Microsoft Flight Simulator's 2026 Roadmap: Every Update Coming This Year and Where to Fly First

Microsoft and Asobo have laid out their 2026 plans for Microsoft Flight Simulator, and it is the busiest release calendar the platform has ever had: three World Updates, four Sim Updates, a steady drumbeat of City Updates, and an aircraft schedule that runs from a WWII Australian fighter to a modern super-midsize business jet. There is a lot to digest, so here is the roadmap month by month - and, more usefully, how to turn a list of update names into a plan for a year of flying.

The headline: a monthly cadence

The stated goal for 2026 is a steady rhythm - roughly one meaningful release every month, alternating between sim technology (Sim Updates), scenery (World and City Updates) and aircraft (Local Legends, Expert Series and avionics work). After the platform-building years of 2024 and 2025, this is the "content years" phase, and it shows in the calendar.

Worth restating before the list: all of this is free for MSFS 2024 owners. World Updates, City Updates, Sim Updates and the Aircraft & Avionics Updates are platform content, not paid DLC - the Local Legends and Expert Series aircraft are the marketplace items.

Month by month

April - Sim Update 5. Due within days of this article, SU5 is billed as the largest update MSFS 2024 has received: a very long bug-fix list plus some significant quality-of-life changes across the sim. We will cover it properly once it lands, but if the beta notes are any guide, it is the update that a lot of frustrated 2024 adopters have been waiting for.

May - World Update 21: Australia, and Local Legend 24. The first World Update of the year takes on an entire continent - new photogrammetry cities, refreshed terrain and elevation data, points of interest from Sydney Harbour to the outback, and the usual bundle of discovery flights and activities. Alongside it, Local Legend 24 is the CAC Boomerang from iniBuilds - the WWII fighter that was Australia's first home-designed combat aircraft, a fittingly on-theme companion release.

June - City Update 15, the Piper M600, and AAU05. Three smaller-but-notable releases. City Update 15 brings the usual hand-crafted city refresh. The second Expert Series aircraft - the Piper M600 single-engine turboprop by FSReborn - is targeting a debut around FlightSimExpo, and if the first Expert Series release is the standard, expect study-level systems depth. Aircraft & Avionics Update 05 rounds out the month with a pass over US-based aircraft in the default fleet.

July - World Update 22, a new base aircraft, and SU17 for MSFS 2020. World Update 22's region has not been announced yet - the community is already guessing. July also brings a new aircraft added to the base sim, and - notably - Sim Update 17 for MSFS 2020, which remains supported with fixes that also feed the 2024 platform. If you are one of the many still flying 2020, you have not been forgotten.

August - City Update 16 and Local Legend 25. A quieter month on paper, with a City Update and the next Local Legend (aircraft not yet named).

September - World Update 23 and Local Legend 26. The third World Update of the year, region also unannounced, plus another Local Legend.

Sim Update 6 is pencilled in for the early-summer window between those releases, continuing the fix-and-polish cadence rather than headline features.

Later in the year. October brings AAU06 (aircraft to be announced). November is the big one for systems-depth fans: City Update 17 alongside Expert Series 03 - the Embraer Praetor 600, built by Asobo with Working Title, which should set the bar for what a first-party study-level business jet looks like.

What the roadmap tells us between the lines

A few readings worth making.

MSFS 2024 is now the lead platform, but 2020 is genuinely still supported. A dedicated Sim Update for the older sim in July - six years after release - is more ongoing support than most simulators ever get. The practical advice stands, though: the content cadence, the World Updates and the new aircraft are all flowing to 2024 first or exclusively.

Turboprops and bizjets are having a year. The M600 in June and the Praetor 600 in November bracket the year with two serious step-up aircraft - the kind you graduate to when the C172 feels solved but a full airliner SOP feels like a second job. If your 2026 flying needs a theme, "the turbine year" is a good one.

World Updates are back on a schedule. Three this year, roughly quarterly. Which brings us to the practical question.

A word on betas. Each Sim Update runs a public beta first, and with four of them this year you will see beta build numbers in your feeds constantly. Joining is easy (opt in via the Xbox Insider Hub or Steam beta branch), but think before you do: beta builds can and do break third-party add-ons, and you cannot always roll back cleanly mid-flight-week. If the sim is your evening wind-down rather than your hobby-within-a-hobby, the sensible pattern in 2026 is to let each beta run its course and take the stable release a few weeks later - the roadmap's cadence means you are never waiting long.

Where to fly first: turning the roadmap into a plan

A release calendar is only useful if it changes what you fly. Some suggestions.

Hold your Australia bucket list for May. If you have been meaning to fly the Kimberley coast, a Sydney Harbour circuit or the outback station strips, wait four weeks and do it over refreshed terrain. World Update regions are noticeably better after their update - flying them the week before is the sim equivalent of repainting a room the day before the decorators arrive. We will publish a full Australia route guide when WU21 lands.

Plan a type-rating month around the M600. Single-engine turboprops are the best-kept secret in sim flying: airliner-grade avionics and real systems to manage, at speeds slow enough to hand-fly and learn from. When the Expert Series M600 arrives in June, consider giving it a dedicated month - same aircraft, increasingly ambitious trips - rather than one test flight between airliner legs.

Use the quiet months to build skills. August and the other gap months are the time for the unglamorous work - circuits, crosswind practice, instrument approaches - so that when a World Update gives you somewhere spectacular to fly, the flying itself is up to it. Our recent pieces on landing smoothly and the stabilized approach are a syllabus for exactly this.

Fly the Local Legends where they lived. The CAC Boomerang over the Australia of World Update 21 is the obvious pairing this spring, and it is a good habit generally - historic aircraft over their home scenery is consistently the most atmospheric flying the platform offers.

Keep a record of the year

Here is a small suggestion that changes how a year like this feels: log it. Twelve months from now, "I flew a lot of the new stuff" is a shrug, but a logbook showing the week you toured post-update Australia in the Boomerang, the month you learned the M600, and fifty autumn circuits that dragged your average touchdown from firm to smooth - that is a year of flying you can actually look back on.

My FS Flights does this automatically: run the companion app and every flight is recorded, scored and mapped, building a logbook and a personal world map of everywhere 2026 takes you - across MSFS 2024, MSFS 2020, X-Plane and P3D. However you track it, go into the year with a plan. The roadmap above is Asobo's. The interesting question is what yours looks like.