Although still in their early access period exclusively for players who purchased the $119.99 Premium Edition, Forza Horizon 6 has already taken the title of the game in the series with the most concurrent players on Steam. Forza Horizon 6 has already managed to double the number of concurrent Steam players from the last game in the series, and that's before the vast majority of players jump into the action.
Forza Horizon 6 is the latest iteration of Playground Games' long-running spin-off of Forza Motorsport series. The latest game takes the series to Japan for the first time, a setting long requested by fans. Early reviews of Forza Horizon 6 have been excellent, earning a top critic average of 91 on review aggregator site OpenCritic. The early access period for the game has been live since May 15, and players have wasted no time getting lost in Forza Horizon 6s fantastic rendering of Japan.
Don't make the same mistake I did in Forza Horizon 6
Forza Horizon 6 players should be sure to avoid making one of the biggest mistakes I made while playing through the open world racer.
Forza Horizon 6 breaks records for the number of players on Steam during the early access period
According to SteamDB, Forza Horizon 6 has reached a peak Steam player count of 178,009 during its early access. This makes it the i game Forza Horizon series with the highest concurrent Steam players ever, more than doubling Forza Horizon 5peak at 81,096. What makes it even more impressive is that Forza Horizon 5 was released on Steam on the same date as other platforms, so this is not a case where the disc is the result of a delayed launch. Rather, this is just pure hype generated by Forza Horizon 6.
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It seems inevitable that this record will be broken further in the coming week. Considering the fact that Forza Horizon 6The early access period is only available to Premium Edition owners, there will be another huge wave of players who only bought the base game arriving on May 19th on its normal launch date. It's not clear exactly how many players have pre-ordered the base game, but there's no doubt that it will be by some margin the most played game in the series' history on Steam when the dust settles.
With its early critical and commercial success, Forza Horizon 6 becomes the third game of 2026 to receive an average rating of 90+ on OpenCritic. This makes it one of the best games of the year so far by some margin, and joins esteemed company Lost and Found Co. and Pokemon Pokopia. There is no doubt about the quality of the game, and the next question will be whether the game will be nominated for awards at the end of the year.
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Those who are already in the game have shared their feedback with the developer Playground Games. While overall sentiment is overwhelmingly positive, players do have a few complaints Forza Horizon 6 which the studio will hopefully address in its first post-launch updates.
- Released
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May 19, 2026
- ESRB
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All / Mild texts, users interact, in-game purchases
- Publisher
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Xbox Game Studios
