Sim racing may finally have broken its glass ceiling; or rather, the plasterboard ceiling of the basements that used to house every car nerd's Logitech wheel-and-pedals setup. If the rest of the family once found the hobby slightly embarrassing, those days appear to be ending.
The proof: thousands of car enthusiasts, motorsports fanatics, and sim techies of all ages and backgrounds gathered in Charlotte, NC this past weekend for the first-ever US-based SimRacing Expo. The expo—inaugurated at the infamous Nürburgring racetrack in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, in 2014—has traced the meteoric rise of the sim racing industry.
The 2026 SimRacing Expo hosted dozens of vendors from the hardware and software sides of the hobby: Fanatec, Thrustmaster, iRacing, NASCAR, Red Bull. Even the auto racing equipment manufacturer Sabelt showed up in full force.
While industry leaders spoke on the ever-growing market and unstoppable advance of haptic-feedback technology, kids drove their favorite cars on sim setups, the fanciest of which cost more than a down payment on a house.
Simulation racing takes motorsports video games ranging from the arcadey Forza Horizon to the hyperrealistic iRa...
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