Despite a massive 155GB build leaking online a week before release that let some players access the game early, Forza Horizon 6 has still managed to break franchise records. In the first 24 hours of its Advanced Access, the new Playground Games title reached a concurrent player peak of 172,000 players on Steam.
At the time of writing, the game has 117,917 active players and is ranked seventh on Steam’s most played games list, with no racing game above it. These numbers will likely go even higher over the weekend as more players have free time to play. To better understand how big this is, Forza Horizon 5 peaked at 81,096 concurrent players on Steam back in November 2021. The new game has now more than doubled that record.
What makes this result even more impressive is that these numbers were reached during the Advanced Access period that started on May 15, four days before the official launch. This means all these players are people who paid extra to play early by purchasing the $120 Premium Edition. It’s also worth noting that these numbers are only from Steam on PC and do not include Xbox players, meaning the real player count is likely much higher already.
In many ways, these numbers were already expected. Last month, we reported that Forza Horizon 6 had already passed 500,000 pre-orders on Steam before launch. That early interest already showed the new racing game was likely going to have a very strong release on PC, and it’s still only just getting started.
In addition, the game has received overall positive ratings from both critics and players. It currently has a “Mostly Positive” rating on Steam, and on Metacritic it holds a score of 92 out of 100, making it the highest-rated video game of 2026 so far. For more Forza Horizon 6 related coverage, keep checking GameObserver.
