.FLP File Format

Introduction

These are the projects saved by FL Studio 2026. Releases are named by year, and the major number of the version string is the two-digit year, so these files carry version strings such as 26.1.6.5639. Version 26.1 was released on 2 July 2026 according to Image-Line’s changelog (its “New features” page gives 7 July), and the latest release is 26.1.7.5, of 12 October 2026.

The file keeps the events and text of FL Studio 2024 and 2025, event 172 among them, but it changes the playlist item record again: the record grows to 88 bytes, and bytes 24 to 31, the clip’s start and end offsets, hold whole tick values rather than floats. So it is described here as a format of its own. These files are new and little studied, and what follows comes from open-source readers that are still catching up.

Structure

The file is a 14-byte header chunk and a data chunk holding one long stream of events. What sets these files apart:

• 88-byte playlist items. Each playlist item record grows from 80 bytes to 88. Bytes 24 to 31 are the clip’s visible window, as two 32-bit tick values, start and end, and the flpkit reader says FL Studio 2026 works out the clip’s length from this window.
• The same length, two sizes. A playlist items event of 17,600 bytes is both 220 records of 80 bytes and 200 records of 88 bytes, so the length alone cannot tell this format from FL Studio 2024 and 2025. Only the version can.
• Event 172. As in FL Studio 2024 and 2025, event 172 has an ID in the four-byte range but carries fewer bytes, so a reader that follows the size rule loses its place in the stream. It has been seen in 26.x files.
• Notes before the first pattern. A pattern notes event (224) can come before any New pattern event, as in FL Studio 2025. See Note records.
• Licence details. Image-Line’s “New features” page for FL Studio 2026 says that “the License Plate rather than User Name will be saved in project files”. That this is the text of the licensee event (200) is this site’s inference; no file has been checked for it.

Other fields may have changed without being noticed yet. A reader for these files should check the version, skip events it does not know by their length, and treat event 172 as a special case.

Telling it apart

The explorer’s parser for this format checks the FL Studio version text event (199): its major number must be 26 or higher. It takes later versions too, until one is known to differ, so a file from a release after FL Studio 2026 is read as this format for now. The version is what tells these files apart from FL Studio 2024 and 2025, because a playlist items event can have a length, such as 17,600 bytes, that divides into both 80-byte and 88-byte records.

Like the parser for FL Studio 2024 and 2025, it reads event 172 as one byte followed by an ordinary event.

Variants

• FruityLoops 1 to FL Studio 5 – the 1999 layout: single-byte text, 20-byte notes and 28-byte playlist items
• FL Studio 6 to 8 – channel volume and pan on a scale 100 times larger
• FL Studio 9 to 11.4 – 24-byte note records and 32-byte playlist items
• FL Studio 11.5 to 12 – every string but the version switches to UTF-16LE
• FL Studio 20 – multiple arrangements, with tracks counted down from 499
• FL Studio 21 – 60-byte playlist items with fades and gain
• FL Studio 2024 and 2025 – 80-byte playlist items and a one-byte event 172
• FL Studio 2026 – 88-byte playlist items with clip offsets in ticks

Links