Forza Horizon 6 immediately beats its predecessor's all-time Steam record with 130,000 concurrent players – and that's only counting people willing to pay $120 for early access

Forza Horizon 6 gameplay screenshot — (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)

Forza Horizon 6 has already far surpassed the peak player count of its predecessor on Steam, and that's just from people who paid $120 to play early.

Microsoft's premiere racing franchise is always a bit of a low-key heavy hitter. Forza Horizon 6 has already beaten Pokemon Pokopia, Mewgenics, and Resident Evil Requiem to become 2026's best-rated game of the year, but the series rarely gets the recognition it rightfully deserves when it comes to awards. But, clearly its stock is rising somewhat within the community, as the games are performing better every time a new one launches. Forza Horizon 5 was one of the best-selling PS5 games when it finally came to the platform.

And, despite the game having a leak so prominent that the developers had to respond, with players already modding the game before it was officially out, Forza Horizon 6 is off to a massive start from players who really wanted to play it early. The official release date for Forza Horizon 6 is next Tuesday, May 19, but for those who sprung for the £110 / $120 Premium Edition version of the game, you can start playing it today. And it looks like a massive amount of players did.

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At the time of writing, Forza Horizon 6 is sitting at a peak of 135,081 concurrent players per SteamDB, and that number has kept growing the entire time I've been writing this, so there's no telling where it's actually going to end up landing. However, it's a notable number regardless, as Forza Horizon 5 only peaked at 81,096 players when it launched back in 2021. Plus, keep in mind a lot of players will be playing the game through Xbox, too.

Obviously, Japan has been a highly-requested setting for the series since it launched – as it is for any open-world series that changes setting with each entry (just ask Assassin's Creed) – but the choice to finally do it has clearly paid off. And I can only expect that number of players to grow after the full game launches next week.