Star Citizen is on track to hit $1 billion in player funding by 2026, and we may still not get its single-player campaign next year.

In 2026, gaming will almost certainly cross a milestone that still feels faintly absurd. No, this isn’t about the long-awaited arrival of Grand Theft Auto 6. It’s about Star Citizen and its relentlessly successful—if ethically questionable—funding model finally breaking through the $1 billion mark.

The last major checkpoint came in April, when Star Citizen’s funding total crept past $800 million. Since then, the counter has continued to spin at an alarming pace. As of writing, the project is sitting at just over $925 million raised, a figure that continues to climb month by month.

Originally funded through traditional crowdfunding, Star Citizen now pulls in money through a blend of paid alpha access, microtransactions, and virtual spacecraft that can cost more than many real-world cars. At its current trajectory, the project is on track to pass $1 billion sometime around mid–2026. One billion dollars. Enough money to fund multiple AAA blockbusters from start to finish—assuming, of course, those projects actually ship.

That framing may sound unkind, but it’s worth noting that Star Citizen has been playable in alpha form for years. Development has undeniably been slow—painfully so, given that the game was announced 13 years ago—but the alpha has expanded steadily. Earlier this month, version 4.5 introduced a fully fledged engineering role, allowing players to manage power systems, repair ship components, and even extinguish onboard fires sparked by combat or system failures.

The real question, as always, is whether Star Citizen will ever truly be finished. That question splits neatly in two. On one hand, there’s Squadron 42, the single-player campaign packed with Hollywood talent, which has long been promised as the more “contained” release. It’s supposedly due next year, but its absence from this year’s CitizenCon presentation raised fresh doubts about that timeline.

Speaking in October, content director Jake Huckaby admitted the release window was far from certain. He explained that while the studio had once targeted 2025, the focus had shifted toward development itself rather than marketing milestones. That may be honest, but it’s hardly reassuring to a community that’s heard similar sentiments before.

As for Star Citizen proper, Chris Roberts suggested earlier this year that version 1.0 could arrive in 2027 or 2028. That’s a window wide enough to accommodate even the game’s most extravagant virtual ships. Despite occasional unrest among backers—particularly when new monetized upgrades are delayed or repriced—funding continues to pour in at an astonishing rate.

At this point, it seems clear that players will keep spending until one of two things happens: the game finally launches in a recognizable “complete” state, or its creator disappears into orbit aboard a very expensive, very virtual spacecraft.