Forza Horizon 6 vs. Forza Horizon 5: Is Japan Actually Worth the Upgrade?

When it was announced that Forza Horizon 6 would be set in Japan, the reaction was predictable. "It's just FH5 with cherry blossoms." The internet said it, Reddit said it, YouTube comment sections said it.

But that take is wrong. A new location alone wouldn't justify a new game – everyone knows that. So let's actually look at what changed, what got better, and where FH5 still has the edge — for players trying to figure out whether to make the jump.

🗺 The Map: Mexico vs. Japan

Size

Forza Horizon 5's Mexico map covers 108 square kilometres, which made it 50% bigger than FH4's Great Britain. At launch in 2021, Playground Games was right to be proud of it.

FH6's Japan map is bigger than every previous Horizon entry combined.

The number that keeps coming up: Tokyo City is five times larger than Guanajuato, FH5's signature city. The single urban district in FH6 is bigger than FH5's most iconic location.

• FH5 – 108 km², Mexico, 6 biomes.
• FH6 – The largest map in Horizon history. Tokyo City alone is 5x the size of FH5's Guanajuato

Terrain

The geography itself is also very different. Mexico was wide but relatively flat — you had the volcano, the desert, the jungle, the coast, and that was mostly it.

Japan adds real vertical terrain. Mountain passes cut through the alpine region, including Mt. Haruna and Bandai Azuma (the two confirmed touge locations). Industrial docklands wrap Tokyo's waterfront. Shibuya Crossing drops you into the densest urban grid any Horizon game has attempted.

Real landmarks, ones you'd recognise instantly, anchor the map in a way that Mexico's more generic regions couldn't quite pull off.

Seasons

One genuinely clever change: Japan's alpine zone carries permanent snow, independent of whatever season the game is currently running. For the first time in the franchise, snow tyres have a year-round reason to exist.

And the seasons themselves? They are described as "more dramatic than Mexico" — which, given that Mexican winter is basically autumn elsewhere, is a low bar they clear easily.

Japan gets actual summer haze, real fog in the mountain passes, cherry blossoms in spring. The environmental variety between seasons is meaningfully different rather than cosmetically tweaked.

Here's a brief preview (by IGN):

🏅 The New Wristband System

This is the one that actually changes how the game feels to play.

FH5 had an open structure. You could race anything, in any order, more or less from the start. The progression loop was: earn Influence, hit Rank 200, Prestige, repeat. It worked fine. But it also meant the game had no meaningful gates, no sense of unlocking something you'd actually been working toward.

FH6 uses a wristband system: seven tiers of progression running from Tourist at the bottom to Horizon Legend at the top. Each tier unlocks the next car class, new event types, and new regions.

The seven tiers are:

1. 🟡 Tourist (Yellow) — Starting point. D-class and C-class access
2. 🟢 Green — B-class unlocked, regional races open up
3. 🔵 Blue — A-class events, Touge Qualifiers available
4. 🌸 Pink — S1-class, major Festival events
5. 🟠 Orange— S2-class racing, competitive circuits
6. 🟣 Purple — R-class events, endgame content
7. 🏅 Horizon Legend (Gold) — Full access, including exclusive Legend Island

Legend Island is the endgame. FH5 never had anything quite like it — an exclusive zone you can only reach after real, sustained progression.

The honest downside: if you've got 3 hours a week to play, the wristband climb will grind on you before you reach the cars you actually care about. We see this constantly — players who buy FH6, love the first few hours, then hit a wall trying to unlock the class they actually want to race. That friction is real and worth knowing before you buy.

🆕 What's Actually New in FH6

Beyond the wristband system, the game has seven mechanics that have no equivalent in FH5 at all:

1. Touge Battles
2. Aftermarket Cars
3. Drag Meets
4. Time Attack Circuits
5. Horizon CoLab
   
6. The Estate
7. Horizon Rush

1. Touge Battles

They are the obvious one for anyone who grew up with Initial D. Nighttime mountain pass racing, uphill versus downhill, tight technical corners. Mt. Haruna and Bandai Azuma are the two confirmed locations.

This isn't a reskinned sprint event — it's a dedicated competitive mode that suits Japan specifically and would've felt forced in Mexico.

Here's a video on Touges (by VidaarWKO):

2. Aftermarket Cars

They are rare modified vehicles parked at hotspot locations across the open world. You find them, test drive them, and buy them for less than the standard Autoshow price.

The inventory and locations rotate, so there's a reason to keep exploring the map rather than fast-travelling everywhere. Nothing like this existed in FH5.

Learn more about aftermarket cars in this video overview (by TmarTn2):

3. Drag Meets

They take FH5's informal drag strip and formalise it properly: 12-player lobbies, synchronised starting lights, structured competition. If you've played FH5's drag racing and felt like it was missing something, that something was this.

Here's a brief explainer video (by MARZ TUNING):

4. Time Attack Circuits

They are purpose-built tracks embedded in the open world, where lap times earn Credits and XP. FH5 had rivals leaderboards. FH6 gives you physical venues on the map.

5. Horizon CoLab

This is the multiplayer version of FH5's EventLab creation tool. Up to 12 players can now build courses and events together in real time.

FH5's EventLab was solo-only. CoLab turns it into an actual shared experience.

6. The Estate

This is FH6's base-building mechanic: a mountainside property where you place permanent structures, roads, ramps, and obstacles funded through in-game earnings. Nothing remotely like this was in FH5.

7. Horizon Rush

It's the new obstacle-course event category, tied to the wristband progression. FH5 had PR Stunts as its standalone challenge type. Horizon Rush is a fuller, structured replacement.

Take a look at a shot video preview of this mode (by Forza Clips):

🏎 Cars: 550+ at Launch

FH5 launched with 500+ cars in November 2021 and grew to over 540 through DLC and updates. FH6 launches with 550+ cars — plus a new class FH5 never had.

R Class

The all-new R Class sits above S2 in the performance hierarchy: track-focused, purpose-built racing machines.

FH5's class structure ran from D through S2 and X, which left a gap at the serious track-racing end. R Class fills it. Players who hit the S2 ceiling in FH5 now have somewhere to go.

Car roster

The JDM representation is exactly what you'd expect from a Japan-set game.

Nissan Skyline GT-R, Mazda RX-7, Mazda RX-3, Honda NSX-R, Toyota AE86, Nissan Silvia S15, Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, Toyota Supra MK4, Autozam AZ-1 — these are confirmed at launch. 

They're the cars that built Japan's car culture, on the roads and mountain passes where they actually ran.

Cover cars are the 2025 Toyota GR GT Prototype and 2025 Toyota Land Cruiser. Pre-order gets you an exclusive pre-tuned Ferrari J50.

Motorcycles aren't drivable

One thing worth clarifying: motorcycles aren't driveable in FH6. They appear as props on the map, same as dirt bikes did in FH5. We know this comes up a lot — Japan and bikes feel like a natural pair. But Playground has confirmed it: props only.

👍 Where FH6 Is Genuinely Better

No more Xbox One dragging everything down

FH5 launched still supporting the 2013 Xbox One. That constraint wasn't invisible — it capped asset quality, world simulation complexity, and draw distances across the whole game, even for players on a Series X.

FH6 is the first Horizon title built exclusively for the 9th-gen hardware: Xbox Series X|S, PC, and PS5. That matters more than any bullet point about ray tracing.

On PC specifically, FH6 runs full ray-traced global illumination — not just car surface reflections as in FH5, but actual environmental light bounce. On console, screen-space reflections replace full ray-tracing, but the asset ceiling is dramatically higher without a decade-old machine setting limits.

The audio system gets a Triton Acoustics spatial reverb upgrade: new car recordings, remastered engine notes, turbo and backfire effects that respond to real-world geometry. Driving through an underpass in FH6 sounds different from driving in an open field. FH5 didn't model that.

Cross-play that was planned from the start

FH5 added PS5 in April 2025 — four years after launch — and cross-platform multiplayer came later still, as something bolted on. FH6 launches with full cross-play and cross-save across Xbox, PC, PS5, and Steam from day one. Your progress carries across platforms from the first session.

Seasons that actually feel different

Mexico is a tropical country. FH5's "winter" looked like a mild autumn. Japan's climate range gives FH6's seasons something to work with: summer heat haze on mountain horizons, dense fog through the passes in autumn, genuine alpine snowfall, cherry blossoms in spring. The environmental difference between seasons is substantial rather than subtle.

Cockpit view that's actually usable online

Car Proximity Radar is an optional HUD feature that shows nearby vehicles in your blind spots — designed specifically for cockpit camera during multiplayer. FH5's cockpit view was beautiful and practically blind at speed. This fixes that for people who prefer it.

💪 What FH5 Still Does Better (Be Honest About This)

FH5 has four years of live-service content. That gap is real, and it's not small.

The garage

FH5 has 900+ cars after all the DLC, versus FH6's 550+ at launch. If having the widest possible selection of vehicles matters more to you than new mechanics, FH5 wins that comparison for at least the first year of FH6's life.

The community content

FH5 has years of EventLab creations, fan-built events, and community knowledge baked in. Every barn find location has been mapped. Every PR stunt has a tutorial video. FH6 starts from scratch. CoLab is exciting, but it launches empty.

The open progression

FH5's Accolades system lets you do whatever you want in whatever order you want. Some players genuinely prefer that. The wristband system is a better design in theory, but better design and better for you aren't always the same thing.

Game install size

And FH6 is 100 GB on launch day. Not a dealbreaker, but worth knowing if you're on a capped connection or running tight on SSD space.

🏁 The Completion Problem

FH5 takes about 135 hours to fully complete, according to HowLongToBeat community data. At 1.5 hours a day, that's 90 days of focused play.

FH6 is bigger. All seven Wristband tiers, the full Discover Japan Collection Journal with photography stamps at landmarks across the map, Barn Finds across rural Japan, Horizon Stories, Horizon Rush events, and every achievement in the base game. Then post-launch content starts adding to that total.

The realistic estimate for FH6 100% completion: 160 to 180 hours. Possibly more once episodic content arrives. That's based on what we're seeing from early players — the Discover Japan stamp system alone adds a significant layer that FH5's Accolades didn't have in the same concentrated way.

🎮 PS5 Players: Here's Where You Stand

FH6 launches on Xbox Series X|S and PC on May 19, 2026. Premium Edition gets you four days early, from May 15. Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass includes the game at no extra cost from day one.

PS5 players are waiting. Microsoft confirmed a PS5 release later in 2026 — no date yet as of June 2026.

The PS5 market for Forza is real. FH5 sold 5.1 million PS5 copies in its first eight months on PlayStation, generating over $300 million in PS5 revenue alone, per Alinea Analytics. When FH6 hits PlayStation, demand will be there.

🤔 Is FH6 Worth It?

The short version: yes, for most FH5 players. But with some honest caveats.

Get FH6 if...

You finished or plateaued in FH5 and want something structurally different. The wristband progression, Touge Battles, Aftermarket Cars, and the Japan setting aren't window dressing — they change how the game plays.

If you care about JDM culture, mountain pass racing, or just want the best-looking Horizon game ever made, this is it. Cross-play from day one is a genuine improvement over how FH5 handled it.

Stick with FH5 for now if...

You're still mid-way through its content library, or if progression gating genuinely puts you off. FH5's open structure is still there, still works, and has 900 cars waiting for you. PS5 players without the patience to wait should also stay put.

The "just FH5 in Japan" criticism gets harder to defend the more you look at the specifics. Seven new game systems, a fundamentally different progression structure, a map that dwarfs FH5's, and a technical foundation that drops 13-year-old hardware constraints for the first time. That's not a reskin.

Japan is worth it. FH5 was great. FH6 is built on top of that and then some.

🆚 FH6 vs. FH5: Side-by-Side

ℹ️ FAQ

Is Forza Horizon 6 bigger than FH5?

Yes. FH6's Japan map is the largest in Horizon franchise history. Tokyo City alone is five times the size of FH5's Guanajuato. The map adds genuine vertical terrain — alpine passes, mountain routes, urban density — that Mexico didn't have.

Is FH6 on Game Pass?

Yes. Forza Horizon 6 is on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (Xbox Series X|S and cloud) and PC Game Pass from May 19, 2026, at no extra cost. The Premium Upgrade gives four days of early access from May 15.

Can I transfer my FH5 progress to FH6?

No. FH6 is a separate game with its own progression system. Your FH5 cars, credits, Accolades, and Prestige don't carry over. You start fresh at Tourist Wristband.

Is FH6 coming to PS5?

Yes, later in 2026. Xbox and PC launch is May 19. Microsoft confirmed PS5 for later this year with no specific date yet.

Is FH6 worth buying if I already own FH5?

For most players, yes. The Wristband system, seven new game modes, Japan's larger map, and the 9th-gen technical baseline represent a real step forward, not a reskin. The exception: if you dislike progression gating, FH5's open structure suits you better.

How many cars does FH6 have vs. FH5?

FH6 launches with 550+ cars. FH5 launched with 500+ in 2021 and grew to 900+ over four years of DLC. FH6 also adds the R Class, a vehicle tier above S2 that didn't exist in FH5.

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