Forza Horizon 6 hit 172,093 concurrent players on Steam during its Premium Edition early access window – and that’s before a single standard-edition buyer could log in, per SteamDB. Every person in that count paid $120 for the privilege of getting in early, and the game was sitting at number two on Steam’s global top sellers chart – having jumped three spots in a single week – days ahead of its official May 19, 2026 launch date.
Here’s the context: Forza Horizon 5 set the previous series high-water mark on Steam with a peak of 81,096 concurrent players – itself a record at the time, surpassing Forza Horizon 4‘s peak of 75,689. Horizon 6 has already more than doubled that figure before most players even have access, as reported by VG247. The game has also spent 16 weeks on Steam’s global top sellers list heading into launch, with analytics firm Alinea Analytics estimating over 500,000 pre-sales on Steam alone – translating to nearly $30 million in Steam revenue before the standard edition even opened. That’s the kind of runway that makes a record launch look less like a surprise and more like an inevitability.
Honestly, the raw concurrent figure undersells what’s actually happening here. This isn’t a story about a game doing well on PC – it’s a story about a racing title headlining platform-wide charts in a way that racing games simply don’t, which is a genuinely unusual thing for the genre to be doing. Xbox and Windows Store player counts aren’t reflected in Steam‘s numbers at all, and Forza Horizon 6 isn’t even in the Game Pass catalogue yet – meaning every single player driving those peaks made a deliberate, paid decision to be there. The critical reception backs up the enthusiasm, and with a PlayStation 5 release still to come on top of the full PC and Xbox rollout, these early Steam numbers look less like a ceiling and more like a floor.
Watch for whether the May 19 standard launch pushes Steam concurrent players past 270,000 – the threshold that would make Forza Horizon 6 not just the biggest Forza launch on PC but arguably the highest-ever peak for a racing game on the platform. Beyond day one, the first seasonal festival playlist will be the real signal: whether those record-setting numbers convert into the kind of weekly active audience that keeps Horizon 5 still charting years after its own launch. If you’re curious what the game’s Japan setting brings to the formula, we’ve broken down everything we know about the map.
Did you pay for early access, or are you holding out for the May 19 launch? And does Forza Horizon 6‘s premium early-access model feel like good value, or a worrying sign of where game pricing is heading? Sound off in the comments below, and keep your eyes on GameLuster for more Forza Horizon 6 coverage.
