There’s no denying it: Forza Horizon 6 is Playground Games’ most ambitious attempt at their long-standing open world racing series. Its Japanese setting immediately stands out, but FH6 also uses this location to shape the driving experience, from newly complex urban areas, to dynamic weather and JDM-specific events. There’s renewed emphasis on the community experience too, through smarter AI and expanded sandbox mechanics to shared progression. There’s a lot going on under the hood, so here’s fifteen things you need to know before getting behind the wheel.
Tokyo Brings New Levels of Complexity
Forza Horizon 6’s version of Tokyo isn’t just bigger. According to Playground Games, it’s designed to be more complex, intricate, and vertical. Multi-level parking garages, underground tunnel systems, elevated expressways, industrial dockyards, and more combine to create a city that’s layered in ways previous Horizon maps simply weren’t, ensuring races won’t be confined to flat, sprawling streets anymore.
Dynamic Traffic Density Makes Roads Feel More Authentic
Roads in Forza Horizon 6 will reflect their surroundings more authentically than official pre-release gameplay would have you believe. Whilst low traffic was a highlighted concern, the only quiet stretches of tarmac you’ll find across Japan will be in the sparsely populated rural regions. You can expect heavier congestion in urban areas, as each of the map’s locations will have its own rhythm, enhancing immersion whether you’re freeroaming or competing.
Weather Impacts Driving
While seasonal variety was already covered in our FH5 vs FH6 “15 Biggest Differences” feature, we didn’t mention that Forza Horizon 6 pushes weather further into gameplay. Heavy rain and snowfall influence traction, grip, and braking distance more than any earlier Horizon title, encouraging you to adjust your driving styles and tyre choices. Furthermore, weather is extremely localised throughout Japan; dense fog, for instance, is more likely to appear in specific areas. Finally, weather patterns dynamically shift over time; look out for storms rolling in unexpectedly, forcing you to adapt on the fly.
Touge Battles Introduce Technical Drift Racing
Inspired by classic Japanese street racing culture, FH6’s Touge Battles focus on tight, winding mountain roads. You’ll engage in one-on-one battles in JDM-modified cars, where the emphasis is on precision, rhythm, and controlled drifting over raw speed. You’ll find these events at preset mountain passes, and when in single player you can attempt them at any time; they’re not tied to festival progression. The shared open world will cycle through locations too, so you can challenge real-life opponents when online too.
Drifting Has Been Refined
Based on early gameplay footage, it appears Forza Horizon 6’s updated car physics have provided meaningful refinement to drift handling, where greater emphasis is being placed on balance and car control. Holding long, consistent slides is more technically demanding, requiring deliberate input, patient trail braking, and transition management. The result should make drifting – a staple of JDM car culture – feel more natural, challenging, and rewarding.
AI Drivers Behave More Realistically
To address complaints that AI drivers behaved robotically, Forza Horizon 6 is bringing improvements to computer-controlled Drivatars to promote more varied, realistic behaviour. Through a new “multi-line” approach, AI-controlled drivers won’t follow a single, most-optimal racing line but will weave naturally, exhibiting more skill which should eradicate the often-erratic style that overshadows earlier entries in the series. Better AI racing logic extends to traffic handling too, making races feel fairer and less unpredictable.
The Festival Playlist Returns
The Festival Playlist is back, and it follows a structure familiar to anyone who raced in any of Horizon’s earlier entries. Bringing weekly challenges, photo objectives, rotating activities, and collectible rewards, including Playlist-exclusive cars, as part of a live service format happening across Japan, the Festival Playlist remains core to personal progression, encouraging you to engage with a wide range of content which refreshes on a weekly basis.
Convoys Now Share Progression
In earlier Horizon titles, you arrived already a superstar racing champion. Not so in Japan – you’re a tourist with dreams of making it big and becoming a Horizon Legend. And now, in Forza Horizon 6, you can share that dream with others via a campaign that’s playable in co-op. So, whilst convoys aren’t new to the series, now they are more meaningfully tied to progression in that you can share your progress across activities. You or one of your friends can set up an event as a convoy leader to participate in a range of events and customisable races, with campaign progress counting for all participants.
In-Game Economy Has Been Adjusted
In Forza Horizon 6, the in-game economy has been adjusted to be stricter and more structured as a way to regulate progression. Included in the changes are fixed auction prices aimed at preventing credit exploitation, restricted early access to supercars, and more methods for obtaining special vehicles, including the all-new option to purchase copies of other players’ tuned and customised cars. The latter should make it easier to access community builds without grinding for the modified wheels yourself.
Sandbox Mechanics Have Been Expanded
Forza Horizon 6 is placing greater emphasis on your creativity across the board. Systems like customisable garages, The Estate, EventLab, and Horizon CoLab combine to create a broad suite of sandbox mechanics. It’s an entire ecosystem which gives you the tools and control over how you build, customise, and interact with the world. See our “15 Biggest Differences” between Horizon 5 and 6 for the lowdown on all that’s new in The Estate; here, we’ll expand on EventLab’s changes in the next entry.
EventLab Receives Notable Quality-of-Life Improvements
EventLab is now more flexible and user-friendly thanks to a range of QoL improvements, including smoother building tools, such as the ability to place objects repeatedly, and intuitive creation options like the new “undo” and “redo” features, allowing you to quickly cycle back-and-forth through changes you’ve made. Your under-construction creations can be tested in real-time too with a new Free Drive option, whether that’s on your own land or anywhere else in the open world.
Custom Challenges Integrated Into EventLab
Forza Horizon 6’s custom Challenge Creator is also set to benefit from EventLab’s upgrades, including the community-made, stunt-based challenge mode Super7. Challenges can now be built and played anywhere across Japan, and they can be stored in a specific folder in the EventLab menu rather than be activated at specific event points. Playground’s goal here is to ensure all user-generated content is the easiest it’s ever been to create, and the simplest it can be to access and experience.
Custom Garages Turn Your Collection Into a Showroom
Your own personal garages have seen significant overhaul too, aligning them more closely with Forza Horizon 6’s community-led ethos whilst mirroring Japan’s car culture. Now, garages are fully customisable spaces where you can display your car collection, host meets, and even download layouts created by other players. You can freely move through your own or your friend’s garage too thanks to a nifty drone-cam.
Car List Brings 550+ to Collect
Forza Horizon 6’s roster continues the series tradition of blending a host of everyday road cars, modern high-performance machines, and iconic classics. And, seeing as this edition is in Japan, a host of JDM legends too. Notable amongst the 550-plus cars is the 2025 GR GT Prototype – the game’s cover star – and the 2025 Toyota Land Cruiser. Others include exclusive pre-order bonus the Ferrari J50, created by Ferrari to celebrate fifty years in Japan; the Hyundai i20 N is also new to the series, while the 2023 Aston Martin Valkyrie R and 2022 Gordon Murray Automotive T.50 bring some of the highest performing vehicles to the tarmac. Special Japanese cars include Nissan Skylines, Toyota Supras, and a Mitsubishi Minicab.
PC Players Get Cutting-Edge Features
If you’re playing on PC, and your hardware is capable, then you can take advantage of Forza Horizon 6’s cutting-edge features like ray-traced global illumination, ray-traced reflections, uncapped framerates, and technologies such as DLSS 4 and AMD FSR 4. There’s also support for ultrawide monitors, ensuring the game not only looks the sharpest it possibly can but plays closest to an immersive, cinematic experience.
