June 18th, 2026 MSFS Weekly Briefing

Weekly Recap

The MSFS team is back after spending a fantastic weekend at FSExpo 2026! It’s always a huge pleasure for the team to meet so many passionate simmers and discuss our shared love of aviation with you!

In case you missed it, Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator Jorg Neumann delivered a keynote presentation from the stage in the Grand Ballroom on Friday. You can watch the entire presentation on YouTube here:

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Included among Jorg’s many announcements from the stage were the release of City Update 15: Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin and Expert Series 02: Piper M600! Both are available now from the in-sim Marketplace. City Update 15 is FREE, and the Piper M600 sells for USD $24.99.

We would once again like to thank all the wonderful hardware makers who furnished equipment for our booth on the convention floor. Event attendees had a great time trying products from the following vendors at the Microsoft Flight Simulator booth:

• High-end gaming PCs courtesy of MSI

• Flight control peripherals courtesy of Honeycomb Aeronautical, MOZA, Thrustmaster, Turtle Beach, and WINCTRL

• Sim cockpits courtesy of NextLevelRacing

• PCVR headsets courtesy of Pimax

• Head/eye trackers courtesy of Tobii

Also at FSExpo, we hosted our first Microsoft Flight Simulator esports competition on the FSElite Stage. Using the Red Bull Air Race mode, we pitted four popular content creators from Twitch and YouTube (Blu Games, Moosestaffa, NickFlightX, and Twotonemurphy) against the top two FSExpo attendees who recorded the fastest qualifying times at the MSFS booth on the convention floor. The VOD of the full tournament is also available on YouTube here:

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Finally, public testing for Sim Update 5.1 continues. Since our last Weekly Briefing, two new test builds have been made available to those enrolled in the beta. You can find the release notes for these two builds here:

• Sim Update 5.1 Beta (1.7.33.0) Release Notes – June 11, 2026

• Sim Update 5.1 Beta (1.7.34.0) Release Notes – June 15, 2026

Click here to continue reading the rest of the Weekly Briefing!