Playground Games will host a special live stream this coming Thursday, February 23, to announce the second expansion for Forza Horizon 5.
It’s something PG has been teasing for a little while, with the last word on it before today coming back in December and promising an “early 2023” launch. That timeline looks to have been accurate with the news it’s ready to reveal it; a launch is usually not that far down the road from the announcement with Horizon expansions.
At the moment we have very little information to go on for what the expansion might bring, although we can make some basic assumptions: there’ll be new cars, a new map area, and new races and missions to fill your time.
We’ve also been speculating that it’s likely to be a more grounded entry — quite literally — than the Hot Wheels expansion from mid-2022. That’s based on the fact the previous two titles have both had a “real-world” expansion and a toy expansion, and although they’re arriving in a different order this time the pattern looks to be holding.
Reinforcing that is PG’s choice of teaser image for the stream, which shows what looks like a new area of Mexico with some terrain we’ve never seen before — including a rock formation similar to the Pena de Bernal monolith, 80 miles east of the real Guanajuato.
There’s also an outpost in the bowl below which looks to sport the same orange colors as the game’s dirt racing-focused “Horizon Wilds” theme, hinting at off-road racing as a core feature.
We can’t quite make out the signage in the teaser, but there looks to be a word beginning “Ba” behind the trucks on the right. That’s possibly “Baja”, which fits in with some existing themes, but measuring the signs suggests it could be a longer word of around eight letters.
We won’t have to wait long to find out, with the reveal stream beginning at 1700 UTC on Thursday, February 23.
Just after the conclusion of that stream, Playground will shift on to reveal what’s coming up for all players in Series 18 of Forza Horizon 5, “Horizon Wilds”.
That’s going to focus on the dirt racing category of the game, and we’re expecting a multitude of events that all feature the rough stuff — although the precise details are under wraps until Thursday’s streams.
One thing we already knew was the return of the Hoonigan Gymkhana 9 Ford Focus RS RX during the series, in tribute to the late Ken Block, however the cover image for the stream also reveals the Audi Sport quattro S1 will be returning to the game. That may also be connected to the Ken Block tribute, with the legendary driver switching to the Audi brand in recent years.
This Forza Monthly stream will go live at 1800 UTC, also on Thursday February 23.
See more articles on Forza Horizon 5 DLC and Forza Horizon 5 Game Updates.
