Squadron 42 release date: it's now set for Q2 2027, and Cloud Imperium says an exact day is coming soon

Squadron 42 finally has a window it seems ready to commit to. Cloud Imperium moved its single-player Star Citizen spinoff out of 2026, put it on Steam and promised an exact date soon. Here’s what’s official.

When is Squadron 42 coming out?

The official answer is Q2 2027, which means sometime between April and June 2027. That’s the release listed on the game’s Steam page, which went live on Oct. 10, 2026, along with a new trailer called The Oath. There’s no exact day yet.

Founder Chris Roberts explained the timing in a Letter From the Chairman in August 2026. Cloud Imperium let a small group of original backers and long-time content creators play the game on Oct. 9 and 10, and Roberts said the studio would share more about its release plans during those sessions and announce a specific release date shortly afterward. As of Oct. 16, that date hasn’t come.

Why Cloud Imperium moved it to 2027

Squadron 42 was supposed to come out this year. Roberts wrote that Cloud Imperium announced at CitizenCon 2024 that it would ship in 2026, and the plan was a Q4 release around Star Citizen’s yearly Intergalactic Aerospace Expo event.

Then GTA 6 settled on Nov. 19, 2026. Roberts wrote that the studio wasn’t going to launch a game with that much work behind it into the “attention buzz saw of GTA6.” GTA 6 isn’t coming to PC this November, Roberts noted, but outlets and creators would be busy with it anyway. Cloud Imperium looked at the release windows in early 2027 and chose Q2. Our GTA 6 release date page covers the game it’s avoiding.

Roberts also explained why Squadron 42 has taken so long. Development started in 2014, and for years the studio kept moving people onto Star Citizen to get its updates out. Toward the end of 2024, it shifted the balance back, and in these final months the development staff is split 55% to 45% in Squadron 42’s favor.

What Squadron 42 is, and how it’s different from Star Citizen

Squadron 42 is a single-player first-person action-adventure. You enlist as a rookie in the UEE Navy and fight in humanity’s war against an alien race, the Vanduul, flying combat ships, fighting on foot and living aboard a capital warship with your crew. Roberts calls it a spiritual successor to Wing Commander, the space combat series Roberts created decades ago.

Star Citizen is the studio’s separate online game, still in development and playable now. Roberts wrote that Star Citizen hit a peak of 35,890 players at once this year, and that Star Citizen passed $1 billion in crowdfunding earlier in 2026.

The cast includes Mark Hamill, Gary Oldman and Gillian Anderson, and Steam promotes an all-star cast and next-generation performance capture. Roberts said the engine now has hardware-assisted ray tracing and global illumination for Squadron 42.

PC requirements and platforms

Squadron 42 is coming to Windows PCs through Steam and the official site. Cloud Imperium hasn’t announced versions for PS5, Xbox Series X|S or Switch 2. Steam lists full controller support, including DualSense and DualShock controllers, plus HDR and Steam Cloud saves.

The minimum requirements are steep for a game that’s still months away. Steam asks for Windows 11, a quad-core CPU, 16 GB of RAM, a DirectX 11.1-compatible graphics card with 8 GB of video memory and 150 GB of storage. Full voice acting is in English and Latin American Spanish, with text in eight more languages. There’s no price on Steam yet.

When the exact date could arrive

Roberts said the exact date would follow shortly after the October play sessions, so the announcement could come any week now. Cloud Imperium usually shares big news on its own site and channels, but The Game Awards on Dec. 10 is the year’s biggest stage for game reveals, and our Game Awards 2026 page has the details.

Squadron 42 is now one of the bigger PC games planned for the first half of next year, alongside the others on our list of upcoming games in 2027.

This page is updated as soon as Cloud Imperium announces an exact release date or a price for Squadron 42.