Set to arrive in Season 9 next year, The Crew Motorfest’s new track creator is “the biggest feature developed in the entire franchise.” 
With Forza Horizon 5 enjoying colossal player numbers on PlayStation 5 and Forza Horizon 6 set to launch next year, The Crew Motorfest is facing tougher competition than ever. In response, Ivory Tower’s live service updates are shifting up a gear over the next year, as the franchise celebrates its 50 million-player milestone.
The Crew Motorfest’s Year 3 updates kick off with Season 8 in November, with the Street Riders playlist bringing Need for Speed-style underground street racing and expanded customisation options. A BMW-themed playlist will follow this.  
Launching on 4th March 2026, Season 9 promises to be even more seismic. From a new playground island to a track creator, NASCAR racing and toy RC cars, Ivory Tower has plenty of surprises in store for the franchise next year.
The Crew Motorfest’s Year 2 live service updates commenced with a new island set in Maui. For the upcoming Year 3 updates, Ivory Tower is continuing to expand the map with another new island set to arrive in March 2026 as part of Season 9.  
In terms of scale, the new playground island is smaller than the existing Maui and Hawaii maps. From footage shown in the Showcase presentation, it appears to be inspired by Forza Horizon 5’s Hot Wheels expansion, featuring magnetic, rollercoaster-style tracks elevated above the road network, with massive jumps, loops and boost pads. 
Previewed in the latest Showcase presentation, Ivory Tower promises the new location will have “a lot of new things to discover,” from off-road sections, bridges and tunnels to realistic racetracks.   
The biggest surprise, however, is that Ivory Tower is that the new island will be the basis for ‘Track Forge,’ a new mode where you can create and share custom tracks that Ivory Tower has been secretly working on for over a year. 
“It’s the biggest feature we’ve ever developed at Ivory Tower in the entire Crew franchise,” The Crew Motorfest’s Creative Director, Julien Hummer, said proudly, adding that work began on this mammoth feature last summer.
During a brief hands-off session seen by Traxion, Ivory Tower demonstrated how the editor can create fantasy tracks for Track Forge events on the island, similar to Trackmania and Wreckreation. Once a starting grid is placed, straights, corners and trackside scenery, such as trees and rocks, can be easily added, allowing you to create a new track within minutes in the ‘Fast Mode’ aimed at casual players. 
“It’s a very deep and powerful system,” says Gameplay Director Paul Narducci. “It’s designed to let players create something very easily, so you don’t have to spend ten hours to create your first lap.” 
A more advanced library mode allows you to add ‘Super Modules’ that enable you to place “signature elements” like chicanes. It’s so versatile that Ivory Tower claims you can create anything from wild fantasy tracks to recreations of real-world circuits like Monaco and Suzuka.
“We have a lot of assets from the open world we created,” Hummer explains, assuring that there are “not a lot of limitations.”
For those who want to delve deeper, an even more advanced selection mode lets you copy and paste elements and add checkpoints for time attacks or races. Other elements, including the time of day and music, can be modified to create a specific ambience.  
Impressively, once a track is finished, pressing a button instantly transports you to the circuit, where you can test your creation with no loading screens. 
Tracks can be uploaded for other players to try if they can be completed successfully, with a Live Summit highlighting the best community-created circuit every week. 
While the early build shown was still a work in progress, The Crew Motorfest’s track creator has enormous potential to breathe new life into the series next year.  
In another surprise reveal, NASCAR is coming to The Crew Motorfest in Season 9 as part of a new partnership, with a dedicated playlist expanding the roster of motorsport disciplines. 
While it won’t be as realistic as iRacing’s official NASCAR 25 game, The Crew Motorfest’s take on American oval racing will incorporate slipstreaming with modified driving physics, alongside the official cars, teams and drivers from last year’s season. 
According to Ivory Tower, pit strategies will also be a core part of the experience, with NASCAR races lasting around ten to 15 minutes. 
While NASCAR is most popular in North America, Ivory Tower is confident that players outside the US will enjoy learning more about the motorsport in the dedicated playlist. 
Accompanying the NASCAR racing, a second playlist will introduce another unexpected new vehicle type in Season 9: remote-control cars. During a visit to Ubisoft’s Ivory Tower studio in Lyon, France, Traxion had a brief hands-on driving the new RC car in free roam. 
As expected, it feels nimble and rapid to drive, with a dedicated jump button allowing you to perform air flips in conjunction with the analogue stick, with playlist events challenging you to perform specific tricks. When timing a jump right, the RC car can drive on rooftops or climb up construction sites to reach previously inaccessible areas. 
A lower viewpoint makes the environment’s scale seem enormous when driving the miniature RC car. You can also still drive the RC cars in cockpit view, revealing an animated miniature driver behind the wheel. 
“It’s a new way of discovering the open world,” says Hummer, who adds that you may see environmental details you didn’t notice before. “You can go everywhere with this vehicle,” says Hummer. 
This is no exaggeration. As we accidentally discovered, the RC cars can drive on water if you veer off the road – something that is possible in real life due to their light weight and speed, according to the developers. Failing to maintain your speed will cause the toy car to sink, however. 
RC cars were originally going to be full-size, but this changed during the prototype phases, according to Narducci. “We reworked a lot of things”, he says, adding that the gravity physics were adjusted to make the cars feel more toy-like. “The early prototype was very basic. “
In a throwback to retro arcade games like Atari’s Super Sprint, split-screen races can be played from a top-down perspective, with both players racing on the same screen.     
While the NASCAR playlist will be free to play for all players, the RC playlist will be paid DLC as part of the Year 3 Pass, just as last year’s Chase Squad playlist was only available to Year 2 Pass holders.  
However, those who don’t own the Year 3 Pass will still have a chance to unlock the RC car as a free Live Summit reward or buy it in the Prestige Ticket shop with in-game currency in the future. Several RC cars will be included in the Year 3 Pass, each with different characteristics for different terrains, such as asphalt or off-road, and can be customised.   
Ivory Tower also teased a partnership with an official RC brand, with more details to be announced later.  
After Season 9 ends, a tenth season will conclude the Year 3 updates, starting on 1st July, 2026. Season 10 details are being kept under wraps for now, but Ivory Tower is already committing to updates beyond Year 3, confirming that Year 4 is already in development. 
“It’s only the beginning,” Hummer teased, adding that mystery “new brands” are coming to the game. If Year 4 follows the same cadence, The Crew Motorfest players can potentially look forward to live service season updates until at least the end of 2027.   
With four years’ worth of content updates, The Crew 2’s post-release support was exemplary, and now The Crew Motorfest is following a similar path. Ivory Tower clearly has a long-term vision, and the team’s passion and dedication is admirable. 
It remains to be seen if the Year 3 updates can keep players hooked when Forza Horizon 6 rolls out, but The Crew Motorfest has an exciting path ahead. 
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