Welcome to our 212th newsletter on Star Atlas! This weekly newsletter, published by Aephia Industries, focuses entirely on the development of this ambitious game. Here, we attempt to aggregate all the newsworthy tidbits revealed, primarily by the team, throughout the past week.

Welcome to 2026, and Happy New Year!

The team is back after their two-week holiday break, which means our weekly coverage of Star Atlas news is officially resuming.

As is often the case at the start of the year, it’s been a relatively quiet week. Still, there are a few updates worth catching up on: a roadmap from the community team (that we annotated), the start of a new chapter for the DAO Council, and a handful of smaller notes around Fleet Rentals, the Econ Vantarah, and more.

Let’s dive in!

Star Atlas - Ustur Combat outfit [In-engine]

Star Atlas – Ustur Combat outfit [In-engine]

Roadmap 2026 H1

During the first Atlas Brew of the year, the team shared the estimated release order. This roadmap is sorted chronologically, but no actual dates were given. Below, we are sharing this list while adding some context to each item:

  • UE5 and Zink Bug Fixing — There are still many bugs in the z.ink zProfile and O.rigin program that need to be fixed. Jim Carter has made some progress over the holidays, but the list is far from empty. Furthermore, the new UE5 patch released just before the team went on holiday break introduced numerous issues. So, unsurprisingly, this is the first item on the list. The team has started (or continued) work on this, this very week.
  • Holosim Chapter 2 — The first release of the year! During the Town Hall, this was promised for January 2026; therefore, we expect it to drop towards the end of this month.
  • CORE — Act 3 of the Graphic Novel should launch at the end of this month as well. Since Holosim Chapter 2 allows players to obtain the special cover edition (on-chain assets) for free, it is no surprise that this will occur after Chapter 2 went live.
  • SAGE C4 (PTR) — The public test version of SAGE C4 is likely to go live on the z.ink testnet in February, if all goes well (or even late January if things go super well). If things don’t go well, this could slip to March, but that seems less likely at this point.
  • Z.ink — A big one! The launch and genesis of the z.ink mainnet was originally said to come in late March at the earliest. With C4 PTR slipping, however, we would not be surprised to see this slip as well. The primary reason for this is that Michael (CEO) wants SAGE C4 to go live with z.ink on day 1. Given that SAGE C4 likely needs at least 2 months of testing, late March seems unlikely at this point.
  • SAGE C4 (Mainnet) — The biggest one! The full overhaul of SAGE, on the z.ink mainnet! This will propel SAGE to the next level and introduce a completely redesigned browser interface (UI). For that reason, the team is dropping the “Labs” moniker, currently attached to SAGE.
  • New UE5 Mode — The mystery! During the Brew, the community team said this item is not related to Siege or Conquest. They did not talk about Fleet Command at all, but since that mode is public knowledge, it would likely not be referred to as a “new UE5 mode”. So, for now, this remains a big unknown!

Star Atlas DAO Council

The elections for the 3rd term of the DAO Council concluded a few weeks ago, but as of January 11th, the newly elected Council members have actually begun their 9-month term (ending October 11th, 2026). For the past month, these individuals had the opportunity to participate in all Council meetings (internal & external) and learn as much as they could.

Star Atlas DAO Council Members for Term 3 (SAC-3):

  • Winston (new)
  • Morango (new)
  • Jith blade (new)
  • Lanzer (term 2)
  • Emperor (term 2)

Now that their term has started, we can likely expect the elections for the approved DAO Casters PIP to kick off soon.

On behalf of the community, we’d like to thank departing Council members:

  • DrumCarl05 (term 1 & 2)
  • Bodhi (term 1 & 2)
  • Signal (term 2)

Star Atlas - Iris' Blessing Schedule

Star Atlas – Iris’ Blessing Schedule

News Bits

To wrap up the first issue of the year, here are a few of the smaller tidbits we gathered during the past week:

  • Another Iris’ Blessing Raffle took place on January 9th. Check out the #monthly-drawing channel on the Star Atlas Discord to see if you were one of the winners (tip: if so, you would have been tagged there). We are not midway through the full 6-month program.
  • The next Iris’ Blessing Double XP Weekend will be on January 23rd – 25th
  • Anthonyra, creator of the Fleet Rental program, shared some details on a new reservation system on Discord this past week. It is live on devnet (Holosim) and is planned to go live on mainnet later.
  • The team reopened the form for community members to apply to join the Econ Vantarah team. It will likely close again on Wednesday, January 14th.
  • Danny (CPO) confirmed that the current numbers shown/used in the Sage Editor Suite will go live with the SAGE C4 PTR. That said, he expects almost all of the numbers to be changed as a result of PTR testing.
  • We published a complete guide to the z.ink O.rigin campaign during the holidays!

That’s a wrap! Thanks for reading, and see you next week!