Android Emulator Error Message: "PANIC: Missing emulator engine program for 'x86' CPUS."

If you are using macOS, add both Android SDK emulator and tools directories to the path:

Step 1: In my case the order was important, first emulator and then tools.

export ANDROID_SDK=$HOME/Library/Android/sdk
export PATH=$ANDROID_SDK/emulator:$ANDROID_SDK/tools:$PATH

Step 2: Reload you .bash_profile Or .bashrc depending on OS

Step 3: Get list of emulators available: $emulator -list-avds

Step 4: Launch emulator from the command line and Replace avd with the name of your emulator $emulator @avd

Don't forget to add the @ symbol.

This was tested with macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 and Android Studio 3.1.2.

I had this issue after upgrading Android Studio to 3.2 and even upgrade some SDK-Packages.

The cause was that the path to emulator had changed, so don't use ...../Android/Sdk/tools/emulator but instead ....../Android/Sdk/emulator/emulator.

The following work-around to start emulator-x86 worked for me:

cd $SDK/tools; 
ln -s emulator64-x86 emulator-x86

Or on Windows open Command Prompt (Admin)

cd %ANDROID_SDK_ROOT%\tools
mklink emulator64-x86.exe emulator-x86.exe

And now the emulator will start from the SDK manager.

Note: Emulators islocated in emulators folder in more recent versions.