Exactly One Month Until Vienna: What Is Confirmed for CTS 2026 Now – and What Is Still Missing!

The basic scope has now been established. With the 37 tram line you travel from Schottentor to Hohe Warte, while line 38 also continues from Schottentor to Grinzing. Added to this is the 35A bus line between Spittelau and Salmannsdorf. ViewApp explicitly describes all three as real lines, with their road layouts, stops and surroundings based on their real-world counterparts. Vienna will thus become the first real map in City Transport Simulator 2026.

One thing that is easily overlooked in discussions about the price is important to mention again: The new Vienna is not a recycled TramSim map. According to information from the development environment, practically nothing from the old TramSim Vienna was simply carried over. The buildings from back then were based on a different technical system and also no longer meet the quality standards ViewApp uses for CTS today. That is precisely why the new streets and buildings had to be recreated for today's game world.

The same applies to the vehicles. Anyone who reads the name ULF A and ULF B might initially assume that ViewApp simply brought out the corresponding old TramSim vehicles. That is not how the development works, however. According to our information, the already CTS-developed ULF A1 and B1 instead served as the technical and modeling basis. The ULF A and ULF B variants required for Vienna were then developed from them. This is further development within today's CTS vehicle system – not the adoption of the old TramSim models.

ViewApp itself at least confirms the decisive visible aspect: The Vienna vehicles were implemented to match their real-world counterparts and have corresponding driver's cabs, control functions and sounds. Alongside ULF A and B, the Citybus C2 Vienna is also part of the expansion. On the 35A, both a solo and an articulated variant can be driven.

The fact that existing vehicles at ViewApp are not simply released once and then left untouched has also been demonstrated in 2026. With the new weather functions, numerous vehicles were revised once again, followed by further corrections to models, controls and sounds. Update 26.2.0 also addresses E1, Tatra, ULF A1/B1, Flexity Vienna and other vehicles again. This is not unimportant for Vienna, because the new expansion is being released on a technical foundation that has visibly continued to develop over the past few months.

This now also includes things that were still missing at the original CTS 2026 launch. Since Update 26.2.0, express bus lines can be created, stops can be passed without a boarding or alighting request, custom announcements are possible on PC, and in Free Roam you can sit down as a passenger. Pedestrians and passengers have also been further revised. Vienna is therefore not simply appearing on the same game foundation as Tramau did months ago, but benefits from the updates released in the meantime.

And that brings us to what is actually still open.

The biggest point is simply the finished overall impression. Screenshots already show highly detailed streets and vehicles, but three complete real-world lines have to work along their entire length. How consistent will the quality remain away from the most striking locations? How believable will AI traffic and passengers feel during an entire shift? How smoothly will the timetable, traffic lights, stops, IBIS and the different vehicles work together? These are not missing feature details – they are things that only the finished expansion can demonstrate.

The second real point is the technical condition at release. ViewApp itself explicitly says that work is still continuing on performance and stability on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S . Certain environmental elements have already been optimized for this purpose with Update 26.2.0.

One should be fair here: Consoles have fixed hardware limits, and especially on weaker configurations, a large, detailed city with lots of AI traffic, passengers and dense development is a significantly tougher task than on a powerful PC. Not every performance problem can therefore simply be explained as “poorly optimized.” Conversely, it is of course still part of the finished product that the respective console version works reasonably within these hardware limits. This is precisely the point that will matter on October 13.

The third open point concerns less a technical function than the value for €49.99. Three real lines for almost €50 is a price at which players are entirely understandably going to look more closely. At the same time, it would be unfair to reduce the scope to “only three lines” while ignoring the development work behind it. According to information from the development environment, Vienna now contains nearly two years of work . More than 1,000 buildings, new streets, new vehicle variants and a complete real-world city environment do not come into existence by copying TramSim files into a new folder.

Of course, that does not mean anyone has to automatically consider €49.99 cheap. Development effort and personal value are two different things. If you can hardly do anything with the three lines, a long production period does not suddenly give you more enjoyment. Conversely, those who specifically want this kind of detailed real-world map must accept that such a project is significantly more expensive to produce than a fictional environment where not every house, intersection and road layout can be compared with a real-world counterpart.

By now, we know what Vienna is supposed to be. We know the three lines. We know the vehicles. We know about more than 1,000 buildings. We know that buses and trams are included together. And we know that the expansion will be released on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.

What we still cannot know is how well all these parts will ultimately work together.

That is precisely what the €49.99 price will be measured against. Not whether ViewApp pulls some spectacular fourth line out of a hat, but whether the three announced lines are implemented in such detail, with such technical quality and atmosphere, that you can actually recognize Vienna and enjoy traveling there again and again.

Anyone who is already certain can buy the Vienna Expansion now and activate the Steam key directly. It will nevertheless not be playable until October 13, 2026. The expansion normally costs €49.99. With our discount code SIMULATORENNEWS you get an additional 5% discount in the official CTS shop and pay around €47.49.

Vienna Expansion – 5% cheaper with SIMULATORENNEWS

If you do not yet own CTS 2026, you can get the base game and Vienna together in the Vienna Edition for €69.99; with our code, that comes to around €66.49.

CTS 2026 Vienna Edition – 5% discount with SIMULATORENNEWS

Alternatively, Vienna is included in the 2026 Season Pass for €64.99 . Our additional 5% discount also applies there.

CTS 2026 Season Pass – 5% discount with SIMULATORENNEWS

What does Vienna need to prove to you above all on October 13? Is a consistently detailed city more important to you than as many lines as possible? How do you assess the €49.99 if nearly two years of development and more than 1,000 newly built buildings are actually behind it? And which of the three lines do you want to ride first: 37, 38 or 35A?