The Crew: Motorfest wants to be a festival you can drive through. Ubisoft Ivory Tower built the third game in The Crew series around a Hawaiian open world, and it released on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. A Nintendo Switch 2 version is due October 8, 2026. Its published critical score, an aggregate drawn from five outlets, sits at 7.8 out of 10.
Trailer, via Ubisoft.
A Scaled-Down Oʻahu and Maui
The map is not Hawaii. It is a scaled-down version of the islands of Oʻahu and Maui, and the game never pretends otherwise. That compression is the whole point: you can cross an island in minutes, and the world stays dense enough that something is always within reach.
Players control cars, boats, and planes across that open world. The mix matters more than it sounds. A plane gives you a view of the coast that a car cannot, and a boat opens water that would otherwise be scenery. The Crew: Motorfest treats all three as first-class vehicles rather than side attractions, and the game is better for it.
The perspective shifts between first person and third person, and the modes cover single player, multiplayer, and co-operative play. That is a wide net. It also means the game rarely forces you into a corner — you can race alone, race with a crew, or race against a crowd.
The Playlists Are the Game
The main part of The Crew: Motorfest is “Playlists.” These are series of staged events, side activities, and challenges, each built around a theme. As of July 2026, there are 32 of them.
The themes run from vintage cars to RC cars to Lamborghini, Porsche 911, Ferrari, BMW, and NASCAR. There are also collaborations with influencers and lifestyle brands, including Supercar Blondie, Liberty Walk, Donut Media, and Red Bull.
That list is the clearest statement of what this game is. It is not a simulation of motorsport. It is a festival program, and the Playlists are its stages. A Lamborghini playlist and a Donut Media playlist sit side by side, and the game asks you to treat them as equally valid ways to spend an evening.
The main part of the game is “Playlists”, which consist of a series of staged events, side activities, and challenges.
The structure draws comparisons to the Forza Horizon series, and the comparison is fair. The festival serves as the main area for accessing the various events in the game. That is the same trick Forza Horizon has run for years, and The Crew: Motorfest does not hide the borrowing.
Grand Race and Demolition Royale
Multiplayer splits into two headline modes. The Grand Race is a long race, approximately 10 minutes, with 28 players online split into three sections for three tiers of racing.
The sections and tiers are chosen at random and swap every 30 minutes. The race route is random for every race. That randomness is the mode’s best feature and its main risk: you cannot master a Grand Race, only survive one.
Demolition Royale is the demolition derby-based battle royale mode. Up to 32 players are put into crews, and the goal is to drive demolition-type vehicles to destroy the racers of other crews inside a shrinking safe area.
Power-ups spawn in the safe area to give racers an advantage, such as shields and health. The mode ends when only one crew still has at least one racer remaining. It is a strange fit for a racing game on paper, and it works better than it should, because the vehicles are built to be hit.
The Main Stage Keeps Running
The Main Stage is the game’s live-service mode. It consists of a monthly theme with unique limited-time rewards. Each week of each month, players earn experience toward those rewards.
This is where The Crew: Motorfest shows its commercial skeleton. A monthly theme is a schedule, not a design. It gives players a reason to return, and it gives the game a way to keep the Playlists feeling current without rebuilding the world.
The risk is familiar. Live-service racing lives or dies on whether the monthly theme is worth the return trip. The Crew: Motorfest has 32 Playlists to lean on, which is a deep bench, but a monthly theme is only as good as the rewards attached to it.
What Started as The Crew 2 DLC
The Crew: Motorfest originally started development as DLC for The Crew 2 before becoming a standalone title. That origin explains a lot about the final game.
It is the sequel to 2018’s The Crew 2 and the third game in The Crew series. It carries forward the online multiplayer features referred to in game as a “crew,” and it keeps the series’ habit of letting you drive things that are not cars.
But the festival framing is new, and the Hawaii setting is new, and the Playlists are new. This is a game that grew past its original container. The result is not a DLC-sized idea stretched thin. It is a full release with a clear organizing principle.
The Switch 2 version, due October 8, 2026, will be the first test of how the scaled-down islands hold up on that hardware. Ubisoft has not said how the port will run, and the Playlist structure is the part most likely to survive the trip intact.
A 7.8, and What It Means
The Crew: Motorfest has received generally positive reviews from critics. Its published critical score sits at 7.8 out of 10, an aggregate drawn from five outlets. That number is the right neighborhood, and it is worth explaining why.
A 7.8 is not a verdict of greatness. It is a verdict of competence with a clear identity. The Crew: Motorfest knows what it is: a festival racing game with a compressed Hawaii, three vehicle types, and a Playlist structure that turns car culture into a menu. It executes that idea without much friction.
The strongest argument for the game is the Playlists. Thirty-two of them, spanning vintage cars, RC cars, Lamborghini, Porsche 911, Ferrari, BMW, and NASCAR, plus brand collaborations with Supercar Blondie, Liberty Walk, Donut Media, and Red Bull. That is not a content dump. It is a curated set of reasons to keep driving, and the variety keeps the game from settling into one rhythm.
The weakest argument is the live-service layer. The Main Stage runs on monthly themes and limited-time rewards, which is a retention mechanic first and a design idea second. It asks for a recurring commitment that the rest of the game does not require. Players who want to race through the Playlists and stop will find plenty to do. Players who want the monthly rewards will find themselves on a schedule.
The Grand Race and Demolition Royale sit between those poles. The Grand Race is the better of the two: 28 players, three tiers, three sections, random routes, and a 30-minute rotation that keeps the format from going stale. Demolition Royale is the more distinctive one, and the more divisive. A 32-player demolition derby battle royale is not what most people picture when they hear “racing game,” and the shrinking safe area and power-up spawns push it further from the genre’s center.
That is fine. The Crew: Motorfest benefits from not being only one thing. The game’s willingness to put cars, boats, and planes in the same world, and to put a NASCAR playlist next to a Red Bull collaboration, is the same instinct that produced Demolition Royale. It is a game assembled from enthusiasms, and most of them land.
The comparison to Forza Horizon will follow The Crew: Motorfest for as long as it exists. That is fair, and it is also limiting. The Crew: Motorfest does not beat Forza Horizon at its own game, and it does not try to. It offers a different map, a different vehicle mix, and a Playlist structure that treats car culture as a set of scenes rather than a single ladder.
Where it falls short is in the parts that are meant to last forever. The Main Stage is a treadmill, and the game’s long-term identity depends on whether that treadmill keeps producing themes worth running. The Playlists are the foundation. The monthly rewards are the upkeep.
For now, the foundation holds. The Crew: Motorfest is a confident, well-organized racing game with a clear festival premise and enough variety to justify the trip. It is not a landmark. It is a good time, and it knows it.
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