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From the varied roads of Colorado in the US to the vibrant, cactus-filled plains of Mexico, Playground Games' Forza Horizon series has put us behind the wheel of various sprawling locations. Drawing inspiration from their real-world counterparts, each iteration has brought us a more expansive and impressive open-world than the last. But if you thought Forza Horizon 5's open-world shifted it up a gear, Forza Horizon 6 is about to go full throttle in one of the series' most exciting and ambitious locations yet: Japan.
Officially announced during Tokyo Game Show, the trailer took us through the series location history, before revealing Japan and confirming that Forza Horizon 6 is set to land on Xbox Series X/S and PC sometime in 2026 (with a PS5 release to come later). In light of the big reveal, I sat down with art director Don Arceta and cultural consultant Kyoko Yamashita to chat about the next setting we'll be racing through – one which has been requested for a long time.
"It's been something that the fans have been wishing for, ever since Forza Horizon 1, Forza Horizon 2," Arceta says with a smile. "It's been kind of a dream location for a lot of players. And even as developers of the series, it's been a dream location for us as well. So we're so excited not only that it's announced, but that the next game actually is in Japan."
Car culture
Japan has set the scene for some big releases this year, with the likes of Assassin's Creed Shadows and the upcoming open-world adventure, Ghost of Yotei – both of which turn back the clock and draw us into the feudal era. It's been having something of a moment this year, that's for sure, and with Arceta highlighting that players have been hoping for Japan to host the Forza Horizon festival since the early days of Forza Horizon, the first question I have to ask is an obvious one: why now?
"Whenever we choose a location, it's quite a process. It's like choosing the location for the Olympics, there's a long list, short list, and there's a lot of discussion," Arceta says. "This time around, because of the way the games kind of evolved over each iteration, and actually, in the technology that we have grown and developed to actually create these open worlds, it's those two things that now made it the right time for, 'Hey, we can actually do Japan right', because we can only do Japan once and we want to do it right. Hence also why we have been working closely with Kyoko [Yamashita] to make sure we're being authentic and respectful with this location."
As Arceta mentioned, part of doing Japan "right" saw Playground Games bring Yamashita on board as a consultant. Working with the team for the past year and a half to help them realize the location, Yamashita tells me she's been involved in the games industry on a professional level for almost three decades, but since she's always had a personal interest in cars and automotive culture, which started when she was a young girl, working on Forza Horizon 6 married those worlds together perfectly.
We have been working closely with Kyoko [Yamashita] to make sure we're being authentic and respectful with this location.
Don Arceta, art director
Growing up in California, Yamashita spent a "significant" number of years in Tokyo, constantly going back and forth between Japan and the West Coast. Adding that she even lived in Japan during her teen years, she observed and experienced first-hand the many car cultures and subcultures embedded in Japan – from the big automotive manufacturers to motorsports, gatherings, meet-ups, and even Van Life: "any subculture within the larger umbrella of cars, automotive, anything on two and four wheels, was [and] is very mainstream. So it was almost like I couldn't ignore it," Yamashita says.
With Yamashita along for the ride, the team also went on location to experience this rich culture for themselves: "I think when you see things in different environments and the context of where you are," Yamashita says, "whether in the countryside just roaming around and all of a sudden, [you] see a gathering of folks with specific car types and models, versus what you see in a large parking area that is known to just gather all kinds of car people. It was just that sort of dynamic being able to show, from my side, a taste of what it's like for car culture to be so huge in Japan."
"We never set out to make a location one-to-one," Arceta says. "It's always capturing the spirit of the location, and trying to do that in an authentic way and obviously a respectful way. We use a lot of real life data as much as we can to build our world; so a lot of satellite data for the terrain, we take a lot of 3D scans of objects actually on location, a lot of reference photography. We capture skies. So, you know, there's a lot there that we take".
Tokyo (Drift)
This map that we've created for Japan, or Horizon's version of Japan, is big, but also dense. There's always something around the corner for you to discover and see.
Don Arceta, art director
But the thing that "makes a Horizon game, a Horizon game", as Arceta puts it, is how the team "interprets that real world data and the authentic elements" and turns it into a "fun Horizon experience". While the team are keeping quiet about specific features we can expect to see in Japan, Arceta does share that Forza Horizon 6 is "the most approachable and welcoming game", with all of the Horizon freedom of "just driving around the world" in "areas where it is just completely breathtaking".
Describing Japan as a location that's "full of contrast", Arceta highlights how that the team has tried to not just create "new driving experiences", but "new driving experiences that capture the location", too, with everything from "vibrant tight city streets" to "mountain roads and nice open plains" that we can expect to speed our way through. And since the changing "seasons are a big deal in Japanese culture", they will feed into the experience in Forza Horizon 6's world.
What's undoubtedly most exciting, though, is the sense of scale Playground is promising with its take on Japan. Arceta states "it is our biggest map yet", and not only that, but it's the "most full" of any Forza Horizon map so far. And as if that wasn't enough to get my motor running, he shares one particular part of the map which feeds into those "tight city streets".
"This map that we've created for Japan, or Horizon's version of Japan, is big, but also dense. There's always something around the corner for you to discover and see. And also one area I'm really excited about that is also bigger, is our urban area, which is Tokyo city. That's the biggest city that we've done in a Horizon game yet."
You read that right, we'll be able to drive through Tokyo city in what Arceta says is the "most ambitious" city the team has created to date, adding that "it's really layered and complex". As it turns out, it's the contrasts of Japan, and that layered complexity of Tokyo that also speak to the question of why it wasn't until Forza Horizon 6 that the team felt like they could do Japan justice.
"Working with Xbox Series X, we worked with that on Horizon 5, and we've really grown to understand that technology for Horizon 6," Arceta says. "But technology and console aside, our workflows and the way we built our worlds throughout each iteration, for Forza Horizon 6 [we took] lots of learnings from past games".
"An example is Forza Horizon 5's Hot Wheel expansion," Arceta continues. "We actually developed a new way to create those orange tracks that go around the road to get the best quality and have it be authentic [to Hot Wheels]. We've actually leveraged and built off that tech to build elevated roads that weave and web around Tokyo City."
I'm assured, of course, that we won't be seeing big orange tracks around Tokyo, but elevated roads that will offer up "something fresh and new" for us when we get behind the wheel next year. From everything I've heard so far, it sounds like Playground Games is gearing up to bring us its most impressive open-world yet, which, as Arceta teases, promises to really immerse us in the beautiful scenery and culture of Japan.
"Japan's a breathtaking location, but I think they'll be surprised just how much more of the culture we've tried to integrate into Horizon 6 outside of just the location," Arceta says. "So obviously there's car culture, but there's different festivals and other cultural aspects that we actually wanted to inject a lot more into this game. I think we kind of dipped our toe in that a bit with Horizon 5. But working closely with Kyoko, I think people will be surprised; they'll probably learn a bit more about this location than they might expect."
Forza Horizon 6 is currently set to release sometime in 2026 on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox Game Pass and PC, with a PS5 release set to come "post-launch".
