Stellaris is a slow game where you spend a lot of time waiting and thinking.
Good background music can make it much easier to stay wired and immerse yourself in your role as leader of an intergalactic empire.
And the vanilla Stellaris soundtrack does a good job. But many people start getting tired of the music and often just turn it off entirely after a while.
A great alternative to turning off the music is simply updating your repertoire with custom music mods.
There’s a massive variety of playlists available for Stellaris, and it can be a drag to look through all of them, so let me point you in the right direction.
First up, we’re looking at a beautiful collection of 10 piano tracks written by Stellaris composer Andreas Waldetoft and played by talented pianist Yannick Süss.
For the most part, these are the same songs you’d hear in your average playthrough, except they’re played on a piano. It adds an air of delicate elegance and makes the game’s music a lot more relaxing.
This new piano soundtrack is perfect for listening as you create a race of highly-educated and art-loving beings.
Starcraft is one of the most well-known and loved Sci-Fi strategy games in history, and many Stellaris players today are either Starcraft veterans or active players.
As a real-time strategy game, Starcraft tends to feature much more fast-paced songs than Stellaris, but there’s a lot of variety.
Factions like the Terran have many glorious fanfares, while the Protoss have ominous BGM meant to inspire fear.
This music pack includes 77 tracks chosen from all over the franchise, from the first game to the latest expansion.
It’s a lot to take in, and you probably won’t hear it all in a single playthrough!
Space marines are a popular video game trope – but you won’t find more bad-ass space marines than the towering post-human champions of Warhammer 40K.
Suppose you want your civilization imbued with the brutality and raw power of the Imperium of Man or any other heavy metal factions in Warhammer 40K.
In that case, the first step should be getting this music pack.
This bad-ass soundtrack introduces 28 new tracks from Warhammer 40K: Mechanicus and Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War. As you can expect, there’s no subtlety here – just a couple hours of non-stop badassery.
If you’re looking for something more refined than the blood-soaked world of Warhammer 40K, the mysterious and infinitely exciting Mass Effect universe might be more your style.
The Mass Effect Soundtrack mod brings the most iconic tracks from the first three games to Stellaris in an epic mix that will bring back some memories of your exploits as Commander Shepard.
The moment the Suicide Mission theme from ME2 starts playing during a crisis, you’ll know you made the right choice.
The recent DUNE film adaptation has been polarizing among moviegoers, but we can all agree that the soundtrack is top-notch.
Composed by Hans Zimmer, this OST is experimental and a far cry from his work in The Lion King (1994) and even Inception (2010). It’s distorted and evokes the idea of far-future technology and sounds, slowly pulling you into this Sci-Fi universe.
This makes it perfect for Stellaris, especially if you choose to stray from the beaten human path and start experimenting.
You’ll also feel thoroughly immersed if you find the Arraks system in your next playthrough – though the Spice is sorely lacking.
Next up, we have a truly massive music mod that’s almost as monumental as the franchise the tracks belong to: Star Wars.
This mod features a whopping 329 tunes from all across the franchise, including the three main trilogies, one-offs like Rogue One and Solo Story, and many games like Republic Commando and the excellent Knights of the Old Republic.
I love mods with this level of variety because you probably won’t hear the entire soundtrack in only one playthrough. It keeps the music fresh, which goes a long way considering how long the average Stellaris playthrough can be.
For something completely original, consider Suabia’s Handcrafted Soundtrack for Stellaris.
Rather than bringing a soundtrack from another source into Stellaris, this modder composed their own collection of tracks.
I was surprised when I started listening to these.
They may not have the sound variety or polish of the original Stellaris soundtrack, but they’re memorable and fill me with determination to conquer the stars and protect the future of my species.
This soundtrack has a certain indie appeal I can’t resist, and we need to support this kind of creativity in our favorite communities, so check it out.
You can enjoy another indie attempt at a Stellaris soundtrack by installing this Music Expansion Pack by XTRMNTR2K.
Unlike the vanilla soundtrack, this custom-made soundtrack wastes no time in suspenseful silences and ethereal moments.
It’s like comparing ice cream to pannacotta. They’re both delicious, but the ice cream’s sugar hits you like a truck, while the pannacotta needs to be savored.
This mod is the ice cream.
Every track is perfect in its own way and evokes a particular feeling, such as calm, trepidation, or excitement.
It isn’t the most nuanced tracklist, but it’s a lot of fun.
It might sound a little weird, but I find Stellaris relaxing.
Yeah, there are many things to keep track of. But if you let the game run at a slow pace and just enjoy watching your scouting vessels slowly approach the next planet, it can be therapeutic.
Something else I love doing to relax is listening to ambient tracks on YouTube – and thanks to the SpaceAmbient Music mods, I can do both simultaneously.
This collection of mods features an enormous amount of “space” ambient tunes featured on the SpaceAmbient YouTube channel. It’s a hotpot of indie composers with Sci-Fi influences that’ll breathe new life into Stellaris.
Nelson Chitty is a Venezuelan expat living in Argentina. He’s a writer and translator passionate about history and foreign cultures. His ideal weekend is spent between leisurely playing games of Civilization VI and looking for the next seinen anime to marathon.
