What should I do if opponent paints are not appearing after iRacing’s 2026 Season 4 build?
The current public release of Trading Paints Downloader (version 2.1.5) does not properly work with iRacing’s new support of UTF-8 in telemetry session strings when enabled. This can result in paints not appearing even with Downloader running and will be fixed in a future Downloader release once it’s properly tested and ready for public consumption.
In the meantime, however, there are two options to restore compatibility.
Option 1: Turn off UTF-8 in the telemetry session string
In the Users\[Your Name]\Documents\iRacing folder on your computer, open app.ini:
Search within app.ini for a line labeled irsdkUTF8SessionStr.
If it says irsdkUTF8SessionStr=1, you can change the 1 to a 0 like irsdkUTF8SessionStr=0, save the file, and reopen iRacing and Trading Paints Downloader.
If it already says irsdkUTF8SessionStr=0, then you already have UTF-8 disabled in your telemetry string. (This is fine, but may reduce support for displaying special characters in text.)
Option 2: Try the Downloader Beta
You can try installing the Trading Paints Downloader Beta, which is our testing version of potential new Downloader releases, aimed at fixing bugs and maintaining compatibility, including with iRacing’s support for UTF-8.
Follow the instructions on the Downloader Beta page to set up the Beta program on your computer. This shouldn’t impact your existing Trading Paints Downloader installation in case you would like to use the current stable Downloader release instead.