In 2026, MCMTR will transition from being a Minecraft transit server based solely on Hong Kong and the MTR system to consisting of multiple cities and their transit systems across Asia. Last October, we announced that we will be expanding to include Macau and Shenzhen. This year, we will expand further to include Taipei and Singapore.

By the end of the year, the goal is to have finished building the following:

• Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong High Speed Rail – only the section connecting the following two stations:

  • Hong Kong West Kowloon Station

  • Futian Railway Station (Shenzhen)

• the rest of the Hong Kong Tramway (Hong Kong Island)

• the full Macau LRT Taipa Line

• a few more Shenzhen Metro stations, especially stations on Lines 1 and 4

• at least two stations of the Taipei Metro

• at least two stations of the Singapore MRT

The plan is to finish and open the following MTR lines to the public in 2026. Same as before, for each opening, we will be having an event consisting of an opening ceremony, station tours and first train ride. Events will be live streamed on YouTube, as usual.

• Airport Express – the entire line

• Island Line – most likely only a portion of it, to be determined

In 2026, I am planning to finish building a few more Montreal metro stations—mostly stations on the western side of the Orange line from Vendôme to downtown Montreal, as well as some Green line stations.

However, the main focus will be on the REM, in which I plan to finish all 19 stations on the main Deux-Montagnes branch (from Deux-Montagnes Station all the way to Brossard Station). I will aim to have the full 19-station route open by the end of the year.

Overall, by the end of 2026, I would hope to finish around 25 stations (metro and REM combined), so I plan to finish building one station every two weeks on average.

This is something new that I want to work on this year. I am planning to make two Minecraft Java (Spigot) plugins for the Minecraft Greater Montreal Transit server (and perhaps they could be utilized in MCMTR as well).

A simple escalator plugin

The first one will be a simple escalator plugin. As of now, escalators in the Montreal Transit server and MCMTR are "just for the looks" and do not actually work—ie. you need to manually move in order to go up/down on an escalator. On the other hand, we have been using working elevators in Minecraft with an elevator plugin for a long time already, and there are already elevator plugins out there. So I thought: why not working escalator plugins too? I could not find anything like that on the internet, so I wanted to make one.

Making escalators that work should be pretty straightforward in theory. Normally, using redstone, albeit a lot of them would suffice, but given our context, which is that we will be having well over 1000 escalators in the stations across the servers, it would be a tedious amount of work to install all of them, and so using redstone is simply not the way to go. Therefore, using a plugin instead would be a superior option since it could allow mass, rapid and repeated deployment of working escalators with just a command (or some other simple mechanism, which I have yet to figure out).

Despite attempts to organize more activities, engagement across our Discord server communities in 2025 was not as high as expected overall. I have to admit that, apart from the introduction of KS Kahoot games, there has not been a good variety of events organized, which may explain the low level of engagement.

So this year, I will aim to organize a wider variety of activities in the form of competitions or contests, since they are most effective at driving interest. Ideally, I would like to organize one event every 2 months or so (so around 6 in total for the year). Below are some ideas I have come up with. As mentioned in section 3.1, these events will involve rewards to incentivize participation.

Kahoot games again? (or other quiz games)

As mentioned previously, Kahoot games were introduced in an attempt to increase community activity, but to no avail. However, I still think that quiz-based games are one of the most interactive forms of events. So I will still keep the idea, and maybe organize one or two this year. I could also try using something other than Kahoot.

Minecraft build battles

A new kind of activity I have in mind and that I think would be engaging is "build battles" in Minecraft, in which players attempt to build things related to a certain topic within a limited time and compete against each other to see who has the best build. Topics could include railway stations (fictional or replicating one in real life), skyscrapers, landscape, redstone machines, etc. This could also be an opportunity to recruit new builders for our Minecraft servers (MCMTR and MTR Crafters).

Competitions in MCMTR and/or MTR Crafters

These have actually been done more or less in various live streams in the past, but most of the time they were spontaneous game ideas that we came up with during the stream. So, I am thinking we could also organize some of those as independent events to make them more accessible and thus, have more players participating.

Examples:

• in-game speedruns – travelling from one location to another by MTR

• in-game MTR challenges (inspired by those that other people have done in real life)

• treasure hunts

• guessing the composition of blocks of a station

The KSMP server (our Minecraft survival multi-player server) has never been, and never will be, the main focus of KS. Its purpose is to facilitate community building through engaging gameplay; specifically, it is a place where members can interact and bond in a casual setting. To me, the community aspect of KSMP is the most important thing, rather than the fancy features found on some other SMP servers. Therefore, I will refrain from adding new features to KSMP other than those included in new Vanilla Minecraft updates, and I intend to keep it this way moving forward.

Community Ender Dragon fight on KSMP's first anniversary

Almost half a year has passed since we started the KSMP server, which also means its first anniversary is coming up soon. So, what better way to celebrate it than with a big community event? If all goes well, then we will collectively fight the Ender Dragon on the day of KSMP's first anniversary (Thursday, 13 August 2026). All server factions will fight the dragon together, rather than competing against each other, and rewards will be shared equally amongst the participating players. After that, the End dimension will finally be opened up for exploration. More details to come in the coming months!

Joining new public transit railway openings in Canada

2026 will be an important year for public transit in Canada, as there will be quite a few new railway openings. I hope I will be able to experience all of them in person and do a special live stream event for each, just as what I did last November for the opening of the Montreal REM's Deux-Montagnes branch. Provisionally, the following transit projects should open this year:

• Montreal's REM Anse-à-l'Orme (West Island) Branch – spring 2026

• Ottawa's O-Train Extension (Line 1 East extension) – sometime in 2026

• Toronto's Eglinton Crosstown LRT (TTC Line 5) – hopefully

Frankly speaking, the YouTube channel is what makes KS what it is today. It is the videos and content I make on YouTube that have made all of this possible—the servers, the community, and whatnot. However, after years of trying to constantly post videos and gain subscribers and views, or as some might say, "chasing the algorithm", I would like to take a step back this year.

This year, I want to focus on the projects, events, the community and the audience, rather than how many views and subscribers I get. As such, I will not be setting specific goals for subscriber and view counts, which is contrary to what I have done in previous years. I believe these will result from the quality of my productions.

Nevertheless, it is important to continue using the YouTube platform actively and wisely, as it is essential for promoting my projects to the world, connecting with different audiences and building community.

Videos

Video ideas this year will stem from the various projects and events (see the previous sections above), so I will not be deliberately coming up with new ideas for videos. This should hopefully lead to a more consistent video upload schedule. I will aim to publish at least one video every three weeks. Most of the videos I upload will focus on:

• MCMTR server:

  • MCMTR station tours (will start a new video series for each transit system, eg. a new one for Macau LRT, separate from Hong Kong MTR)

  • progress updates – for example, when a new area is built, I will do a tour of it

• MTR Crafters:

  • a time-lapse front-view train ride video for each line that is about to open

  • multiple train journey ride videos for a line after it opens

• • Minecraft Greater Montreal Transit Project:

    • detailed tours of each completed station

    • train journey rides

• trailer/teaser videos for the projects and events

Live Streams

I have always thought that doing more live streams would increase engagement. However, based on what I saw in 2025, this does not seem to be the case. To be honest, part of the reason is my relatively inconsistent live-streaming schedule, but I also think it is partly due to the repetitiveness of my live streams. It is just difficult to come up with many interesting ideas to keep live streams engaging.

After some reflection, I have come to the conclusion that constantly doing live streams is not a great idea. Here is the thing: if I keep doing live streams with the same content all the time (eg. building stations in Minecraft), people will tend to lose interest. On the contrary, if I were to do fewer live streams, but each time it is something different, then people should be more willing to watch them; it gives viewers the impression that each live stream is a special event and not just "any other live stream."

Therefore, I will reduce the number of times I live-stream on YouTube this year. So in general, I will only live-stream for events (see section 3 above for details of the various events and activities planned for this year). Progress updates about the projects (see section 2) will be in the videos instead.