Yes, Forza Horizon 5 is still worth playing in 2026—especially if you want a gorgeous, low-friction open-world racer with hundreds of cars and an absurd amount of driving freedom. The catch is that it no longer feels like an endlessly expanding showcase. Its best content is already here, and the game’s weaker campaign structure, repetitive festival chores, and always-online dependence are much easier to notice after several years.
That makes the 2026 verdict simple: buy or play it for the driving, map, car list, tuning and EventLab, not because you expect every weekly playlist to feel like a major event. If you bounced off Horizon 5 in 2021, time probably hasn’t fixed its core pacing. If you loved cruising across Mexico, there’s still an excellent racing sandbox waiting for you.
Why Forza Horizon 5 Still Feels Great in 2026
Horizon 5’s biggest advantage is that it gets the fundamentals right immediately. The 2021 release still offers one of the smoothest arcade-sim driving models around: cars have readable weight, throttle control matters, and assists can move the experience from forgiving Sunday drive to demanding controller test without turning the game into a spreadsheet.
The Mexican setting does a lot of heavy lifting. You can leave the Horizon Festival Mexico site and reach the Gran Caldera volcano, Guanajuato’s tunnels, the jungle around Ek’ Balam, the western beaches and the airstrip near the main festival in minutes. The 107-square-kilometre map isn’t the largest open world in gaming, but its biome variety makes every road trip feel less disposable than the flat, interchangeable highways found in many racers.
Fast Travel also makes the map practical. Unlock the Buenas Vistas house on the west coast and smash 50 Fast Travel boards to remove the travel fee. Until then, the cost encourages you to drive—but late-game players will appreciate being able to jump straight into a danger sign, speed zone or seasonal championship.
The driving model rewards small improvements
Start with traction control and stability control enabled, then disable them one at a time. Traction Control reduces wheelspin out of slow corners, while Stability Control intervenes more aggressively when a car starts rotating. For most road cars, turning off Stability Control first gives you more freedom without making launches chaotic. Manual shifting, meanwhile, is worth learning because short-shifting can protect rear-wheel-drive cars from useless wheelspin.
There’s also real depth beneath the friendly presentation. Tire compound, tire width, differential settings, ride height, anti-roll bars and downforce all affect how a build behaves. A road-tuned 1997 Nissan Skyline GT-R V-Spec can feel planted and precise; a poorly balanced rear-wheel-drive swap can become a smoky disaster before the first checkpoint. That gap between “fun instantly” and “deep enough to master” is why the game has aged so well.
Where Horizon 5’s Progression Starts Showing Its Age
The campaign is not a traditional career. You’re a superstar arriving in Mexico, and instead of climbing through a strict ladder, you unlock Horizon sites and choose which activities to expand. The Horizon Festival Mexico, Horizon Apex, Horizon Wilds, Horizon Baja, Horizon Rush and Horizon Street Scene branches each open different event types, but the structure rarely creates meaningful pressure.
You can win road races in a Toyota GR Supra, jump a Ford Bronco off cliffs, complete PR stunts and earn Wheelspins without building a coherent racing résumé. That freedom is relaxing, but it also blunts the sense of progression. The game keeps handing you cars, credits and influence, so a new player can own a garage worth millions before learning why a locked differential might help a rally build.
Accolades provide a better long-term checklist than the main campaign. They track challenges across racing, exploration, car collection, skill chains and creative activities, while Car Mastery boards let individual vehicles unlock perks using Skill Points. The 2018 Porsche 911 GT2 RS, for example, can be developed through its own mastery grid, but the system is still a collection of small bonuses rather than a meaningful character build.
Wheelspins are another mixed legacy. They’re exciting early, when a rare car or a large credit payout can reshape your garage. Later, duplicate clothing, horns and low-value credits make the reward loop feel noisy. The sheer generosity is part of Horizon’s identity, yet it removes the tension that makes a carefully earned car feel special.
| Activity | What It Offers | 2026 Verdict | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Campaign Expeditions | Unlock festival sites and event categories | Fun but loosely structured | New players learning the map |
| Accolades | Long-term challenges and rewards | Best progression checklist | Completionists and collectors |
| Horizon Open | Online themed championships | Good variety, matchmaking dependent | Competitive drivers |
| Seasonal Playlist | Weekly championships, PR stunts and challenges | Useful bursts of activity | Returning players |
| EventLab | Community-built races and stunt courses | Inconsistent but creatively huge | Players bored with standard events |
Is the Car List and DLC Still Worth It?
The car roster remains the strongest argument for returning. Depending on the current release and expansion content available to you, Horizon 5 offers a huge mix of modern supercars, classic muscle, rally machines, off-road trucks and oddball picks. The difference between driving a 1965 Mini Cooper S, a 2020 Koenigsegg Jesko and a 1986 Lamborghini LM 002 is dramatic enough that collecting doesn’t feel purely cosmetic.
Cars also have distinct jobs. The Jesko is a terrifying top-speed choice for long highway runs. The 2018 McLaren Senna excels on technical asphalt when tuned correctly. The 2013 Ariel Atom 500 V8 is brilliant on tight circuits but punishing over rough terrain. For dirt, the 2017 Ford Focus RS RX and 2018 Porsche 911 GT3 RS offer very different solutions: the Focus rotates with rally aggression, while the Porsche rewards smooth momentum and careful braking.
Base-game content is already substantial, so new players shouldn’t feel forced into every expansion. Hot Wheels adds a separate orange-track world built around loops, jumps and extreme speed. Rally Adventure adds Sierra Nueva, a compact off-road map with rally stages, timed events and the Horizon Rally Academy. It’s the more valuable expansion for drivers who want new handling challenges rather than spectacle alone.
The car pass and individual car packs are harder to recommend in 2026. They’re worthwhile only if a specific vehicle matters to you. Don’t buy a bundle expecting it to transform progression; it expands the garage, not the game’s underlying structure. Check the official Forza Horizon hub and the Steam listing for current editions, pricing and platform availability before spending.
Best PC Settings for a Smooth 2026 Experience
Forza Horizon 5 remains one of the better-scaled PC racers. Its benchmark tool is useful, but don’t trust the average FPS alone: pay attention to the GPU frame-time graph, CPU simulation load and minimums during storms or crowded festival scenes. A locked 60 FPS usually feels better than a wildly fluctuating 90 to 120 FPS.
| Setting | Recommended Value | FPS Impact | Visual Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Resolution | Native or 1440p with dynamic optimization | Very high | Major clarity improvement at native resolution |
| Environment Texture Quality | High | Medium | Sharper roads, rocks and distant scenery |
| Shadow Quality | High | Medium-high | Cleaner car and building shadows |
| Reflection Quality | Medium-high | Medium | Controls showroom paint and wet-road reflections |
| World Car Level of Detail | High | Medium | Improves distant traffic and parked cars |
| MSAA | 2x or 4x | Medium | Reduces jagged edges without huge cost |
| SSAO Quality | Medium | Low-medium | Adds contact depth around cars and scenery |
On a modern mid-range PC, High settings at 1080p or 1440p remain the sensible target. Lower Environment Texture Quality first if VRAM is tight, then reduce shadows and reflections. Don’t immediately gut every visual option: Horizon’s sense of speed depends heavily on clean distant detail and stable frame pacing.
Steam Deck owners should treat 30 FPS as the realistic baseline, with low-to-medium settings, reduced shadows and a conservative resolution target. It’s playable, but the large open world and streaming demands make it less consistently smooth than a desktop or Xbox Series console. For more PC troubleshooting ideas, Steamoz’s PC crash and FPS guide covers the same useful fundamentals: verify files, update drivers and watch temperatures before blaming the game.
Who Should Play Forza Horizon 5 in 2026?
Play it if you want a game that can be enjoyed in ten-minute bursts or absorbed for 200 hours. You can complete a quick speed zone, tune a Subaru Impreza, build a custom EventLab circuit, join friends for co-op or spend an evening hunting Barn Finds. The game supports casual driving and serious optimization unusually well.
It’s also a strong recommendation for players who dislike punishing racing sims. Rewinds, adjustable difficulty, driving assists and generous checkpoints let you focus on racing lines rather than restart screens. Raise Drivatar difficulty gradually: Highly Skilled is a solid target for learning, while Unbeatable can feel less like fair competition and more like perfect launch-and-corner execution.
Skip or delay it if you need a dramatic career mode, realistic motorsport rules or a constantly evolving story. The writing is mostly an excuse to send you toward the next activity, and the festival playlist can turn into routine maintenance if you force yourself to complete every weekly objective. Online features also depend on server health and account access, so check current service information through Forza Support before committing to a multiplayer-focused purchase.
For context, players comparing older PC racers may also want Steamoz’s performance settings coverage or the Everspace 2 exploration guide; both highlight the same question Horizon 5 answers well: does the world make you want to keep wandering?
Final verdict: Forza Horizon 5 is still worth playing in 2026, but its value has shifted. It’s no longer a fresh content machine or a particularly compelling career game. It’s a polished driving playground with an enormous garage, a beautiful map, excellent tuning and enough user-created content to keep the road interesting. If that sounds like your kind of game, Mexico remains an easy recommendation. Just arrive for the driving—not the promise that the festival will reinvent itself every week.