SimRacing Expo 2026 comes to Charlotte: A landmark moment for sim racing in America Published 1:18 pm Tuesday, May 26, 2026 | Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... | By Brandon Hyde Star Correspondent The 2026 SimRacing Expo in Charlotte marked one of the biggest milestones in the history of virtual motorsport. For the first time since the event began at Germany’s Nürburgring in 2014, the world’s premier sim racing exhibition crossed the Atlantic and landed in the United States. Hosted May 22-24 at the Charlotte Convention Center, the event transformed the heart of NASCAR country into the global capital of sim racing for an entire weekend. As an avid sim racer myself, I was excited to see all that it had to offer. What made the 2026 edition so important was not simply the size of the event, but what it represented for the future of the hobby and industry. Sim racing has exploded in popularity over the last decade thanks to platforms like iRacing, the rise of esports, affordable direct-drive hardware and increasing crossover with real-world motorsports. Bringing the expo to the United States acknowledged that North America is now one of the fastest-growing sim racing markets in the world. Why Charlotte was the perfect host Few cities could have been better suited for the inaugural American edition than Charlotte. The city is deeply tied to motorsports culture, serving as home to numerous NASCAR organizations and the nearby Charlotte Motor Speedway. The expo also coincided with Memorial Day weekend, what many consider the greatest race weekend of the year, creating a fusion between real-world racing and virtual competition that perfectly captured the spirit of modern motorsport. The venue itself connected sim racers with authentic racing culture. The convention center sits adjacent to the NASCAR Hall of Fame, reinforcing