Star Wars: Galactic Contention Relaunches This Month With Unreal Engine 5

Star Wars: Galactic Contention is coming back this month, and the fan-made Clone Wars shooter mod looks far more ambitious than it has any right to.

The popular Squad total conversion is set to relaunch with Version 9.0 on July 31, 2026, bringing the project into Unreal Engine 5 with upgraded visuals, new changes, maps, and more details still to come. The Steam Workshop page currently lists the mod as “COMING JULY 31ST 2026” and describes it as a total conversion for Squad set during the Clone Wars.

A new reveal trailer also shows the mod’s Unreal Engine 5 upgrade in action, with clone troopers, battle droids, vehicles, blaster fire, and large-scale battlefield chaos looking sharper than ever.

A Clone Wars Battlefield Built by Fans

For anyone new to it, Galactic Contention is not an official Star Wars game.

It is a fan-made total conversion mod for Squad, the tactical military shooter built around communication, teamwork, objectives, vehicles, and large maps.

Now imagine that structure rebuilt around the Clone Wars.

Clone troopers. Separatist battle droids. Walkers. Gunships. Blaster fire. Battlefield coordination. The kind of big Star Wars war fantasy that official games have not fully returned to in years.

That is the appeal.

It is not trying to be a Jedi power fantasy. It is trying to make you feel like one soldier in a much larger war.

Why Unreal Engine 5 Matters

The move to Unreal Engine 5 gives Galactic Contention a much bigger visual punch.

The trailer shows improved lighting, atmosphere, and scale, making the mod feel closer to the kind of modern Star Wars battlefield experience many players have wanted since the height of Battlefront. It is still a mod, so expectations should stay realistic. Big community projects can be messy, and major relaunches can always have rough edges.

But as a statement of intent, this is hard to ignore.

Especially because Star Wars gaming has always been at its best when it spreads across different genres. RPGs, shooters, strategy games, racers, MMOs, LEGO games, arcade cabinets, and strange experiments all have a place in the galaxy. Our complete list of every Star Wars game ever made makes that pretty obvious.

Galactic Contention fits right into that tradition, even if it is fan-made.

Battlefront Fans Should Pay Attention

The obvious comparison is Battlefront, but Galactic Contention is chasing a different feeling.

Where Battlefront is usually more cinematic and accessible, Squad is slower, more tactical, and more dependent on team play. That makes Galactic Contention feel less like a theme-park battle and more like a chaotic military operation with clone armor.

That is probably why the mod has built such a dedicated following.

Star Wars fans still want large-scale battles. They still want infantry, vehicles, objectives, and the feeling that the war is bigger than one hero character. We recently looked back at how Battlefront’s Offline Skirmish mode gave solo players something they had been asking for, and the appetite is similar here.

Players want more ways to step inside Star Wars battles.

Not just watch them.

A Big Month for the Mod Scene

Star Wars: Galactic Contention Version 9.0 is currently targeting July 31, 2026, with more patch details expected before launch.

It is not an official Lucasfilm Games release. It is not a polished boxed product. It is still a fan-made mod built on top of Squad.

But that is part of what makes it interesting.

Sometimes the most exciting Star Wars gaming news is not the heavily marketed thing with three editions and a cinematic trailer.

Sometimes it is a group of fans dragging the Clone Wars into Unreal Engine 5 because nobody else is doing quite this version of the fantasy.