Forza Horizon 6's review embargo lifted on May 14 and within 24 hours the picture is unmistakable: Playground Games' Japan-set racer is the new highest-rated game of 2026 on Metacritic, sitting at a 92 average from north of 60 critic reviews and climbing. That's enough to push Pokemon Pokopia and Resident Evil Requiem - both excellent in their own right at 89 - off the year's top spot, and it lines up neatly with the early-access launch that went live on May 15 for Premium Edition owners ahead of the May 19 standard release on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, and Steam.
If the score sounds familiar, that's because it should. Forza Horizon 4 and 5 also opened at 92, and Forza Horizon 3 hit 91. The streak isn't an accident, either: six consecutive mainline Horizon games have now matched or exceeded the Metacritic score of the title that preceded them, which is something almost no other long-running franchise has pulled off in this generation.
Where the score is coming from
The Xbox Series X|S aggregate is doing the heavy lifting at 92 across 47 reviews on that platform, while the PC version sits a few points behind at 89 from a smaller, all-positive sample. Individual outlet scores range from a few perfect 100s down to a 70, but the cluster is tight: most reviews land between 90 and 95, with a long tail of 85s rather than the spread you usually see when a big-budget release has structural problems.
The praise lines up in a tidy stack. Critics are calling the Japan map the most varied open world Playground has built, with the team weaving Tokyo neon corridors, Kanto mountain switchbacks, Hokkaido coastal stretches, and Shinto-shrine festival sites into a contiguous loop that you can drive between without loading screens. The 550-plus-car garage is the largest in series history, and the progression system - rebuilt around "Horizon Legends" reputation arcs rather than the older festival rank ladder - has been singled out by reviewers as one of the cleanest in any racing game this generation.
Six in a row is the bigger story
Step back and the Metacritic streak is the historical headline. Most racing franchises and most open-world series have at least one stumble in their back catalog - a transitional engine year, an undercooked expansion-as-sequel, a launch that wobbled. Playground Games hasn't had one. Forza Horizon (88), Forza Horizon 2 (86), Forza Horizon 3 (91), Forza Horizon 4 (92), Forza Horizon 5 (92), and now Forza Horizon 6 (92) draw a line that only goes up or holds level. Across six full releases that's something neither Rockstar, Naughty Dog, FromSoftware, nor Nintendo's first-party racing arm has matched on Metacritic.
The commercial follow-through is queued up to be even bigger. Forza Horizon 5 ended its run with over 50 million players via the Game Pass on-ramp, and Forza Horizon 6 is launching day-one into both Game Pass and PC Game Pass while also being the first mainline Horizon to ship on Steam at parity. Microsoft is also pointing the game at PlayStation later in 2026 - dated only as "2026" so far - which would be the first time a Forza Horizon entry has gone multiplatform.
The four-day Premium head start
Premium Edition buyers got the keys on May 15 at 12:01am local time on Xbox and Xbox app for PC, and globally at 4:01am UTC on Steam. That's four days of car collecting, Horizon Legends reputation grinding, and 2x credit boosts before the May 19 standard launch opens the gates for Game Pass subscribers and Standard Edition owners. Anyone holding off until the 19th still keeps the Premium owners' progress separated only by a head start - there's no FOMO content lockout, but the leaderboards will already be heated by the time the broader player base shows up.
What to watch from here
Two questions sit on top of the pile. First, can the average hold? Day-one Metacritic scores famously soften as the long tail of mid-tier outlets files in - Forza Horizon 5 opened at 93 and settled at 92, while Resident Evil Requiem opened at 91 and settled at 89. A drop to 91 over the next few weeks would still leave Forza Horizon 6 on top of 2026; a slide to 89 would put it in a three-way tie. Second, the Steam Deck story is shaping up as a quiet sub-plot: Microsoft has formally tagged the game as Verified for Valve's handheld, which means the broadest "play anywhere" pitch yet for a Forza release - cloud, console, PC, handheld, and PS5 later in the year.
For now, the line on the scoreboard is simple. Forza Horizon 6 is the best-reviewed game of 2026 so far, Playground Games has stretched a streak that almost no studio has matched, and the volume is going to grow louder on May 19 when the gates open for everyone.
