Vroom vroom. That's right, acceleravers and pedal-to-the-metalheads, this is a list of the best racing games to fire up on your PC in 2026. Like all good grids, this one boasts plenty of variety in terms of designs, paintjobs, and mysterious bits of metal which lurk in engine bays. There are sims that'll test your setup-tweaking knowledge and have you feeling every bump, zooming arcade romps which are all about the chaotic thrills of speed, and at least one game that I typically use just to see what happens if you chuck an automobile off a mountain.
What you won't find here are more straight-laced driving games that lack much racing oomph. So no American Truck Simulator, despite my best efforts to convince my colleagues that my cargo runs from Seattle to New Orleans are basically F1 qualifying laps.
Oh, and if you love a particular racing game and find it's not made on track for our list, don't worry. Odds are we forgot about it, so correct that by racing to the comments and telling us why it belongs on the podium. Now, lights out and in the words of the great Murray Walker, it's GO, GO, GO!
The best racing games on PC
Here's a quick breakdown in alphabetical order. If you hate scrolling for some reason, that's okay. Just click a title to head straight to that game.
- Art of Rally
- Assetto Corsa
- Automobilista 2
- BallisticNG
- BeamNG
- Burnout Paradise
- Descenders
- Dirt Rally 2.0
- Forza Horizon 5
- Grip
- Horizon Chase Turbo
- Night-Runners Prologue
- Star Wars Episode 1 Racer
- Trackmania
- Wreckfest
Star Wars Episode I Racer
Image credit: Lucasfilm / DisneyPodracing was always cool. The Phantom Menace may or may not deserve its place in the dungheap of the Star Wars universe as far as storytelling goes. But for sheer spectacle, the podracing scene is a blast, not only in terms of being an entertaining splurge of special effects and cool sci-fi machinery, but also in that it establishes a fresh cultural phenomenon within a oft-recycled universe.
Star Wars Episode I Racer, originally released in 1999, let you fling yourself down the canyons of Tatooine and a bunch of other planets that, no, I have never heard of before. Baroonda? Ando Prime? Oovo IV? Okay, strictly speaking the game did not do anything particularly new when it comes to racing games. But there are times when theme trumps novelty, when you can put your shiny-obsessed magpie brain to one side and simply enjoy a safe high-speed chase between the oil derricks of... [checks notes] Mon Gazza.
Will Episode I Racer's place on this list be usurped by Fuse Games' Star Wars: Galactic Racer when that drops later this year? We'll have to see, but there certainly looks to be a good chance based on what we've seen so far.
Assetto Corsa
Image credit: Kunos SimulazioniMods. It's 2026, and that that one word there is why it's still well worth firing up Assetto Corsa. The base version of Kunos' 2014 racing sim might be starting to get a little long in the tooth compared to other entries on this list, but would be successor Assetto Corsa Evo's still got a long way to go in its early access ride if it's to supplant its beloved older sibling.
Sure, Kunos adding more features will get it closer, but what makes AC is the sheer volume of additions players have made themselves. Pick any car you like. Pick any track or road route you like. The odds are great in modded Assetto Corsa than any other racing game on PC that you'll be able to drive the former on the latter. A 1999 Nissan Primera super tourer on Los Angeles' Mulholland Drive? Done. A Subaru Impreza WRX Wagon on the Miami F1 circuit? Sorted. A Honda lawn mower racing at Le Mans in 1967? Easy.
If sheer racing variety's your thing and you don't mind trawling the net for things folks have created, nothing can beat it.
Night-Runners Prologue
Image credit: Planet JemWhat's this coming up the outside lane? A demo for a game not even fully released? That's unorthodox. But look, what Night-Runners Prologue lacks in final polish, it makes up for with tonnes of atmosphere. You buy your ride at a dodgy used car auction in the dead of night. You spy some notes in the paper documents accompanying each vehicle, from innocuous observations such as "low oil pressure" or "nearly empty tank" to the slightly concerning "previous driver reported as missing" or the openly dubious "licence plate linked with local crime organisations". Soon, you too are deeply embedded in Japan's racing underworld, forced into debt by a facelss gangster. Everything you do here is bathed in old-school street racing subculture, you can almost smell the petrol.
The actual racing involves exploring an urban nightscape of highways and rest stops to find like-minded racers to bet your money against, then blasting down huge straights and gently curving lanes at horrendous speed hoping not to miss the right exit or slam headfirst into an oncoming lorry, every win bringing a boost to your rep. As a game it's full of idiosyncrasies that will drive casual racers mad. The navigation map is tough to make out, the street lights often eye-squintingly dim. But then there are little sparks of personality. Blasting off from the starting line before the "go" signal will costs you a chunk of reputation. Win, and you'll not only earn cash, but your legally distinct 2000s era Nokia phone will light up with a text message that whiffs of begrudging respect: "dont let it get to ur head," says your newest rival. With its quirks and sometimes-quirky design, Night-Runners won't be for everyone (I crave the roads to be better lit) yet it has such a strong flavour some car tire cultists are bound to fall in love.
BallisticNG
Image credit: NeognosisI told my brother we were writing a "best racing games" list on RPS, and he dutifully listed every racing game ever released on the PlayStation 1, starting with Wipeout. I can't include those games on our PC-only site, and yet I cannot fault his approach. So I offer him this. BallisticNG is in love with the sci-fi racer of yesteryonks, recreating its hovercraft combat zooms in a way that remains somehow deeply futuristic despite the low-poly art style. Even the development studio's name - Neognosis - is a loving reference to Liverpool-based developer Psygnosis, the original makers of the Hackers' favourite racer.
Trance fans of a certain age will mostly know what they're getting, but there are some modern amenities. A "smart assist" can aid players who struggle with the anti-gravity controls, and you can play in VR (if you can stomach such speeds with a road that close to your eyeballs). It has also been "built for modding", say the developers, letting folks build tracks using a spline-based editor. Even so, this is as close to Wipeout as you will get on PC today, outside of emulating the classic itself. I hope this satisfies my brother, who was disappointed when I said we could not include the PlayStation games he had mentioned. He said he understood, then he suggested Diddy Kong Racing and left the room.
Dirt Rally 2.0
Image credit: Codemasters"The stages are challenging and endlessly satisfying to nail," I wrote of Dirt Rally 2.0 when tasked with summing up when it deserved to be in the top 10 of our latest RPS 100 rankings. "The cars each present something different to master, or in the case of the 80s Group B monsters, desperately hold onto while they attempt to claw out your eyes."
You know what, Mark from a few months ago, you were bang on the banana, 100% correct, totally justified. In all seriousness, the second of Codemasters' modern rally sims before they reclaimed the official World Rally Championship license for a still pretty good game that now looks like it might be a swansong for the series - is a great time. Punishing to the point of polishing your ability to thread the needle down narrow trails to near perfection, an absolute hoot when you hit that point and the tail of your Quattro or Stratos is carving past unyielding trees or rocks at the edge of adhesion.
Purposebuilt routes you can slice through over and over again in different retro rally rides for a ride that still feels fresh and exhilarating 80 hours in. If it's rally fun you're looking for, I can't recommend it more strenuously.
Horizon Chase Turbo
Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun / AquirisIf you pause Horizon Chase Turbo, you'll discover that when you unpause the game it gives you an extra "3, 2, 1" countdown, to prep you for the big speeds you're about to get launched back into. That is good game design, my friends. Much of this throwback road rager is as cleverly and loyally crafted. The way the racetrack and its oncoming environs "grow" into existence as the road rises to meet you, the 80s synth guitar rock that pushes you forward almost as much as the nitro in your gas tank. Its simplified Out Run feel means hardcore sim likers may want to avoid it. The car leans into the curves and bends of the road, correcting itself almost automatically, leaving it to you to control things at a more instantaneous level. This is not about accurately recreating car physics, just about accurately recreating a brief era of arcade playfulness and making the racing feel as good as you (wrongly) recall.
BeamNG.drive
Image credit: BeamNGIf you have been scrolling through this list with your driving aviators, tutting at each entry with the furious professionalism of a motoring maniac, then perhaps you will find some catharsis with BeamNG.drive. As we outlined in our BeamNG.drive review, it leans heavily into an accurate simulation of "soft-body physics" which roughly translates to "rally car go bounce good". It also means crumpling car bonnets and particles of glass when the police cruiser chasing you down finally catches up. While not strictly a racing game per se, the time trials and free roaming allow for a kind of vehicular liberty. In any case, you're not here to race. You're here to drive off a cliff and steeple your fingers with a very serious expression as you scrutinise each dent and crunch with monstrously high standards. I am deathly afraid of you.
Grip: Combat Racing
Image credit: Wired ProductionsWhere we're going we don't need roads. Hang on, sorry. I've just been informed that actually we need extra roads. Roads on the ceiling, roads on the walls... With vehicles like those in Grip, you need all the road you can get. Fashioned after the PlayStation classic Rollcage, as we outlined in our Grip review, this arcadey combat racer sees you sticking to the underside of whatever tubular tunnel you've just entered or sliding up the curved sides of rollercoaster-like racetracks suspended high above the surface of alien planets. The competition is a bit murdery. You are kitted out with tire-shredding miniguns, HUD-disrupting EMP blasts, and missiles that vindictively target the contestant in first place. Yes, this is very much sci-fi Mario Kart with those old double-sided RC cars that were massive in the 1990s. Nothing wrong with that.
Automobilista 2
Image credit: Reiza StudiosAs someone who likes to keep their sim racing offline for the most part, Project Cars 2 - check out our Project Cars 2 review by the way - was my go-to generalist racing sim for a while. Since the arrival of its bafflingly arcadey follow-up Project Cars 3, the disappearance of both games from Steam, and developers Slightly Mad Studios being gobbled up by EA, Automobilista 2's taken over that spot in my regular playing rotation.
The Brazilian game's grown to pack a wonderfully varied and regularly expanding garage of cars, series, and tracks from various eras of motor racing. The retro offerings are where it really shines, with the range of classic F1 cars and Indycars/CARTs being the best bit in my opinion, especially when coupled with mods that add in authentic liveries and helmets to complete the work the rides and old school track layouts do to wind back the clock. Add in both Brazilian and American stock cars, plus GT and endurance ranks bolstered by a deal with the US IMSA series and the recent addition of mid-2000s LMPs and GT1s - it's a selection that shouldn't be sniffed at.
The handling of certain cars might not be nailed to the granular amount it is in more specialised sims like Assetto Corsa Competizione, but AMS2's great fun and highly accessible if you want to fire up for a different race every weekend.
Descenders
Image credit: No More Robots"Bicycles!?" I hear you yell. "But those don't have motors!" Please, be reasonable. There is space for all sorts of racing in this world. Descenders is about barrelling down a mountainside on the saddle of a two-wheeled rumbler while trying not to fly over the handlebars and ragdoll violently into a tree. As a professional mud commuter you will be backflipping over trains and looping-the-proverbial-loop all while navigating a branching cascade of levels and investing in "mutators" that change your abilities with each run. The roguelike stuff sometimes seems a little superfluous but the feeling of the bike's handling itself is a thumb-pleasing blend of challenge and intuition. And, god, is it ever funny when you take a tumble.
Trackmania
Image credit: UbisoftIn Trackmania, the cars take second place. Here it's all about the tracks players can cobble together from premade assets using an in-game level editor, channelling the Hot Wheels child in all of us. There have been a few Trackmanias, good heavens, but the most recent incarnation is the plainly named Trackmania of 2020. It has the benefit (and curse) of being free-to-play, so you can race on a bunch of curated and official tracks for free. But to get a decent version of the track editor, you will have to fork out some cash. The same goes if you want to see the full range of wild creations players have uploaded, such as the absurdly difficult maps Deep Dip and Deep Dip 2, the latter of which took dedicated players over a month of constant racing to finally conquer.
Wreckfest
Image credit: THQ NordicGet bashed hard enough in this destructive derby and a red message will pop up, labelling the aggressive driver who hit you as a "rival". You can then earn extra points by ramming this rival, leading to silly situations like getting completely distracted from securing your place at the front of the pack, just so you can hang back and harass the off-brand VW Beetle who tried to punt you off the road. There is something innately hilarious about building an entire driving game around old bangers. The station wagons, minis, and legally distinct Fiat 500s will spin out with delightful glee as you fishtail them on a bend, messing everything up for the tightly packed stack of competitors behind you (this is especially soaked in schadenfreude during online multiplayer).
Wreckfest has a lot of the usual extras under the hood - car upgrades, suspension tuning, customisable paint jobs - but no matter how nicely you dress up your beastly bangmobile, it's the aggression and craziness that counts. Don't be afraid to shunt that bargain bucket Ford Escort into a stack of tires at the side of the road. While it might seem obvious to jump into Wreckfest 2 instead, the fact that game's still gaining Steam in early access at this point leads me to keep its predecessor ahead of it for now, simply due to the extra variety in cars and tracks it offers. Especially if you grab all of the DLC.
Burnout Paradise Remastered
Image credit: Electronic ArtsPC gamers sadly never got to feel the metallic intensity of Burnout 3: Takedown, but they did finally experience true joy in 2008 with Burnout Paradise. Ten years later, as John Walker outlined in our Burnout Paradise Remastered review, the Remastered version didn't change much at all about the game, but it did make it easier to play (uh, a bit - more on that in a sec). There are many simple pleasures to Burnout's crashy careening: you spin your tires at traffic lights to start a race, you can dip into repair shops during a contest to refill your boost meter on the fly. And when you spot a big billboard you will often take a last-second detour to fling yourself through said advert with wild abandon, like a sumo wrestler belly-flopping through a paper door in a rural Japanese house. It is a hefty, powerful, generously fun-loving game. The cars are slightly less fragile than in previous Burnouts, letting you sometimes "driveaway" from a hairy fender bender. But the destructive silliness remains intact, with the crossroads and hilly outskirts of Paradise City inviting you to hurtle headfirst into traffic.
The Remastered version has its issues, be warned. In the absence of official updates, it has fallen to god's own IT department to list fixes for many of those technical annoyances. But even taking this into consideration, Paradise remains a paradise. Even the fictional DJ Atomika, the obnoxious voice of the game's tutorials and universally reviled radio "personality", cannot diminish the game's place among open world racers. And anyway, you can mod that jackass right out.
Forza Horizon 5
Image credit: Playground Games"It’s an open world racer of humongous scale, dressed up in beautiful, destructible environments that are nothing like the dioramas of old," Justin Towell wrote in our Forza Horizon 5 review. "Foliage flattens under your car, seasons change, and water splashes look the best they’ve ever looked in any racing game." He's right, Mexico has a tonne of cactuses to smacktus.
Doing a lot of the things that earned its predecessor pretty much unanimous acclaim throughout the treehouse, Forza 5 is a motoring toybox so unashamed of that fact that it literally has a Hot Wheels DLC. To be honest, I prefer the variety in weather and cosiness offered by Forza 4's UK setting more than I do the sun-kissed climes of Mexico. It says something about the strength of the Forza formula, though, that if you call Horizon 5 the best racing game someone can pick up on PC right now, I'd likely concede that putting personal tastes aside, you're most likely bang on the money.
So, Horizon 5 over its tragically delisted sibling we go. At leat until Forza Horizon 6 arrives and shows whether it has the speed to outrace its kin for this spot.
Art of Rally
Image credit: Funselektor LabsIt'll probably earn me a cheeky slap from Horace if I describe a game as possessing immaculate vibes, but Art of Rally's defining characteristic is that it does. Funky synth blares over the sound of your revving motor as you Scandinavian flick a host of simplistically rendered classic and retro rally machines through stages lined by scenery brought to life in an art style stripped back enough to help you really appreciate the natural beauty. Well, if you have time to appreciate it before you thunk into a tree.
You may well need a bit of time to get to grips with the handling, since Art of Rally suffers from a bit of weightlessness and the general drawback of controllers struggling a bit to convey the flow of rallying as well as a wheel and pedals. Once you're a few stages deep though, that retreats to being a minor quibble and you'll find yourself getting lost in the simultaneously chill and frenetic trailblazing Art of Rally delivers.
Extra points if you can win a stage in any of the vans it offers as bonus rides.
Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnndddddddd across the line they come, about fifteen a breast because we believe all of these top racing games are equally good. They've all got their own merits, we explain to the assorted dignitaries trying to work out who they should give the trophies to. Ok, maybe we should have thought this through a bit more beforehand. I'm going to try and rectify the situation by offering to take all of our best racing games for a nice cruise down the coast. Vroom Vroom. Off we go!
