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Test Drive Unlimited Solar CrownEventsSolar Club Letter: September 2026
Community

Solar Club Letter: September 2026

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown · published 1 Sep 2026, 20:01 UTC

All eventsPlayers around this dateRead on Steam

Season 7 arrives tomorrow, and with the Nacon Racing News From the Pits showcase that happened on August 21st, you should have all the details, but if you don’t we’ll recap everything in this letter!

See the Patch Notes below!

You can also choose to watch the showcase provided with the link below!

Now, let’s get started!

What’s In the Letter?

  • Season 7 Information

    • Car List

    • Enhanced Live Tab

      • Daily Challenges

      • Live Events

      • Weekly Challenges

    • Spoiler Removal

    • Hypercar Tire Model

    • Solar Pass

    • Online Store

    • World Enhancements

    • New Tasks

    • Known Issues & Fixes

  • Season 7 Mid-Season Update

    • New Camera

    • 8 Player Groups

    • Rim Size Options

    • New Gamemode/Collaboration

    • Addition Bug Fixes

    • October Solar Club Letter

  • Houses

  • Community Spotlight

    • Winners

    • September Theme

⏭️ Season 7 Information

Let’s discuss everything arriving on day one of Season 7!

Maintenance Confirmation: We will be starting the server maintenance at 7:00am CET and the maintenance will last up to 8:00pm CET. We will keep you updated on our progress during the day so stay tuned to our socials!

Car List

Based on community feedback, we are bringing some well known JDM vehicles to Season 7. Both the dealership vehicles and the Solar Pass are key to such culture, and the mid-season one which will be revealed in the next Solar Club Letter takes that even further! Below are all the vehicles you can find day one of Season 7:

  • Dealership - Mazda ɛ̃fini RX-7 Type R

  • Solar Pass Level 1 - Nissan 370z Nismo Phase 1

  • Solar Pass Level 15 - Nissan GT-R R34 Skyline V-Spec II

  • Solar Pass Level 50 - Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IV

  • Online Store Bundle 1 - BMW M4 GT3 EVO

  • Online Store Bundle 2 - Cox Baja Vacaciones

  • Online Store Bundle 3 (S7P1) - JDM Vehicle (TBA in October Solar Club Letter)

Enhanced Live Tab

This is one of the biggest changes to TDUSC in terms of progression, and it doesn’t make it worse, it makes it vastly better.

When you open the game, you can see something called the ‘Live Tab’. Here, you’ll be able to find daily challenges, weekly challenges, and live events. This whole system brings a new way to play TDUSC, and rather than constantly grind the same race to progress, you have a much wider array of ways to play and level up in TDUSC just as fast, if not faster than how you could before. This system also helps remove the progression ‘dryness’ players can experience in the mid-levels of the game so now, no matter if you just started playing, if you’re level ~40, or even at the end-game position, this massive overhaul will improve how you play the game, and your perception of progression.

IMPORTANT NOTE: We of course do various testing to see how the progression can play out, but we are also closely watching the communities feedback to this new system so if anything does need to be further improved based on player feedback, we will look into it for the mid-season update and Season 8!

Daily Challenges

When you open the game, you’ll now find new daily challenges which are categorised based on theme. The good news is, if you don’t like that challenge, you have the ability to reroll this (only once), and in doing so, you can choose between 3 other possible daily challenges for each theme.

This helps keep things refreshing, and also allows players to really play the way they want! We hope you enjoy this system!

Live Events

This is a big one. One thing we’ve seen requested a lot from players is the ability for live events to have more than just races. Well, that changes now! Live Events can now feature taxi missions, delivery missions, detective missions, navigation races, domination races, and more! Essentially, this means you have more fresh content to enjoy over the course of a season.

With this new system, some live events will last more than a week, and some will actually overlap others meaning sometimes you can expect to have more than one live event at a time! We also have some exciting rewards from a McLaren livery, to more BMW x PUMA clothing!

Weekly Challenges

Also getting a massive change, is this! Weekly Challenges is where you can level up your Solar Pass with much more variety in progression rather than repeating races.

Each week, you’ll be able to complete new challenges which greatly increase your Solar Pass level. We reduced the Solar Pass XP earned outside of these challenges (regular events, and Solar Pass XP only, no Solar Coin or Reputation deduction was made). We are going to look at your feedback on social media regarding this, and if needed, we’ll be increasing it in the next update, but we expect with this new system in place, players should find it’s much easier and refreshing to progress through the Solar Pass this time.

Spoiler Removal

We’ve worked on spoilers so that players can remove them on some cars in the workshop! There are many cars which have this feature, and we’ll list these below:

  • Lotus Exige 380 S Cup

  • Nissan GT-R R34 Skyline V-Spec II

  • Nissan GT-R R35

  • Mazda ɛ̃fini RX-7 Type R

  • Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IV

  • Audi TT RS

Hypercar Tire Model

To improve how hypercars feel, we improved the tire model for them. You can notice a vast difference when racing these cars at high speeds as they will have a lot more grip and will not feel much more arcadey. It is an effort for us to improve the realism of TDUSC, and it will not be the last time we revisit how cars feel and drive in the world!

Solar Pass

Just like the car list theme for Season 7, we are going for a JDM themed Solar Pass too! You can find many items which are associated with Japanese culture, whether that be clothing, vehicle parts, stickers, customisation, etc.

You can find some screenshots of what to expect in this Season’s Solar Pass below, but you can also see the full showcase of it in the recent News From the Pits showcase which we linked earlier.

Online Store

In Season 7, we’ll also be making some changes to the Online Store. One of the most important and highly requested ones is the ability to purchase vehicles as standalone from the bundles. We can confirm that day one of Season 7, you’ll have the ability to purchase all items within a bundle individually.

Next, we’re removing the concept of FOMO from the store. First, we are removing the FOMO from the exclusive items in the Online Store excluding Solar Pass items (which will remain unavailable to players who didn't get the pass during the next season (eg. S5 Solar Pass items available in S7 Store)). Now, the previous exclusive items and bundles of the last seasons from the online store will permanently be available to all players. If new items arrive, they will be added in a cosmetic bundle (without a car) with a theme. You’ll see 3 of these in the mid-season update for Season 7.

The ‘Featured Items’ section will now only feature items on promotion. We think having FOMO on these items and bundles was a bad idea; so players can now find them in the permanent store or on discount in this dedicated section.

We will also be changing the pricing of items within the Online Store. Bundle pricing, the pricing of the Solar Pass, and how Diamond Gifting works, will all be changed. The new pricing for both are shown below:

  • Solar Pass - previously 600 Diamonds; now 1000 Diamonds

    • Price of level skips and Solar Pass VIP will not change

    • To help mitigate this change, we are giving more diamond gifts through the gifting system, which we’ll explain later

  • Bundles - an overall reduction of ~300 Diamonds for future Bundles

    • The new online store bundles can be purchased for 800 (PUMA x BMW) and 700 (Cox Baja Vacation) Diamonds respectively.

  • Diamond Gifts - We now have the ability to dynamically change the amount of HC and its frequency throughout the season. This allows us to celebrate special events by temporarily increasing the amount of HC in the Gift. Rest assured, everyone will be notified of these changes in advance to give you plenty of time to log in and collect them!

World Enhancements

Since the game launched, we’ve been working on improving the world through small things like adding more billboards and signs, to large things like improving actual areas found around Hong Kong Island so they fit their real life location better.

In Season 7, we aren’t stopping, and we’ve done many things to help improve this! Below are some of the many improvements done in the world to enhance the realism and immersion given:

  • Physical Speed Cameras

  • Pit Lane + Solar Arena (formerly ORC)

  • Updated Construction Sites

And many more improvements around HKI with updated buildings around the Northern area!

New Tasks

We have added new tasks for Car Delivery, Taxi Mission, and Detective Events! We also added more questions for Taxi Missions!

Known Issues & Fixes

As usual, we’d like to discuss some upcoming known issues as well as fixes for day one of Season 7. We don’t want to make excuses on the polish of this season’s release, however with short staffing leading up to the release of Season 7, there are some issues you should be aware of, which are planned to be fixed in the next update.

To explain, unfortunately during the build of Season 7 we encountered some issues which will affect some races in the normal progression of the game. We apologise for any inconvenience.

You can see the known issues below:

  • 6 Detective Missions are not able to be completed:

    • Adrian Lau

    • Morgan Vale

    • Stuart Wintory

    • Mila Rodriguez

    • Chiara Santini

    • Xiang Zheng

  • 2 Crown Jewels cannot be completed: 

    • Nacre

    • Saphirre

  • 1 race on Ibiza cannot be completed:

    • Highway to Heaven

  • RX-7 sound is bugged when autoclutch is off

    • You might remember a bug we fixed a while back for all vehicles where an engine load sound is applied if the revs do not fall under a certain RPM. This issue was found on the RX7, but we realise the issue isn’t with FMOD, but with the game's physics code itself. We are working on fixing this for the next update, however no other vehicles will have this issue

  • RX-7 Customizations have no localization

    • RX-7 options will have a ‘Need Loca’ naming on them

Some fixes you can expect to see in the update (S7 Day One) are:

  • Added motion blur disable for consoles

  • Fixed infinite loading screen when entering or exiting any social hub after accessing the News tab

  • Added option to disabled chromatic aberration and grain

  • Improved AI paths during various missions

  • Added new questions during Taxi missions

  • Standardization of Ibiza and HKI workshops preview scene

  • Fixed Taxi Contract Louis Montrose starts in opposite direction causing possible mission failure immediately

  • Improved some tree LOD meshes

  • Fixed Tour De Force race checkpoint which made players constantly respawn

  • Fixed fences at Hippodrome race track is not solid

  • Fixed secondary task race marker is missing and race cannot be started for multiple task objectives

  • Fixed visible terrain seam lines present in Shek O district during free roam

  • Fixed a road in Ibiza that has dirt texture and dynamics in multiple locations (where it should be asphalt)

  • Fix GI ray generation not being randomized per-frame when time is paused

  • Reworked LOD’s for various objects, props around HKI and Ibiza

  • Fixed Ferrari F430 16M and Lamborghini Miura SV missing sound from other players in freeroam

  • Fixed passenger legs in Lamborghini Temerario

  • Fixed other players cosmetic parts having LOD and/or visibility issues

  • Fixed 2 paint colours create 'orange peel' effect on the Delorean Alpha5

  • Fixed occurrences of bad render for other players' car's doors in free roam

  • & much more!

Don’t forget, full Patch Notes will arrive tomorrow at around 10am CEST!

⏭️ Season 7 Mid-Season Update

The mid-season update for Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown will arrive on October 28th, and the team is hard at working fixing existing issues while bringing some massive improvements to the game! Let’s discuss what has been confirmed so far!

New Camera

One thing we wanted to work on is a new camera for players. Don’t worry though, you’ll be able to swap between the new camera and the legacy one via the settings menu. The goal of the new camera is to make the camera tighter, give a more realistic look and FOV while keeping the sense of speed.

In the future, we’ll be working on improvements for the cockpit camera, as well as giving players the possibility to customise the cameras with more tuning!

8 Player Groups

HUGE! Players will now be able to create 8 player groups, meaning those cruises, those ranked races, those clan races, and much more are going to create some beautiful moments! We can’t wait to see what stuff the community does with this improvement!

Rim Size Options

You’ll finally be able to adjust your rim sizes for your vehicles in both the dealership and workshop! We showcased some work in progress gameplay of this in the showcase, but you can see the image of this system below!

New Gamemode/Collaboration

We have been hard at work implementing a new gamemode which will make its first appearance in the form of a collaboration with a licensed brand! This will be a dedicated live event, but don’t worry, we are working to make sure you can see this gamemode outside of the live event/collaboration space too!

We cannot say much more yet, as our communication about it must be approved before it goes live (hence the next letter will arrive early in the month as opposed to late). We are super excited for you to learn more about this, and we think the TDU community, and the racing game community as a whole will be surprised to see this collaboration take effect in TDUSC!

Addition Bug Fixes

We are working on many bug fixes for this update, especially ones that pertain to vehicles. Of course, our team size is not what it used to be, so tackling a lot of bugs won’t be quick as it was before, but we are working hard! Below are some fixes are currently working on which will be fixed for the mid-season update:

  • Shift animations for all vehicles are being revisited

  • Ability to customise vehicle with appearances on

  • Rim size issues for many vehicles

  • Vehicle model improvements

  • Sound improvements

  • Network performance

  • & more!

October Solar Club Letter

The October Solar Club Letter will arrive within the first two weeks of October. In this letter you’ll learn about the mid-season update in full detail as well as the reveal of the mid-season vehicle, the new gamemode and collaboration and other big community requested QoL features!

We can’t wait for you to see what’s in store for you in the coming weeks leading to this update, so stay tuned!

🏘️ Houses

We revealed a lot about houses and we recommend for all of this information, you take a look at the Nacon Racing News From the Pits Summer 2026 showcase to learn about it in much further detail as we will only do a quick recap of it here. You can again find this showcase linked below.

Houses are an important part of the TDU DNA, which is why the team at KT went all the way with it! Below are just some of the many things that will be possible:

  • Driveways

  • Exterior Customisation

  • Interior Customisation

  • Garage Customisation

  • Real Estate Agencies

  • Smart Home Panel

  • Player Interactivity

  • Furnishing Stores

  • & much more!

We can’t wait to give you a full finished gameplay look of this update! We mentioned in the showcase the next details on this update will arrive before Spring 2027. Stay tuned and keep up with the monthly Solar Club Letters to learn more! Don’t forget to check out the showcase for more thorough details on what houses will have!

🖼️ Community Spotlight

Yup! It’s time to announce the winners for the month of August! We will be selecting 3 players from the showcase!

Congrats again to the winners! You all win 400 Diamonds!

September Theme

JDM Legends - Share a picture of your character with JDM attire and/or your JDM vehicle for a chance to win!

To participate, post a photo with the %communityspotlight8 in the message following the rules of the theme! Good luck!

❤️ Final Message

We hope you enjoy this new season! We would like to apologise for the speed of the development of upcoming fixes, features, and updates, but we assure you that the team is working hard on the future of TDUSC, and despite the delay of the Official Racing Center (now called Solar Arena), we are excited for you to try the new live enhancements which should bring a massive improvement to the replayability of the game and share the cool stuff arriving in the mid-season update too! 

The next Solar Club Letter arriving within the first 2 weeks of October will showcase everything coming in the mid-season update which include some big QoL improvements the community has been waiting for!

See you again soon!

  • The TDU Team

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