Elite Dangerous: May Dev Log 2026

May 26, 2026

Greetings Commanders,

Welcome to May's Dev Log. In this month's post we'll be exploring a first look at one of the brand new Operations arriving on 30th June, taking you behind the scenes of an upcoming Stellar Lighting rework, and recapping a busy month in the community for charity events and long-distance travel!

Operations

Our next major update to Elite Dangerous is arriving for PC players on 30th June, and will introduce six multi-stage, variable challenge based scenarios offering a range of different ways to team up from anywhere in the galaxy! Additional Operations are planned for the future, as we continue to evolve this area of the game.

In case you missed it, we covered Operations in detail in last month's Dev Log, so we'd recommend taking a look!

But for this month, let's take you behind the scenes of one of the six brand new Operations you'll be able to jump into on launch day.

The footage below has been taken from a work-in-progress build and is not yet final.

Operation: Firestorm Rescue (previously named Burning Rescue)

Firestorm Rescue is one of our ship-based Operations, which will task you and your squad to evacuate trapped hostages from a nearby station. You'll need to work quickly as the temperatures climb to dangerous levels, and whilst there are ways to reduce the temperature build up, those responsible for this brazen attack are hardly planning to make your task a simple one...

We start in the Operation Runner, a brand new ship to Elite Dangerous which allows Commanders to take on an Operation regardless of their current docking station around the galaxy. A Squad Leader can share an invite, and each member will join a holding screen where your current loadout is shown. You can even pop an emote while you're waiting!

Each Operation is different, and offers two difficulty options depending on the level of challenge you're looking for. Operations themselves can be solely ship-based, entirely on-foot, or a mixture of the two.

Our first objective is a simple one: we'll need to travel from the Operation Runner to the nearby station which is under attack, Weitz Vision.

Upon arrival, you'll find that the station blast doors have been sealed, blocking your rescue team's path. The criminals responsible for the attack are also increasing the heat within the station, causing fires and putting lives at risk. Getting those blast doors open is of vital importance first. We have two options available to us, either we hack the doors open, or we loosen them up with a little firepower...

Once the doors are open, we need to clear the hostages out before the temperature gets too unbearable. We'll dock, dive into the inferno and scoop up our survivors.

Whilst some of the squad are focusing on evacuation, we need to do something about those rapidly climbing temperatures on-board. The attack has given the criminals responsible an opportunity to install external environmental jammers to the outside of the station and a number of incinerators around the inner dock. The hostages will perish without any intervention. Just as with the entry doors, we'll need to regain control of the situation by destroying the environmental jammers, or by hacking the incinerators to temporarily reduce the raising heat.

Passengers onboard, we need to shuttle these back to the nearby rescue megaship before we fall foul of enemy fire. Firestorm Rescue is all about speed and efficiency, eliminating hostiles whilst extracting survivors in a race against the ever increasing temperatures. Ignore one area and you'll be at risk of mission failure, and you won't receive any of the associated rewards.

Space combat has its perils... However if your ship is destroyed or you meet an untimely end, you'll return to the Operations Runner, ready to immediately redeploy.

With the last of the hostages aboard the Rescue Megaship, our Operation has been a success and we can claim our rewards, which can include Credits, Materials, Merits (if playing in Powerplay Mode) and Merc Coin, the new earnable currency introduced alongside this update.

Note: The numbers shown on the screenshot above are a work in progress and not final.

This is just a first look at one of our Operations, it's a short overview, but we can't wait for you to discover some of the showstopping moments that Operations will create!

Stellar Lighting

Alongside the full changelog for the Operations update, the team have also been working behind the scenes on some changes to Stellar Lighting and the Galactic Background. These influence the entire look of Elite Dangerous, particularly the visual lighting our different classifications of star, and how the galaxy is seen in the star map. To find out more, here's Art Director Chris Gregory to give you a deeper look at these changes.

Chris Gregory, Art Director:

"We’ve been wanting to adjust the Stellar Lighting in the game for a while, and we know our players have been asking for this area of Elite Dangerous for some time. We're excited to share a first look at these changes with you, which are planned for release as part of the Operations update on June 30.

Before:

After:

Elite Dangerous originally shipped with quite intense colourations, but when we were looking at introducing on foot game play with the release of Odyssey we looked to soften these. Finding the right balance can be tricky!

We know that some players miss the more dramatic tones of the original grade and we see can why, it gave the game's visuals more variety and gave more geography to the galaxy. A system with a red star felt very different to one with a blue star, and we wanted to make sure we recaptured that. In revisiting the stellar lighting, our brief was to bring some of that variety and geography back while balancing the coloration with the need of on foot gameplay.

Before:

After:

As you can imagine, this was quite the task as with a game as mechanically complex under the hood as Elite Dangerous is. It also affects virtually every planet and backdrop across the entire galaxy, so even a small change to any element needs to be tested and checked extensively.

Before:

After:

Alongside refreshing the stellar lighting we wanted make some improvements to the galactic background. As Elite's play space is a realistic model of the galaxy, the stars and space background are generated based on the player's location in the galaxy. You see differences in the background depending on your position in the galaxy. The stars will change but you also see changes in the stellar dust clouds and it is these clouds we wanted to revisit. Using real world reference images we rebalanced the cloud to have more tonal variation and contrast. The result is a more accurate and we think more striking look for this key element of the game.

Before:

After:

We're looking forward to players making their first journeys to some of their favourite spots around the galaxy after these changes, and seeing how some of those galactic vistas change!"

Stellar Screenshots

Every week Commanders across the Milky Way can showcase their creative skills with the #StellarScreenshots competition. Our favourite 10 entries each week receive one of 3 exclusive Asp Explorer Shatter paint jobs! Commanders can enter by sending a screenshot to either the Stellar Screenshots forum thread, sharing it on X with the hashtag #StellarScreenshots or posting in the Stellar Screenshots channel of the Frontier Unlocked Discord.

We've picked 6 entries from the amazing screenshots we've received over the past month, but be sure to check out our social channels to see all the other amazing entries!

If you would like to learn more about the Stellar Screenshots check out our forum thread.

Influencer Spotlight

Operation Warbucks

This month saw the Elite Dangerous community and a number of our Elite Partner Program join forces for Operations Warbucks, organised by the fantastic CMDR Orange Phoenix, which saw 36 Twitch streamers raising over $16,000 for a selection of Cancer Charities around the globe. This year they supported The American Cancer Society (USA), St Columba's Hospice Care (UK), the Cancer Council (Australia), Rak'n'Roll (Poland), Blood Cancer NZ (New Zealand) and the Terry Fox Foundation (Canada). o7 to all the Commanders involved!

Other News

Distant Worlds

The Distant Worlds journey has concluded after exploring some of the galaxy's most remote regions! A huge congratulations to all the Commanders involved on this incredible journey.

Galnet Recap

It's been a busy month of Galactic news.

14 May 3312 - Civilians evacuated safely as criminal attacks defeated
- Security forces and independent combat pilots successfully protected rescue efforts after the recent attacks in Lhou Mans.
11 May 3312 - Criminal factions remain silent after Lhou Mans attacks
- Questions remain unanswered following last week’s unprovoked attacks on starport facilities across Lhou Mans.
7 May 3312 - Dodec Station enters full production availability
- Brewer Corporation has confirmed that the Dodec Station has entered full production.
28 April 3312 - Zorgon Peterson presents Lynx Highliner
- Zorgon Peterson has announced the release of the Lynx Highliner, a new medium ship engineered for maximum passenger capacity.