War Thunder Stuck on Loading Screen? Here’s How to Fix It (2026)

If War Thunder freezes on the loading screen, hangs in the hangar, or refuses to finish loading a battle, it’s almost always one of three things: a corrupted local cache, an outdated or conflicting GPU driver, or a connection issue on Gaijin’s side. The hangar cache corruption fix below solves it for most players, so start there before you reinstall anything.

As of 2026, War Thunder runs on the Dagor Engine 6.x and ships a DX11, DX12, and Vulkan renderer on PC, plus native builds on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. The loading freeze shows up differently depending on platform, and the real fixes differ from the boilerplate “restart your PC” advice you’ll see elsewhere.

What Actually Causes the Freeze

Before you start deleting files, it helps to know what you’re fighting. War Thunder’s loading process pulls from four sources at once: your local cache in the game folder, Gaijin’s CDN for patch data, your GPU’s shader cache, and the matchmaking server for the battle itself. A freeze means one of those four stalled.

The most common culprit is the cache folder inside your War Thunder install directory — specifically the binaries and hangar_snapshot subfolders. When an update is interrupted or a patch download corrupts, the launcher thinks the files are fine but the client can’t parse them. You get a loading bar that stops at 60%, 90%, or never starts at all.

The second most common cause is the Vulkan renderer fighting with newer Nvidia and AMD drivers. Gaijin added Vulkan as the default on most PCs in late 2024, and it introduced a known issue with shader compilation on older GPUs where the game hangs for 5 to 20 minutes on the first load after a driver update.

The third is server-side. Check the official Gaijin status page at status.gaijin.net before doing anything else — if matchmaking or login services are down, no amount of local tinkering will fix it.

Fix 1: Clear the War Thunder Cache Folder (Solves It for Most Players)

This is the fix that works. Not a launcher-level “verify” — an actual manual cache clear.

Close War Thunder completely (check Task Manager for any aces.exe or launcher.exe processes and end them). Then navigate to your War Thunder install folder. On Steam the default is:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\War Thunder

On the standalone Gaijin launcher the default is:

C:\Users\[YourName]\AppData\Local\WarThunder or C:\Games\WarThunder

Inside the install folder, open the cache directory and delete everything in it. You will not lose your progress, settings, or controls — all of that is tied to your Gaijin account and stored server-side. The cache folder only holds the transient files the client builds at runtime.

Relaunch the game. The first load after a cache wipe takes 3 to 8 minutes longer than normal because the client rebuilds the hangar snapshot, weapon texture atlas, and vehicle preview thumbnails from scratch. Let it finish. If the freeze is gone after this, you’re done.

Fix 2: Delete the Hangar Snapshot

If Fix 1 didn’t work but the game still gets past the login screen and then freezes with a blank or partially-loaded hangar, the hangar snapshot file is corrupted.

In the War Thunder install folder, delete the file hangar_snapshot.bin (or the entire hangar_snapshot folder, depending on your client version). This file caches the 3D hangar background and the vehicles parked in it. When it corrupts, the client tries to load it, fails silently, and sits on the loading screen forever.

Relaunch the game. The hangar will take about 30 seconds longer to appear than usual on the next launch while it’s rebuilt. After that, load times return to normal.

Fix 3: Force DX11 Mode to Bypass Vulkan Shader Issues

If you have a GPU older than the Nvidia RTX 20-series or AMD RX 5000-series, the default Vulkan renderer is probably the problem. Switch back to DX11.

Open the Gaijin launcher. Click the gear icon next to the Play button. In the dropdown, change the graphics API from “Auto” or “Vulkan” to “DirectX 11.” Save and relaunch. DX11 has a slightly lower max frame rate on high-end cards but is dramatically more stable on mid-range and older GPUs, and it skips the Vulkan shader pre-compile step that causes the long freeze.

You can also edit this manually. Open config.blk in the War Thunder install folder with Notepad and find the line graphics{driver:t="dx11"}. If it says vulkan or auto, change it to dx11 and save.

Fix 4: Update Your GPU Driver (The Right Way)

“Update your driver” is the universal tech-support suggestion, but it matters more for War Thunder than for most games because Gaijin’s engine stresses the shader pipeline hard during the initial hangar load.

For Nvidia GPUs, do not use Windows Update. Download the latest Game Ready Driver directly from nvidia.com/drivers. As of April 2026, the current Game Ready Driver series is 560.xx. During install, choose “Custom Install” and check “Perform a clean installation” — this removes the old shader cache, which is often where War Thunder’s loading freeze originates.

For AMD GPUs, grab the latest Adrenalin driver from amd.com/support. AMD users should also open Adrenalin, go to Performance → Tuning, and set the Shader Cache option to “AMD Optimized.” Some players report the “Off” setting causes War Thunder to rebuild the entire shader cache on every launch, which looks exactly like a loading screen hang.

For Intel Arc GPUs, use Intel Arc Control from intel.com/arc. Arc driver updates in 2025 specifically resolved several Vulkan crashes in War Thunder.

After the driver install, reboot (not just a sign-out — a full restart).

Fix 5: Verify Integrity Through the Launcher, Not Steam

There’s a distinction here that trips people up. If you launch War Thunder through Steam, Steam’s “Verify integrity of game files” only checks the base Steam files — it does not validate the patches and updates that Gaijin’s own launcher downloads in the background.

The correct way:

Open the Gaijin launcher (even if you play on Steam, the launcher still runs).
Click the gear icon.
Select “Check files for errors.”
Let it run — this can take 10 to 45 minutes on the full 100+ GB install.
The launcher will re-download any corrupted chunks.

If you don’t see the “Check files for errors” option, close the launcher, right-click the War Thunder desktop shortcut, choose Run as Administrator, and try again.

Fix 6: Fix Antivirus and Windows Defender Interference

War Thunder’s anti-cheat component (EasyAntiCheat on console, Gaijin’s BattleEye-equivalent on PC) triggers false positives in several antivirus programs. Avast, AVG, and Malwarebytes have all been flagged by the community in the past 12 months as blocking War Thunder’s startup reads.

Open Windows Security → Virus & threat protection → Manage settings → Add or remove exclusions. Add the entire War Thunder install folder as an exclusion. If you use a third-party antivirus, add the same folder plus the launcher.exe and aces.exe processes to its exclusion list.

Fix 7: Console-Specific Fixes (PS4, PS5, Xbox)

PlayStation 5: Go to Settings → Storage → Games and Apps → War Thunder → Delete. Reinstall from the library. Do not do a partial delete (saved data stays in the cloud). A full reinstall resolves almost all PS5 hangar freeze reports.

PlayStation 4: Same process, but also rebuild the PS4 database. Hold the power button until two beeps, boot into Safe Mode, and choose Option 5: “Rebuild Database.” This fixes cross-game file system issues that present as War Thunder loading hangs.

Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One: Perform a full console power cycle. Hold the power button on the console (not the controller) for 10 seconds until it shuts off completely. Unplug the power cable, wait 60 seconds, plug it back in. This clears the Xbox’s persistent cache, which is a known source of War Thunder hangar freezes on Xbox.

If the console power cycle doesn’t work, uninstall and reinstall the game. On Xbox, also clear local saves: Settings → System → Storage → Manage storage devices → Clear local saved games. Your cloud save will repopulate on next launch.

Fix 8: Reset Network and DNS

If War Thunder hangs at “Connecting to server” specifically (not the hangar, not a battle), the issue is network-layer. Run these commands in an elevated Command Prompt:

ipconfig /release
ipconfig /flushdns
ipconfig /renew
netsh winsock reset
netsh int ip reset

Then set your DNS to Cloudflare (1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1) or Google (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4). Some ISPs route Gaijin’s traffic through geographically distant servers, and a manual DNS change is enough to fix the handshake timeout that causes the freeze.

Fix 9: Uninstall and Reinstall (Last Resort)

Only do this if nothing above worked. A full reinstall is 100+ GB and can take several hours.

Steam version: Library → right-click War Thunder → Manage → Uninstall. Then reinstall.

Standalone Gaijin version: Open the Gaijin launcher, click the gear icon, select Uninstall. Redownload from warthunder.com/en/game/download.

Before reinstalling, manually delete any leftover folders at C:\Users\[YourName]\Documents\My Games\WarThunder and C:\ProgramData\WarThunder — these persist after uninstall and can carry corrupted config files back into the new install.

If Nothing Works: Report It to Gaijin

If you’ve tried every fix and War Thunder still freezes on the loading screen, submit a support ticket with your log files. Gaijin support actually reads these and responds within 48 to 72 hours.

Submit tickets at support.gaijin.net. In the ticket, attach the warthunder.log file from your install directory and the dxdiag.txt you can generate by typing dxdiag in the Windows Run dialog and clicking “Save All Information.”

Include your account email, the platform you’re on, your GPU model, and the exact point where the loading freezes (login screen, hangar, battle load, specific map). The more specific the report, the faster the fix.

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