Forza Horizon 6 is set to introduce the series to Japan in 2026- initially on Xbox 

The Microsoft company has announced that the fourth installment of the Forza Horizon officially open-world racing festival will finally be taking the series to a long overdue destination in Japan, in Forza Horizon 6, arriving in 2026.

It was announced at the Tokyo Game Show 2025 when Xbox was broadcasted with a short teaser trailer. The camera of the trailer shots sweeps through license plates and other souvenirs of the past Forza Horizon sites before settling on a view of Fuji mountain across a lake against the background of cherry blossom.

It was not publicly shown what the gameplay entails; in an Xbox Wire post, the game art director, Don Arceta, promised to reveal more of it in early 2026.

In the footnote of the teaser trailer uploaded to YouTube, and on the Xbox Wire post, Microsoft announced that Forza Horizon 6 will be released on Xbox Series X and PC first in 2026, and a PlayStation 5 version will follow the release.

Car culture in Japan will ofcourse be featured; the culture of kei cars and vans with cult following, the origin of drifting, and their love of customization, which Yamashita described, is notably impressive.  And Arceta affirmed that the seasonal changes of the previous two matches will be re-emerged.

One of the attractions of the Forza Horizon games is the virtual tourism of the real-life places which are available in their artificially condensed maps. Since Forza Horizon was released in 2012 in the U.S. in the state of Colorado, fans have hoped that the next installment of the series would be set in Japan.

Nevertheless, Playground Games has played with the expectations of the fans and has taken the roving festival to the Mediterranean coast of Italy and France and subsequently to Australia and most recently to Mexico in the 2021 release of Forza Horizon 5 in their native country of Britain.

The five-year difference between the release of that game and Forza Horizon 6 will be far the longest in accordance with the series history; Playground has been occupied by its long-awaited reboot of Fable, also coming next year.

Nevertheless, the popularity of the series has only increased during that period and the latest PlayStation 5 edition of Forza Horizon 5 is amongst the most sold PS5 games of the year.

This is why there was little speculation that the new Horizon would not be a new 2026 game announced by Phil Spencer at the Xbox Games Showcase in June. But now fans have the assurance that it will be coming – and it will be going where the fans most desired.