This Week in Star Citizen – January 12, 2026
The new year kicks off with a full slate of activity across Star Citizen, as the team returns from the holidays and shifts focus from Alpha 4.5 to the upcoming 4.6 build. After the launch of Dawn of Engineering, the developers spent the break monitoring data, tuning systems, and rolling out hotfixes to keep multicrew and engineering gameplay progressing smoothly. Now, with everyone back in the studio, work accelerates on new systems ranging from Crafting and Genesis planets to major modernizations of Item Recovery, Insurance, and Cross-Patch Persistence.
Alongside development, the community has been heavily engaged. Nearly 34,000 citizens have responded to the latest gameplay survey, and contributors across the ‘verse turned out in force for the Luminalia 2955 Greeting Card Contest. The racing scene also takes the spotlight, with the Daymar Rally 2956 just days away and ATMO Esports preparing to bring Enter ATMOSPHERE 2956 to Sydney next month.
This Week’s Lineup
The week starts with the return of a familiar offering in a new form. Tuesday introduces the first Monthly Bundle of 2026—limited-time cosmetic packs built around unified color themes and arriving on the second Tuesday of each month.
Wednesday brings the first Roadmap Update of the year, along with a Roadmap Roundup detailing new cards for Alpha 4.6. It also marks the debut of a new experimental ‘verse feature: Commodity Trade Boost. Following a surge in capital ship combat in Stanton, two vendors have acquired increased quantities of high-value materials, including Atlasium. They’re reselling resources at marked-up rates while simultaneously paying premium prices for several other commodities. Discovery and timing will matter—quantities are finite, and the competition for quick profit may not always be polite.
Friday rounds out the week with the RSI Weekly Newsletter. If you want regular updates straight to your inbox, you can enable email subscriptions through your account settings.
The Weekly Community Content Schedule
Monday, January 12, 2026
- This Week in Star Citizen
Tuesday, January 13, 2026
- Monthly Bundle
Wednesday, January 14, 2026
- Roadmap Update
- Roadmap Roundup
- Commodity Trade Boost
Friday, January 16, 2026
- RSI Weekly Newsletter
Vision Quest Truth
Smuggling Origin 300
A pair of worlds—Pinecone and The Hive—take center stage in this enigmatic tale. Pinecone, a poisonous main sequence dwarf sitting on the outer edge of the green band, is often passed over by explorers. According to the storyteller, no AI can match the instincts of a seasoned chief engineer, a sentiment echoed as the narrative shifts to The Hive, a high-pressure coreless planet similarly overshadowed by nearby giants.
Hints of danger surface when an investigation uncovers a hidden cache of Kr'Thak weaponry buried beneath The Hive’s surface. The exchange that follows between investigators and an unidentified being suggests that whatever the Kr'Thak left behind may still have watchers—or worse—waiting for answers they don’t intend to hear.
Community MVP: January 12, 2026
This week’s Community MVP goes to FatBird and their team for Sleighdancer, a stylish holiday run through Pyro filled with aerial tricks and festive flair. Their cinematic captures the system’s harsher edges wrapped in seasonal energy, proving that even Pyro gets a little cheer when the right crew shows up.
