Introduction

2024 has been one of Forza’s busiest years yet, as both Forza Horizon 5 and Forza Motorsport continue to receive regular feature and content updates from our developers at Playground Games and Turn 10 Studios.

With so many game updates to keep up with, this year we launched the Forza Newsletter, a periodic notification service that delivers the latest Forza news to your email inbox. Whether you prefer exploring offroad vistas, zooming through chicanes on circuits, or even doing both kinds of racing, there’s something for everyone in the Forza Newsletter. (Psst... keep an eye out, and you might find some in-game goodies in a future newsletter...)

Livery by JDMADIAZ

Forza Community

Cars and community—a combination made possible by game developers and game players, together. The Forza team is continuously inspired by the out-of-the-box and thoughtful creations made by the millions of Forza players across our games. While we’ve shared some examples in this article, our complete “Best of 2024” collections on the forums will let you peruse some of our favorite photos and livery designs. You may find a new signature look for your favorite car, or maybe you’ll be inspired to start creating and sharing your own in-game artistic talents!

• Best of the year in FH5 Photos
• Best of the year in FH5 Liveries
• Best of the year in FM Photos
• Best of the year in FM Liveries

Forza Horizon 5 players--there’s still time to vote for your favorite EventLab creations in this year’s Golden Tank Awards! These fantastical and elaborate races, obstacle courses, puzzles, adventures, and tracks continue to evolve in quality as more players try their hand at building their own blueprint and placing props.

2024 was also the year of creative UGC collaborations. Livery artist PTG Fluex and EventLab expert JohCee came together to produce "Miniracers," a project featuring four unique EventLab creations designed to evoke the charm of racing vintage toy cars in nostalgic and whimsical environments, with liveries inspired by classic toy cars.

The collaborations went far beyond just individual players teaming up; one example is the fan groups Forza Street Wars and the Forza Creators Guild, who partnered to create compelling competitive courses that highlighted the technical skills of EventLab builders while challenging the racers of Street Wars tournaments with exciting and unfamiliar terrain.

Arguably, the biggest Forza Motorsport community event of 2024 was the 9 Hours of Kyalami World Cup, hosted by TORA (The Online Racing Association) and featuring over 100 teams, with 350+ individual drivers. And yes, they all really raced for 9 whole hours! Congratulations to ESV Motorsports!

Livery by FormFirm

Forza Motorsport

2024 was a steady year of progress for Forza Motorsport. Between 12 content updates, the game bolstered its lineup of cars and tracks, while also introducing several new features and quality of life improvements, many of which were inspired by the community voting on Suggestions Hub.

Some of the notable track highlights over the past year include Nürburgring Nordschleife, Sebring International Raceway, Road Atlanta, Sunset Peninsula – last featured in Forza Motorsport 4 – and most recently, Mount Panorama Circuit, Bathurst – home of the V8 Supercars Championship.

Many new and returning cars were also added to the game, such as the 2024 Next-Gen NASCAR, 2024 Ford Mustang RTR, 2019 Ginetta G40 Junior, 2018 Aston Martin #97 AMR Vantage GTE, 2018 Saleen S302 Black Label, 1988 Chevrolet #77 Beretta Trans Am, and even more.

There have been improvements to overall stability and performance, new game modes like Drift, Endurance and Multi-Class, and a host of new feature additions, including Car Proximity Radar, Spectate, Practice & Qualifying in Private Multiplayer, Advanced Car Ghosting, and more. With Challenge Hub, it became possible to earn reward cars by playing either the Career or Featured Multiplayer, and we’ve continued making updates to other aspects of the game, including visual fidelity and audio quality, Drivatar AI, Forza Race Regulations, and Driver & Safety Ratings.

Photo by FRT Davi

As we work towards the future of Forza Motorsport, we started some new community initiatives this year to help ensure we’re going in the right direction. Our team has been sharing progress updates in our letters to the community, and we kicked off a new “In the Garage” Discord AMA series to allow our developers to go deeper into the areas of the game that you care the most about.

We also opened the Forza Insiders Program where you can sign up for the opportunity to participate in playtests of future Forza Motorsport updates on PC or console as well as share your opinions on game content in feedback surveys and our exclusive forums.

We’ve celebrated numerous partnerships throughout 2024, including Mobil 1 – with new Rivals challenges and a rebranding of Maple Valley – as well as Logitech, McLaren, and NASCAR. An undoubtable highlight was our sneaker collaboration with Jordan and professional basketball player Luka Dončić. This included a rendition of Hakone featuring the iconic Jordan brand, and all players were sent a custom 1969 Chevrolet Camaro Jordan Luka 3 Motorsport Edition. Players can compete in the Jordan Luka 3 Motorsport Series using this car – inspired by the shoe – to unlock a special racing suit, and we also made the vehicle available to everyone playing Forza Horizon 5.

Photo by Kerles

Forza Horizon 5

Never thought we could dribble around the roads of the Horizon Festival in a car like the 1969 Chevrolet Camaro Jordan Luka 3 Motorsport Edition, but 2024 was a year with a ton of surprises coming to Forza Horizon 5 that we hope you enjoyed and will keep enjoying while adventuring through Mexico.

We kicked off the year with Community Choice, a content update done partially with members of our community. Our players got the chance to vote which cars, features, and decorations they wanted to see back into the game. The votes were tallied, and the result was a series filled with neon lights at Aeródromo en la Selva, 16 returning stunts, 10 reward cars added to the Autoshow, and a Festival Playlist packed with European Exotics.

That’s not the only time our community came together for an update. Back in March, the Horizon Race-off went live. This update gave our players a collaborative goal: complete street and off-road racing events to unlock two cars for the entire community! A new traveling outpost made its way to the Horizon Festival this series too. The Race-Off Outpost showed players progress on both the street and off-roading challenges, but the past part of this new feature is that it changed its location every week allowing players to explore the map to find it.

Two months after the Race-Off, a wave of retro vibes took over the Horizon Festival with Horizon Retrowave. This content update featured a new start screen players saw (and many chose as their favorite) as soon as the game booted with the update. The Retrowave wasn’t only about the looks, but also the sounds. Forza Horizon 5 welcomed a new synthwave radio station: Horizon Wave. Hosted by Isabel Moss, the new station featured 21 new songs including a streamer friendly “Encanto Remix” by Mitch Murder.

An exciting new game mode came to Forza Horizon 5 this year on the Hidden Horizons update along with all the cars and content: Hide & Seek. This new 5v1 experience had players enjoy a thrilling game of chase between two teams. 5 players joined the game as the Seekers whose job is to find and stay close to the Hider in order to fill their meter. If the meter reached 100% before time runs out or before the Seeker reaches their destination, they took home the win! On the other side, Hiders had to use the environment and NPC cars to cover themselves and stay hidden from the Seekers until the End Zone location was revealed to all players. When the End Zone is revealed, their mission becomes to reach that location before Hiders complete their meter. The following game update, Back to the 90’s, gave players the opportunity to unlock accolades and achievements related to Hide & Seek. We hope you still enjoy hiding and chasing as much as we have!

EventLab creators had a great time this year with all the props added to the game that ranges from coffee cups, racing decorations, highways, elevation pieces, and of course the new Halo props that came in the Horizon Track Day. Our largest Prop Pack ever featured 71 pieces with iconic structures from the Halo franchise such as the Covenant Barricade, UNSC Barricade, Covenant Drop Pod, Energy Shield, Covenant Crate, UNSC Pelican, and more. Most of these pieces came directly from Halo Studios, bringing them right out of Forge Mode and into the Horizon Festival. Three songs from Halo’s OST were also added to the game during this series to FH5’s radio stations. Horizon XS now plays the Halo Theme Gungnir Mix (feat. Steve Vai) and Radio Eterna added Installation 04 and The Trails to its catalogue.

Forza Horizon 5 saw an amazing set of car packs with a large variety of cars, including EVs, superstar racers, pop culture icons, and more. One of our community’s favorites was the Universal Icons Car Pack, which included 5 cars from TV shows and movies: 3 versions of the Back to the Future Time Machine with movie-like lights and sounds, the 1982 Universal Studios K.I.T.T. (featuring the Super Pursuit Bodykit), and the iconic 1992 Universal Studios Jeep Wrangler Sahara ‘Jurassic Park.’

A Fond Farewell to Forza Horizon 4

By the time this article is published, Forza Horizon 4 will no longer be available for purchase at online stores. However, the game is still completely playable, and the game’s servers are still running, so you can still hop in and explore Britain’s beautiful landscapes with other players in the open world! Remember that if you played Forza Horizon 4 on Xbox Game Pass and bought any DLC content for the game, you may be eligible for a game token that you can still redeem. Please take a look at our blog post for more information.

Conclusion

In the grand scheme of time, 2024’s coming and going marks 19 years since the release of the very first Forza game. That’s right—2025 is Forza’s 20th anniversary, and we’re planning some fun activities and surprises for the whole Forza community next year.

Thanks for racing with us this year, and we’ll see you on the road in 2025!