2023 Forza Year in Review

Welcome to the 2023 Forza Year in Review! Another 12 months have passed, which means in true Forza tradition, it’s time to look back at everything that’s happened over the last year. We released Forza Motorsport, celebrated the two-year anniversary of Forza Horizon 5, and introduced some of our biggest updates yet with EventLab 2.0 and the Rally Adventure expansion.

We also gave players a new way to report issues directly to the team with the Troubleshooting Hub and continue to add new cars and features inspired by your input on the Suggestions Hub. In Forza Horizon 5, we introduced the number one community requested car, the 2010 Nissan Tsuru, and upgraded Photo Mode with time of day and weather settings, as well as placement of the driver character outside the car – all of which were highly requested suggestions by players.

Before we dive into the game recaps, let’s celebrate the creative content you’ve been making over the past year. Every week, the Forza Forums hosts themed Photo and Livery contests open to all players. Thanks to everyone who continues to create and submit their content! To celebrate your creativity, we've handpicked our top 5 favorite community photos and liveries from Forza Horizon 5 over the year. You'll see examples in this blog, and we’ve put them together in our ‘Best of 2023’ collection on the Forza Forums:

Best of 2023 in FH5 Photos | Best of 2023 in FH5 Liveries

Community Leaders

Community event organizers are central to Forza's community, inspiring competition, creativity, and ingenuity. With excitement around Forza Motorsport, 2023 saw organizers using all their expertise to craft events and schedules that could straddle the transition from one game to the next. Kudos to you all!

The year kicked off with the brilliant FTC Renault 5 Cup, seeing both great door to door racing and of course the amazing photography for which FTC have earned renowned across the Forza community. By late February the series was cinched by justScotty--despite close competition from Joeyst25. Look out for FTC in 2024 with Race Academy meets running each and every Sunday.

March saw Forza Share Your Creations (previously FH5 Livery & Designs) organize a tribute to the late Ken Block. Go Fast Risk Every Thang' attracted paints that were at once touching and astonishing. The top three liveries came from Kgree27, MrMugello, and SnakeEyes Friex but this was a contest where every entrant, from the Mercedes Tankpool24 Racing Truck to the Gymkhana 10 Ford Hoonicorn Mustang, meant the world. You're always in our hearts, Ken.

May was notable as the beginning of the marathon Envy Drift & PTG Street Masters Drift Championship which would see the community's finest skid-artists competing all the way through to August! Alongside congratulating EDM Atmospheric who took victory, and all the competitors in the drift and concourse contests, we also celebrate those working behind the scenes to put this incredible competition together for the community.

It would not be a Year in Review without mention of the TORA 24 Hours of Mulsanne, which took place in late July. As many predicted, ESV Motorsport exerted their dominance in the event, and indeed TORA's entire endurance calendar. The record ESV carries into 2024 should strike fear into the hearts of the competition as we head into the first year of Forza Motorsport. But then again, there is nothing like a new game to mix up the pecking order!

2023 was the year of Racing Haven. While by October they already had some first events under their belts on Forza Horizon 5, it was their BMW Challenge which launched concurrently with Forza Motorsport that cemented their spot in the top echelon of the community's competitive scene. Huge congratulations to ESV Green who emerged to win from one of the largest set of entrants in recent memory. (And, as an aside, the whole community waits with bated breath for the return of the Racing Haven podcast.)

As the year closes out, we catch up with events that are still ongoing! AR12 is hosting both the AR12 Community Racing Series and the AR12 Racing Championship Presented by Thrustmaster, while Late Night Racing presents a Ford v Ferrari series for lovers of vintage sports cars. There is something for everyone in the Forza community, and we can't wait to see what 2024 has in store.

Forza Motorsport

At the start of the year, we invited our friends at Xbox to Turn 10 Studios as part of Developer_Direct to give you a technical showcase of Forza Motorsport with a behind-the-scenes look at the cars, tracks and audio in the game. We also participated in the Xbox Games Showcase in June, opening pre-orders for Forza Motorsport and showcasing the Builders Cup Career Mode. Before launch, we flew to Cologne for gamescom, demoing new gameplay to our community at an in-person theater experience. Being in Germany, it was the perfect opportunity to reveal the Nürburgring GP circuit would be available in the game, with the Nordschleife coming in spring 2024.

Since the release of Forza Motorsport, we've been listening to your feedback about the game and where you would like to see improvements or changes made. Stay tuned, as we’ll have more to share about these topics early in 2024.

So far, we’ve shipped two major content updates to Forza Motorsport, introducing both Yas Marina and Hockenheim with multiple track layouts for each, new Spotlight cars and Car Pass deliveries, and new weekly events across Career Mode, Featured Multiplayer and Rivals. You can stay up to date with the current active events in Forza Motorsport at Forza.net/Events.

Recently we celebrated two wins at The Game Awards! Thanks to you, Forza Motorsport won both categories it was nominated for: Best Sports/Racing Game and Innovation in Accessibility. We’re also honored to have won IGN’s Best Racing Game of 2023 and Accessibility Innovation in Games in 2023. We love hearing about the features in the game you are enjoying, such as the Featured Multiplayer structure and driving physics, and we’re proud to have our work on Blind Driving Assists and the wide suite of accessibility options recognized by the gaming community. We hope you enjoy building your racing skills in Forza Motorsport for many years to come.

Forza Horizon 5

What a year this has been to adventure through the Horizon Festival in México!

Through 12 game updates you have explored Mexico in different cars, customized your vehicles to truly make them your own, completed thrilling challenges to unlock new, exciting cars, snapped breathtaking pictures for our contests, and created the most amazing events for the community to enjoy.

We are very thankful that you chose to spend 2023 in Forza Horizon 5. Here are some of our favorite moments in the Horizon Festival.

Welcome Our Newest Expansion.

March saw the release of the second expansion that came to Forza Horizon 5: Rally Adventure.

Rally Adventure gave our players a completely new area to explore called Sierra Nueva. This new zone has different biomes that include sand, asphalt, jumps, inclines, forests, and more. Players were now able to enjoy racing and exploring Pueblo Artza, the Abandoned Quarry, Sand Dunes, Desert Gorge, Green Hills, and an entirely smashable Palm Forest.

To go on the perfect off-roading trip, you need the perfect off-roading vehicle, which is why Rally Adventure featured all-new rally parts for car customization as well as the anti-lag system to get those perfect starts. This expansion also brought 10 new-to-Horizon cars made to get a blast on the dirt, mud, and other difficult terrains.

Rally monsters, new biomes, and an interactable environment; if you haven’t had the chance, this is your sign to close 2023 with Forza Horizon 5’s second expansion.

New Permanent Features.

Every update we release for Forza Horizon 5 brings features we hope our players love using. We like to focus on unique themes that enhance your gameplay experience each month.

Although most updates are intended to last only for a single month, we listen to our community very closely and have made some of your favorite additions permanent.

This year, for example, the Summer Party update made the longer night cycles (introduced in Midnights at Horizon) a permanent feature. Even though they do not last as much as their original counterpart, the longer night cycle allows players to explore Mexico’s unique landscape and biomes under a different light.

It’s round, it’s fast, and it’s permanent! First introduced on the High-Performance series in April, the Oval Track was a huge success with our players, and we were ecstatic you enjoyed it! The Oval Track is always available to host a Road Racing event at any time.

Snapping the Perfect Year.

Explore the Horizon was released in May of this year, and with it came a feature many of our players were asking for: an upgraded Photo Mode to take front cover-worthy photos of their favorite cars in the many gorgeous backdrops Mexico has to offer.

Of course, our community of talented creators put the new features implemented in this update to good use as you can see on our many Photo Contests held on our social media accounts. We are very eager to see what you guys come up with for next year and many more to come.

If you want to learn how to take advantage of the new features added to Photo Mode and upgrade your snapshooting skills, take a look at our Forza Horizon 5 Photo Mode Guide.

Fueling the Community’s Creative Spirit.

Our community members never stop creating awesome and unique events that everyone can enjoy. We have seen everything from extreme challenges, fun tours, and completely new game modes designed in EventLab. However, we wanted to step up the creation game and give you better tools to create the huge events you always dreamt of making, which is why we built an entire series around inventing: Horizon Creatives.

This new update put EventLab 2.0 in the hands of our creators to help with their creation process. The multi-selection mode allowed Props to be mass selected and then edited in a group. Players could grab several individual props and then rotate them, move them around, and duplicate them. You could now group props together into a new “mega prop” called a Prefab that could be easily saved, reused in your events, and shared so others could use them as well.

A new location made for creating events was also added in this update, EventLab Island provided creators with a massive blank canvas to put together larger and more exciting events and game modes.

Our Most Requested Car Makes Its Appearance.

The Día de Muertos update meant to recreate this iconic Mexican holiday and include as many references to Mexican folklore as possible. We had marigold stands and petals lying around the Festival, inflatable skulls decorating the streets, and alebrijes of many different forms to find.

This celebration of Mexican culture and folklore would not be complete without Mexico’s automotive sweetheart: the 2010 Nissan Tsuru which we brought as a Festival Playlist reward car for the Día de Muertos update.

The Tsuru, as unbelievable as it sounds, was our most requested car on the Suggestions Hub, and what a more fitting time to bring it to the Horizon Festival than Día de Muertos.

Rolling Out the Red Carpet for Our Partnerships.

The Horizon Festival was starstruck this year, as we had the fortune of collaborating with two brands of huge relevance in automotive history.

The Upgrade Heroes update in July gave us the chance to be everything we wanted to be, adding memorable pieces from Barbie’s history to Forza Horizon 5 as limited-time free gifts. A blast from the past came with Barbie’s pink 1956 Chevrolet Corvette. This Barbie can also go off-roading with the 2022 GMC Hummer Barbie Edition.

This December, we planned our next heist with the Fast X Car Pack, which included five cars from Fast X including the 1970 Dodge Charger and 2022 Flip Car 2.0. You can drive these two, and three more cars from the Fast X film with the Fast X Car Pack available now for $9.99 USD.

Start the New Year with a Huge Throwback.

What better way to start the new year than with a series co-created with you! Community Choice is one of many ways we have to show how much we appreciate our fans.

We sent out a survey asking our players what rewards, challenges, and other features they would like to see in the next series, and their response was amazing!

See us in January when Community Choice goes live featuring the highly acclaimed and requested neon decorations and Neon Cube collectible from Midnights at Horizon as well as plenty of other returning stunts, challenges and rewards on the Festival Playlist and coming to the Autoshow.

Celebrating Our Community.

The Golden Tank Awards are just around the corner!

Celebrate the magnificent creations of our community and vote for your favorite EventLab creations, Prefabs, and more content made entirely by players and for the players.

Make sure to cast your vote at aka.ms/GoldenTankAwards2023 and help your favorite creators take home the coveted Golden Tank Award.

Keep creating and we might see you in next year’s shortlist!

Thanks for Racing!

The biggest highlight we have is and always will be our amazing community. Whether you are a player, a builder, creator, event runner, or anything along those lines, we celebrate all the passion and love you have for the entire Forza franchise.

We hope you have enjoyed the content we put out and that you spent wonderful hours racing in the world’s most famous tracks, going on adventures around Mexico, or customizing your favorite vehicles.

Keep adventuring and we’ll see you at the starting line.