BL1 is a beamline for utilizing soft x-ray FEL. Although BL1 had been operated as a “wide-range spontaneous beamline” since the inauguration of SACLA in March 2012, the opportunity to utilize the beamline had been severely limited, because the SACLA accelerator had been mostly dedicated to operation of BL3, the hard X-ray FEL beamline, which has produced the shortest-wavelength FEL in the world. To boost research activities with soft X-ray FEL, we have started an upgrade project of SACLA in FY2014: the SCSS test accelerator, a prototype machine of SACLA, which had been originally developed for conducting proof-of-principle tests of our compact XFEL concept, has been relocated into the SACLA undulator hall, and connected to BL1 with upgrading some components. The upgrade in the 1st phase was completed in the summer of 2015. Soft x-ray SASE-FEL with a photon energy of ~40 eV is now available with a maximum electron beam energy of ~500 MeV. The 2nd-phase upgrade will be conducted in the summer of 2016, which will increase the photon energy range above 100 eV with an electron beam energy over 750 MeV. We continue commissioning of the beamline with construction of the experimental station. We will install a KB mirror system to focus SX-FEL with a diameter below 10 um and a synchronized optical laser to conduct pump-probe experiments in the first half of 2016. For the moment, it is supposed that users will bring their own instruments, instead of utilizing platforms provided by the SACLA facility, to conduct experiments. We will update information.