Star Wars Galactic Racer is a strong podracing evolution and one of 2026's standout games

Star Wars Galactic Racer is an electrifying take on one of the best spin-offs in the franchise, but prepared to do some tinkering.

First things first, Star Wars Galactic Racer isn’t your typical racing game. The single-player campaign is actually a roguelite where you select your vehicle of choice and endeavour to become the galaxy’s champion.

You play as Shade, an ex-racer who’s pulled back into the sport by an old friend, who enlists your help in overthrowing the current Galactic League champion, Kestar Bool. While your rival’s skill behind the wheel is no mirage, he’s helped along by wealth, connections and a hunger to take over the sport entirely. It’s nothing to start a war over, but the stakes are still moderately high. Story-wise, the game is fine, but it's nothing to scream and shout about.

Star Wars Galactic Racer is a natural evolution of podracing

Star Wars Galactic Racer takes place after Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, so many, many years after the golden age of podracing.

When the Empire took control of the galaxy, podracing was banned and the sport pretty much dissolved, so the new Galactic League is done with land speeders, speeder bikes and skim speeders, which you can freely choose from at the start of every roguelite run.

I sampled all three and found that the skim speeder was my ride of choice. It excels at manoeuvrability, looks sweet when you customise it, and is the next best thing to an actual podracer.

The roguelite mechanics are interesting. There are generic races, elimination races, time trials, mystery encounters, a scrap dealer visit and a secret selection that gets unlocked later in the story.

I’m of two minds here because, on one hand, I think the roguelite stuff could have been pushed further, whereas on some runs a string of bad luck completely killed my desire to play another.

Every time you start a run you’re given a League Token, and in the event of losing that token, you’re booted back to the beginning. The way to lose a token is to crash five times in a race or lose an elimination match. Time trials thankfully don’t have any impact; you either pass them or you don’t.

This does make things interesting when you’re selecting your path. Participating in races and elimination matches yields the most rewards, but at the risk of being knocked out. Time trials are a sort of haven and sometimes a free pass into the next leg of the league.

Mystery encounters and the scrap vendors were by far my favourite part of the game, but they felt so rare on some runs. One mystery encounter brought me face-to-face with Kestar Bool, who used his connections to turn the majority of future races into elimination matches unless I bribed him. They always felt like a big deal, and I’d have liked to have more of these modifiers. It felt like the options were quite limited 70% of the time.

Secret Mode

The scrap dealers are also a lot of fun. They offer you a legendary speeder part for a steal, but there’s always a fault with it. You can only repair it when you progress to the next planet of the league, which could be one race or several away, so it felt like an exciting gamble to grab one early.

Throughout a run, you’ll get the choice of various stat upgrades, new parts, and speeder abilities.

Stat boosts are self-explanatory, as they let you put one, or sometimes two, points into one aspect of your ride, like resilience, cornering, afterburner, etc.

Speeder parts are the most important thing for a successful run, as this is how you construct your ‘build.’ I play this game like a prime Sebulba, ramming as many people off the track as possible and feeling no remorse for doing it. Fortunately, some parts actually reward that kind of bad behaviour, which I loved.

Speaking of Sebulba, he’s here too. After you’ve reached a certain point in the story, he’ll start popping up and reminiscing about podracing, with his memories becoming playable side-missions that’ll even earn you some amped up abilities.

There are a lot of options, so you can easily cater it to your playstyle, though keep in mind every run will differ so you may have to adapt your strategy a bit.

Abilities are also a good laugh, with options including flamethrowers, shields, self-repairs and more. It’s pretty easy to grab your favourite, though I’d implore developer Fuse Games to nerf the Auto Pilot. At the press of a button, it’ll take the wheel for you and perfectly zip-zoom through the course for a limited time. I’m not exaggerating when I say this thing is broken. It knew every shortcut, when to boost, and it’d even use other helpful abilities automatically.

The Burnout vibes are strong in Star Wars Galactic Racer

When I first played Star Wars Galactic Racer at Summer Game Fest earlier this year, you could easily tell this game was made by ex-Burnout devs.

The speed is immense and Fuse Games has done an excellent job of making races feel dangerous. Speeders are nimble, but very fragile, and each planet you race on would throw an additional hazard at you to make things even more challenging. Crait for example, would kick up dust that obscured your vision and cancelled any boosts, whereas Jakku’s intense heat would make it easier to push your machine to its melting point.

After rolling credits, I can safely say there was only one planet that I wasn’t a fan of, but the rest were both fun to play on and looked gorgeous. Racing across Tatooine as the two suns set was a sight to behold.

However, like my Summer Game Fest demo, I couldn’t live with the slow-mo crash-cam every time you KO’d another racer. For the first couple of runs, I enjoyed watching my opponents splatter up canyon walls, but when the normal flow of time resumed and the camera panned back, I’d almost always have no time to regain control before I crashed myself. Luckily, you can turn this feature off in the settings, even if it pained me to do so. It was a great idea, but the execution just didn’t work for me.

Secret Mode

Races in general were consistently fun though. I played on the Normal difficulty setting and rarely felt like I was stomping the competition. The AI was very competent and it didn’t feel like there was any rubber-banding involved if they managed to catch up to me.

My only gripe is the single-player really is dependent on your build. If you haphazardly slap a bunch of upgrades onto your ride that have no synergy, you’re going to struggle in the late-game. That might turn some players away if they’d rather participate in more traditional races.

Star Wars Galactic Racer’s Arcade mode is a podracing fan’s first stop

If the roguelite stuff isn’t your cup of tea, or you just want to relive the golden age of podracing, the Arcade mode is going to be for you.

This is ready and raring to go as soon as you boot up the game, thankfully, and includes a collection of races for all vehicle types where you compete for first place and the best time.

It’s definitely one of the strongest points of the game, and I love how Fuse Games understood the assignment when it came to podracing. It’s such an iconic part of the Star Wars mythos, and it’s treated with the utmost respect both here and in the campaign.

There’s no better example of this than the one, the only, Ben Quadinaros finally making his long-awaited return. Move aside, Sebulba; a real racer has entered the chat. (I shoved him into a boulder on Tatooine for a giggle).

Secret Mode

Like many, I definitely preferred being behind the wheel of a podracer than a speeder. They’re much faster and the races themselves felt more exciting, which is why it kills me that you can’t create and customise your own like you can with the speeders. Perhaps that’s being saved for a DLC?

Final thoughts

Star Wars Galactic Racer seriously impressed me. While the roguelite mechanics initially threw me for a loop when I first played the game earlier this year, after several hours with the game I can safely say they’ve earned their place in the genre. I’d be down to play more racers that adopt the idea.

That said, I know they won’t be for everyone, especially since it feels like we can’t move for roguelikes and soulikes nowadays. In Galactic Racer’s case, though, there’s at least the option to ignore it entirely for some more traditional arcade-y fun, and it’s going to make multiplayer a blast too.

It’s well worth picking up for any Star Wars fan, and I’m already hoping it’s followed up by a full-on podracing game with customisable rides.

Pros: The roguelite mechanics are very fun when the Force is with you, every speeder type is fun to play with and feels great on the track, every planet and its hazards keep things fresh, pays great respect to podracing and its legacy characters

Cons: The Burnout-cam felt more intrusive than spectacular, no customisable podracers

For fans of: Burnout, Forza, Gran Turismo

9/10: Exceptional

Star Wars Galactic Racer will be released on October 6 2026, for Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5 (version tested) and PC. A review code was provided by the publisher. Read a guide to our review scores here.