City Transport Simulator 2026 Review: A Promising Sim Held Back by Its Own Bugs

Two simulators in one fictional city

City Transport Simulator 2026 is developer ViewApp's newest entry in its ongoing CTS franchise, combining a bus simulator and a tram simulator into a single $39.99 package built on Unreal Engine 5. Set in a fictional, European-inspired city, players drive detailed buses and trams, manage timetables and routes, and build out a public transport network, now with dynamic weather and seasonal changes layered on top of the driving and management loop that longtime CTS players will recognize. Notably, the game is offered free to owners of the previous entry, City Transport Simulator 2025, with existing DLC carrying forward at no extra cost.

A driving feel that earns real respect

Reviewers who stick with City Transport Simulator 2026 consistently praise its core moment-to-moment driving. Several longtime fans of the genre's long-running gold standard, OMSI 2, say the force-feedback wheel support and overall driving feel come impressively close to that benchmark when everything is working correctly, and the bus and tram models themselves are widely described as detailed and well animated. The addition of dynamic weather and seasonal city transformations earns genuine praise too, adding atmosphere that reviewers say makes routes feel less repetitive over a long play session, and the ticketing system and small NPC driver interactions add a layer of roleplay depth several reviewers specifically call out as a highlight.

Performance problems that show up constantly

The single most common complaint in the review base, by a wide margin and across nearly every language represented, is performance. Reviewers report frame rates dropping into the single digits during ordinary play, with one German-language reviewer describing repeated crashes down to 5 FPS, and an English-language reviewer stating flatly that the game "can't get more than 31 FPS no matter what, playing on a high end gaming PC." These aren't isolated reports, they recur across German, English, Russian, Polish, and Brazilian Portuguese reviews alike, suggesting a broad, unresolved optimization problem rather than a handful of unusual hardware configurations.

Steering wheel and controller support that keeps breaking

A close second in frequency is the game's handling of racing wheels and controllers, which matters enormously for a driving simulator's core audience. Multiple reviewers report that force-feedback and steering settings reset after game updates, that specific wheelbases like the Logitech G923, Fanatec CSL DD, and Moza R21 aren't recognized correctly, and that gamepad support in particular feels unfinished. One reviewer summed up a common sentiment bluntly: "No one can build a simulator anymore with controls that work."

Traffic AI and bugs that break immersion

Beyond performance and input issues, reviewers describe a long list of smaller but persistent bugs: traffic lights placed or timed in ways that cause AI cars to drive directly into player-controlled trams, tram switches defaulting to the wrong direction and requiring the player to get out and manually correct them, doors that won't close properly, and at least one detailed report of a cloud-save bug that reset roughly 40 hours of progress and a level-47 tram back down to level one. Several reviewers frame these less as dealbreakers and more as evidence the game launched before it was fully ready.

A pricing structure that frustrates even fans

A separate, recurring thread of criticism concerns monetization. While the free upgrade for previous CTS owners is broadly appreciated, several reviewers, including some who genuinely like the core game, describe the DLC and season pass pricing as excessive, with one noting the season pass alone runs over $80 in their region against a $39.99 base game. Reviewers new to the franchise in particular say the base roster of vehicles feels thin without additional paid content, and the lack of any modding support, unlike community-modded competitors such as OMSI 2, compounds the sense that players are expected to pay repeatedly for content the community might otherwise provide for free.

Should existing CTS owners upgrade right now?

For players who already own City Transport Simulator 2025, the calculus here is unusually simple: the upgrade is free, and existing DLC carries forward without any additional cost. Even reviewers frustrated with 2026's bugs generally agree there's little reason not to install it, since the worst case is simply reverting to the previous version while waiting for fixes. Some reviewers do note the practical downside that the new engine and feature set change enough under the hood that old save data and some vehicle behaviors don't transfer cleanly, and a handful describe the jump as feeling more like a large, still-rough patch to CTS 2025 than a fully new game. That framing matters for expectations: buyers hoping for a dramatically different game from the previous year's entry may be underwhelmed by how much carries over unchanged.

What new buyers should know before paying full price

For players with no history with the franchise, the decision looks different. At $39.99 for a base package that several reviewers describe as light on included vehicles and map variety, with a season pass and additional vehicle DLC priced on top, new buyers are effectively being asked to invest in an ecosystem before knowing whether the frequent performance and input problems will affect their specific setup. Reviewers who came in fresh, without the sunk cost of previous CTS purchases, were noticeably more willing to simply refund and walk away than longtime fans who felt invested in seeing the franchise improve. Waiting for a stability patch, or picking the game up during a deep sale once the performance issues are better understood, is a reasonable way to hedge against that risk.

Verdict: real promise, undercut by real problems

City Transport Simulator 2026 has a genuinely satisfying core driving loop and clear ambition, and the free upgrade path for existing owners is a good-faith gesture that's earned it real goodwill. But the sheer volume and consistency of performance, input, and bug reports across its review base, spanning nearly every language and platform combination, make it hard to recommend without real reservations right now. Existing CTS owners have little to lose by claiming the free upgrade, but new buyers considering the full $39.99 price should wait for a patch cycle or two before committing.