMOSPHERE 2956 (ATMO Esports)

• February 21, 2026, Sydney, Australia
• First Star Citizen event in Australia in 10 years
• Ship racing, dogfighting showcases, meet & greets
• A full-day celebration for the Australia & New Zealand community

🗓️ What’s Coming This Week

🛒 Tuesday – New Monthly Bundle

• A new Monthly Bundle arrives in the RSI store
• Limited-time cosmetic packs with themed color palettes
• Starting in 2026, new bundles release on the second Tuesday of every month

🧭 Wednesday – Roadmap Update & PU Experiments

• First Roadmap Update of 2026
• Many new cards added for Alpha 4.6
• Upcoming changes to patch scheduling will be discussed in more detail soon

📦 Commodity Trade Boost (New)

A limited-time experiment in the Persistent Universe:

• Two vendors in the Stanton system now have access to increased quantities of rare resources, including Atlasium
• These vendors are also buying select commodities above standard market prices
• Triggered by increased large-scale capital ship combat and destruction

⚠️ Notes:

• Quantities are limited
• Other players — and pirates — may be chasing the same opportunities

📬 Friday – RSI Weekly Newsletter

• The latest RSI Weekly Newsletter lands in inboxes
• Not subscribed yet? You can enable it anytime via account settings

👋 Closing Thoughts

Star Citizen is kicking off 2026 at full speed:

• Alpha 4.6 moving forward
• Crafting nearing Tech Preview testing
• Major community events on the horizon
• New dynamic PU experiments
• Continued transparency through roadmap updates

a.thl'ē'kol — see you soon in the ‘verse.

Summary based on “This Week in Star Citizen”, January 12, 2026.