Star Wars: Galactic Racer Brings Podracing Back After a 24-Year Gap

Star Wars: Galactic Racer took center stage at Summer Game Fest on June 6, 2026, with a story trailer from developer Fuse Games and publisher Secret Mode that confirmed Sebulba’s return to competitive racing, unveiled a new planet called Derven Acos, and delivered the clearest look yet at the narrative campaign arriving October 6. Debuted at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, the trailer introduced protagonist Shade, corrupt League champion Kestar Bool, and circuit founder Darius Pax, alongside the underground Outer Rim racing league set during Star Wars’ New Republic Era.

Galactic Racer is the fourth dedicated Star Wars racing game in franchise history and the first since Star Wars: Racer Revenge shipped for PlayStation 2 in February 2002. The original Star Wars: Episode I Racer, released May 18, 1999, sold 3.12 million copies and earned a Guinness World Record as the best-selling sci-fi racing game of its era, outselling the combined lifetime totals of F-Zero and WipEout through 2011. That record has held across three console generations without a worthy successor.

The New Planet and the Old Villain

Shade and the Bool Family Feud

The Galactic League at the center of the campaign is an underground, unsanctioned circuit in the lawless Outer Rim, founded by racing enthusiast Darius Pax. Kestar Bool runs it now. Per Lucasfilm’s official story summary on StarWars.com, Kestar “uses his position as League Champion to intimidate other pilots and extend his already powerful reach even further.” Pax’s move is to recruit Shade, described by Fuse Games as carrying “a personal grudge against the Bool family,” with the task of breaking the champion’s grip on the title before Bool can consolidate control entirely.

The New Republic Era setting, placed between the fall of the Galactic Empire and the rise of the First Order, is territory the Star Wars racing genre has never touched. The franchise’s earlier racing titles never explored this period, so Fuse Games has room to build original characters and factions without running into preestablished plot constraints from the prequel era or the Skywalker Saga.

Shade has two allies the trailer makes explicit. Hibi, an Ardennian mechanic (the four-armed species familiar from Solo: A Star Wars Story), handles engineering support. Then there is Sebulba. Per Lucasfilm’s story summary, the Dug’s support for Shade is available “assuming Shade can earn the Dug’s hard-won respect,” making a character who spent The Phantom Menace as Anakin Skywalker’s chief antagonist a potential asset in the new title. Eagle-eyed viewers also spotted an older Ben Quadrinaros in the trailer alongside Griff from Star Wars Resistance, suggesting Fuse is drawing on 25-plus years of franchise lore well beyond Episode I’s immediate cast.

Derven Acos, the Final Arena

The Summer Game Fest trailer’s biggest canon contribution is Derven Acos, a planet not previously seen in Star Wars media. Fuse Games describes it as a gauntlet combining “every planetary condition that racers will have encountered throughout the tour,” designed as the Galactic League circuit’s final showpiece challenge. The trailer also confirmed podracers racing outside the Mos Espa Circuit for the first time in the game, placing the twin-engined craft on planets beyond Tatooine.

The paddock social area featured prominently. Between races, Shade moves through it while other pilots gather to issue challenges, share stories, and interact. Webster has cited these lower-intensity paddock sequences as a deliberate structural choice, a layer giving players time inside the Star Wars universe between high-speed sessions, with character interactions that feed back into the campaign progression.

A 24-Year Gap in the Genre

Star Wars Episode I: Racer launched May 18, 1999, riding the theatrical wave of The Phantom Menace. LucasArts developed the game on a two-year schedule using film specifications and set photos from the still-unreleased movie, and it shipped for Nintendo 64, Windows PC, and Dreamcast. The game won Console Racing Game of the Year at the 3rd Annual AIAS Interactive Achievement Awards and sold its way into the 2011 Guinness Gamer’s Edition as the best-selling sci-fi racing game in history, outselling the combined F-Zero and WipEout franchise totals, as Nintendo Life’s retrospective of the N64 version documents in detail.

The 2002 sequel, Star Wars: Racer Revenge, moved development to Rainbow Studios and narrowed the release to PlayStation 2 only. The Metacritic score landed at 73. Regional sales data puts the total at around 310,000 units, roughly a 90% decline from the original. The sequel arrived during the Attack of the Clones era with no narrative tie to that film’s release, competed against a crowded PS2 racing market, and lost the production quality LucasArts had built for the original. No further dedicated racing entries followed. Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012 and shut LucasArts down the following year. Aspyr’s 2020 remaster of Episode I Racer for Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One confirmed that appetite for the IP still existed, but it produced no new racing development alongside it.

• 3.12 million copies sold by Episode I Racer, the franchise’s commercial ceiling
• ~310,000 estimated total for Racer Revenge, based on regional sales breakdowns
• 24 years between Racer Revenge’s February 2002 release and October 2026
• 4 total dedicated Star Wars racing games across the franchise’s history

Burnout Veterans Build the Engine

The Criterion-Lucasfilm Pipeline

Fuse Games was founded in 2023 in Guildford, England, by Matt Webster, formerly the general manager of Criterion Games at EA. The founding team included Criterion leads Steve Uphill, Pete Lake, Alan McDairmant, and Andrei Shires, most carrying both racing and Star Wars experience from their previous employer. At Criterion, the group built the Endor Chase speeder-bike mission for DICE’s 2015 Star Wars Battlefront, created the Rogue One: X-Wing VR Mission for that same game, and developed the Starfighter Assault space combat mode for 2017’s Star Wars Battlefront II. Those projects built a direct working relationship with Lucasfilm Games that carried over when Fuse was formed.

When Webster left EA to start Fuse, he contacted Lucasfilm directly, and development of Galactic Racer began that year. The game was announced publicly at The Game Awards on December 12, 2025. Douglas Reilly, VP and GM at Lucasfilm Games, framed the collaboration in the announcement statement published by Secret Mode:

From the beginning, Star Wars has drawn inspiration from racing culture, from podracing to high-speed chases across the galaxy. With Star Wars: Galactic Racer, the team at Fuse Games has captured that spirit and elevated it into a wholly new form of racing adventure.

Studio Scale

Fuse employs approximately 75 developers internally, with the total headcount on Galactic Racer reaching around 150 once external contributors are counted. Webster has been specific about what the studio is attempting: he wants the game recognized for “bringing something fresh into racing,” with the paddock elements incorporated as a distinct structural layer. His design inspiration draws on a wider Star Wars racing tradition, explicitly citing Riot Racing from The Bad Batch Season 2 and sky races from Star Wars Resistance alongside the podracing of Episode I.

The UK publisher behind the release took MCV/Develop’s Indie Publisher of the Year award in 2025 and Ukie’s Best UK Publisher award in 2024. The release date was confirmed in May 2026, nearly three years after development began.

How the Galactic League’s Races Work

Fuse Games built Galactic Racer on fixed tracks, a deliberate departure from the open-world template that defined the genre through the Forza Horizon era. Creative director Kieran Crimmins has stated that no tracks use procedural generation, with replayability built through event variants and mixed vehicle classes per circuit. The “runs-based” framing means individual race results carry real stakes for campaign progression, closer to a rogue-lite structure than a career mode where failed races can simply be restarted without consequence. Branching routes within individual tracks mean no two runs play identically, per Fuse’s own design description.

Players pilot multiple Star Wars vehicle classes across the circuit, each with distinct physics. Per the official Summer Game Fest press release from Fuse Games and Secret Mode, the vehicle roster includes:

• Podracers, the twin-engined craft from Episode I, available in both the campaign and dedicated online multiplayer events
• Landspeeders, including the Kor Sarun brand of vehicles introduced specifically for the game
• Speeder bikes, suited to lighter and narrower course sections
• Skim speeders, a new vehicle class not seen in prior Star Wars media
• Additional vehicle types not yet publicly detailed ahead of launch

The Arcade section unlocks immediately from startup and runs parallel to the campaign, covering time trials and alternate-objective races. Online multiplayer supports up to 12 players with a ranked progression system, and Fuse has confirmed that dedicated online podracing multiplayer events are appearing in a Star Wars title for the first time. The game’s stated design ethos, per the launch announcement, is blunt: “No Force. No prophecy. Just skill, strategy, and the will to rise.”

The October Launch and Its Editions

Galactic Racer launches October 6, 2026 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via both Steam and the Epic Games Store. The standard edition is priced at $60 US. Three editions are available at launch:

Pre-orders on all platforms include a platform-exclusive livery and player banner, with color schemes varying by storefront. Vehicle customization runs through both campaign and multiplayer, with players unlocking new abilities on each run and adjusting their repulsorcraft build across the circuit. The UK Collector’s Edition retails at £140. Deluxe and Collector’s US pricing had not been confirmed as of the June 6 Summer Game Fest trailer.

Sebulba last raced in a dedicated Star Wars game on February 12, 2002; October 6 is the next one.