The weirdest and most wonderful things we saw at Sim Racing Expo 2026

Over 29,000 people came through the doors of Sim Racing Expo this year, held for the first time in Frankfurt. If you can subdue the urge to do a little sick in your mouth at the gushy sentiment, that was probably the biggest draw of all – the community.

360-ish days of the year this is a pretty solitary pursuit. A dark room, the gentle whirr of a direct drive wheel, and 4,000 laps cancelled due to track limits. That’s the sim racer’s usual territory. But not last weekend in Frankfurt. The sense of like-minded, passionate people coming together was in the air without conflict or agenda, and in 2026 that’s a rare delicacy.

Of course, there were also big reveals from big players, emerging trends, ridiculous money-no-object items and a particularly beloved Dacia Logan. Behold, the best bits from SRE 2026.

In a giant conference hall that was all about hardware, Kunos Simulazioni still managed to steal the show. Assetto Corsa Evo’s highly anticipated free roam mode was present and playable. We played it.

Mile after spookily accurate mile of German roads surrounding the Nordschleife circuit, driveable in any of the game’s vehicles from the polite Hyundai i20N to the untameable new Lamborghini Temerario. It’s not just that the roads feel true to life, or that they’re scenic, although both those things are true. It’s that this mode’s so different to anything else going on in racing games.

It’s so malleable, meditative, and able to really facilitate the fantasy of owning Evo’s cars. At a Sim Racing Expo where every other booth saw sim racers hotlapping on race circuits, that really stood out.

In what would prove to be something of a theme for the expo, Spanish sim racing megastore Simufy built a full sim rig into a kart on the showfloor, emblematic of a surge in kart-related gear in this sector lately.

It makes sense. Buying a kart is expensive. Buying a seat, wheel and pedals that put you in the same position and give you similar sensations is – we hesitate to say cheap, but certainly less ruinous than a season of karting. For junior drivers with motorsport aspirations, sim racing cockpits like Next Level Racing’s Go Kart Plus could prove a foot in the door.

We did say there was a theme at the show. Where Simufy’s kart rig demonstrated the practicality and affordability of a kart-based sim rig, Chinese manufacturer Conspit went for the opposite approach. And by ‘opposite approach’ we obviously mean turning an actual Audi R8 GT3 former race car into a giant sim rig, with a projector screen across the windshield.

Does it make you faster? It does not. Is it in any way practical? It is not. But does it prepare you for racing in a real GT3 car? Also no. Fun exhibit though.

Meanwhile in high-end luxury land, where there’s no cost of living crisis or AI jobs apocalypse and everything’s fine forever, ImSim and Porsche have teamed up to produce a lovely sim rig aimed at collectors.

Featuring headlights that conjure the Taycan’s nu-school matrix LEDs and a rear light bar that also demonstrates fluency in the Stuttgart factory’s design language, it’s one for Porsche customers and commercial partners more than aspiring racers, and it’s priced accordingly – Traxion reports it’ll set you back north of £50,000.

Over in ‘art imitating life’ corner was a fascinating metaphysical quandary: an RC car track where the cars could be raced by sitting in a sim rig and seeing the track from a first-person cockpit view via Go Pros mounted to the cars.

Is that sim racing, or sim-sim racing? We don’t have enough philosophy degrees to make the call, but it was a fun distraction from all the super-serious kit and countless booths where you could hotlap around Spa in a GT3 car.

One of the most significant showings at this year’s SRE but candidly, not one of our favourites. Fanatec has clearly noted that display units have been a massive growth area for the sim racing market over the last year. So why not cut out the middle man and just build that display onto your wheel?

There’s some solid logic to that. If you’re seated low in an F1-style position, your wheel’s almost level with your eyeline so it makes sense to put vital data there. It’s the specific design of Fanatec’s Project Obsidian - shown as a prototype at the show - we’re not sold on, though.

Historically Fanatec’s great strength against its mass market competitors is that its wheels and pedals look like they’ve been ripped straight out of a race car. This one doesn’t. The finish and materials are giving ‘Keep out mum, I’m gaming in here!’ vibes uncharacteristic of the Clubsport line it’s intended to join.

Beautiful 911 GT3 RS models lined the show floor like taco vans this year, and among them were other highlights such as a Porsche 963 (or at least a model of it), an aggressively modded Silvia laden in energy drink livery, and an Opel Manta 400 rally.

The true star of the show, however, was the little Dacia Logan that could, star of the Nurburgring 24h. It’s what motorsport’s all about, isn’t it?