Forza Horizon 5 is easily my favourite game of 2021/22, and it contains a comprehensive “accolade” (achievements) system. Earning these accolades improves your global hall of fame ranking, as well as various rewards along the way. However, the Creative category contains many accolades that are seemingly impossible to complete. Here’s how I got them, since I couldn’t find any guides!

In this post I’ll show my current accolades to “prove” the methods in here work, then break down exactly how to get them. This will start off simple, with the obvious ones, before ramping up to the far harder ones that require grinding (e.g. 1000 tune uses).

This is a LONG post, so use the links on the side to get to the section you need or search for your target accolade’s name!

December 2022 update: Vinyl uses are now fixed! A guide to them has been added.

June 2023 update: Test track accolades have been added!

My creative accolades

To start with, here’s proof I was #87 worldwide when I initially wrote this guide & my fully completed creative accolades (193) to prove I at least vaguely know what I’m talking about!

Painting (44/44) Tuning (27/27) Test track (15/15)
Photo (55/55) Eventlab (20/20) Super7 (15/15)

Unlock simple accolades

Painting

The painting accolades “Respray”, “By popular request”, “Hoods up”, “They look like ears”, “Spoilers”, “Keeping it wheel”, “Optional extra”, and “Attention to detail” all just require painting every part of a vehicle, very simple.

Tuning

The tuning accolades “The upgrader”, “The ultra upgrader”, “The tuner”, and “The ultra tuner” just require winning events with tunes and upgrades applied, and will probably be completed during normal gameplay.

The accolades “All expenses paid”, “Performance interest”, “Picking up the tab”, “Worth it”, and “To the zoom” require spending up to 2m credits on upgrades, which will likely happen during normal gameplay.

Test track

The test track accolades “Testing, testing”, “Give me five!”, “Tried and tested!”, “Testing the waters”, “Upgrade-zathon”, and “Modification specialist” can be completed fairly easily, by just purchasing as much as possible for a few cars. Most vehicles can have around 150k of upgrades added, with the engine swap being the main part of this.

Similarly, “Track miles”, “Making tracks”, “Leaving tracks”, and “Maxing out” just require driving up and down the highway for a bit. Picking a fast car obviously makes this quicker!

“Fast track”, “Short course”, “Off track”, and “Crash course” require completing a specific skill in a specific car in a specific class. I recommend filtering your cars by type when starting the test track, then purchasing upgrades to get to the required class. Finally, “Getting side-tracked” is very easy, only requiring driving from the test track starting point to the far end of the drag strip in a retro muscle car! You’ll need to drive out of & reenter the test track starting zone to trigger the timer start.

Note that you need to grind out 10 million credits worth of purchases for the “Tinker, Tailor, Car Tuner” badge and 500 miles driven for the “Just Keep Driving, Driving, Driving” badge (more info on badges) so you may want to do them at the same time.

Photo

The photo accolades “Say cheese”, “Snap!”, “Photo op”, “Says 1000 words”, “Fit to print”, “Picture perfect”, “You’re on camera”, “Car-tography”, “Photoshoot”, “Capture this”, “Camera fiend”, “Visionary”, “#nofilter”, “Perfect shot”, “Snap happy”, “Paparazzi”, “Ridiculously photogenic”, “Seeing the big picture”, “Promo-tion”, “Shutterbug”, “Strike a pose”, “Poster cars”, and “Promo superstar” require taking photos of up to 500 different cars.

This is easiest to do during normal gameplay by taking a quick photo (you don’t need to save it) at the start of each race or when you see players online. Cars that you haven’t captured yet have a camera icon above their vehicle.

If you do need to do hundreds of cars quickly, the quickest way I’ve found is starting drag races with various cars, taking a photo of the 8-10 AI cars, then quitting and trying again with another car.

The accolades “New horizons”, “New digs!”, “Sleeping giant”, “Twilight saga”, “Shopping spree”, “On the naughty list”, “Spirit of a christmas past”, “Stay frosty”, “Crowd pleaser”, “Corazón contento”, “Synth waves”, “Cleared for takeoff”, “Peak performance”, “And the crowd goes wild”, “Firework display”, “Photogenic”, “Chips to my salsa”, “Beam me up”, “No rest for the wicked”, “Flash in the pan”, “Throwback”, “Look out, beetle’s about”, and “Porsche with panache” are all very straightforward, and require taking photos of specific cars in specific places.

Eventlab

The eventlab accolades “Pathfinder”, “Show me your moves”, “Creative spark”, “Mix and match”, “Architect of fun”, “Variety pack”, “Master builder”, “Lucky dip”, “Empire of imagination”, “Like a box of chocolates”, “Compendium of creation”, “Content surfing”, “Intrepid explorer”, and “Hero of the community” are all very simple, just requiring basic creation & playing of eventlab tracks.

The accolades “_ class blueprint badge” for every car class can be done on the same event so long as it accepts any car class.

Super7

The super7 accolades “The super7”, “Three of a kind”, “Lucky for some”, “A worthy opponent”, “Smile for the camera”, “Danger is my middle name”, “Drift like me”, “The journey”, “Driving skills”, “Scoring skills”, “Mastering skills”, and “Third party coverage”, are all easily completable, and will likely all be completed whilst working on completing 7x super 7.

“A wild challenge card appears!”, “Card hunter”, and “Card collector” require completing cards in freeroam, I found the best place to find these is on the airport runway drag strip or the main Horizon festival drag strip.

Unlock “downloads” & “likes” accolades

Whilst the way to earn these accolades may seem obvious (just get other people to download and like your creations, duh!), doing this reliably is very, very hard. Luckily we can take some shortcuts and, with some repetitive grinding, complete them all in a few days.

3 overall methods

Update: A user on reddit has reported a 7 day ban for “Spamming Liveries / Layer Groups”, so this may not be permitted. Anecdotally I’ve had no problems, nor has nobody else on the thread, but it appears to be a possibility. For safety, delete your creations after earning the accolades.

There’s essentially 3 techniques to grinding / farming creation downloads and likes. I’ll describe these below, then cover the common steps necessary:

The legitimate method

The “correct” method is creating popular tunes / liveries / vinyl shapes that people want to use. Whilst this is playing the game as intended, it is unlikely that any vinyl shapes in the game have 1000 likes, let alone your random creation!

Due to this, I honestly don’t see this as a viable way to earn these achievements.

The trading method

So, how can we get hundreds of likes reliably? Well, we can swap them with other players! This is how I earned ~60% of my downloads & likes.

Whilst there were many, many, many attempts on the Forza subreddits to exchange likes, they were all ultimately doomed. Can you imagine coordinating with 1000 strangers to like your content!? Similarly, a thread on TrueAchievements suggested swapping 2-3 each which… is better, but still unrealistic.

That’s where our hero “OLOT” comes in, and single-handedly works out a better system. Through careful experimentation, they eventually figure out an optimised way to both share 50+ tunes / liveries, and swap likes with others. This opens the door to bulk swapping, with most people exchanging 100+ at a time, finally letting these accolades be completed!

The exact details of how to create and like tunes / liveries / vinyl shapes will be described later, but here’s the overall process using tunes as an example:

  1. Choose an easy to obtain car, e.g. Corvette starter car.
  2. Create 50 tunes with distinct names, e.g. TUNE1 to TUNE50.
  3. Create an account and post on the thread with:
    • Your Xbox gamertag.
    • What car your tunes are for.
    • Your current number of “likes” (downloads can be ignored, since every like has a download).
  4. Look at the recent posts, like 50 tunes from someone else, and update your post to include this.
  5. They should return the favour, and you’ll finally have your likes!

In case it wasn’t obvious, I’m extremely grateful to OLOT for sharing his innovation, as well as helping new users to get trading, and keeping track of everyone’s progress. If it wasn’t for him at least a few people (including myself) would never get these accolades.

The self-farming method

This builds on the trading method, but avoids the reliance on others. This is useful when, like me, you’ve exchanged likes with all active users on the thread, and are stuck waiting for new motivated users to join.

The steps are the same as before, except you use another account to download and like your own content. This ends up being more effort since you need to either make new accounts to like your main account’s content, or keep creating new accounts. However, it has no delay, is reliable, and is the only known way to get all the accolades within a few days!

I ended up doing this for the final 30-40% of my likes with multiple accounts. To get these accounts access to the game I followed these steps on PC, Xbox users may just be able to swap accounts:

  1. Create a new Xbox account using a spare email.
  2. Purchase a month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (currently £1) for it.
  3. Login to this account using cloud gaming in a browser (to avoid any account conflicts).
  4. Complete the tutorial, and first showcase, until you have access to car customisation.
  5. Follow the “Downloading & liking” steps, but obviously for your main account’s content!

Note: If you’re self-farming on an Xbox, this Reddit comment has some helpful tips.

Photos

Photos are a bit different to vinyl shapes, liveries, and tunes, as the requirements are much lower, and there’s far fewer accolades to earn. However, they’re also the hardest to earn legitimately, have you ever liked a photo inside Forza Horizon!?

This technique applies to the photo download accolades “Image is everything”, “Clickbait”, and “Front page”, as well as the like accolades “On trend”, “Pretty as a picture”, and “Gone viral”.

Creating

Whilst taking photos can be grinded by taking a photo -> “Save” -> “Share” and repeat, as only 100 are needed I’d actually recommend just taking 100 fun photos! Once you’ve finished, your “Photo gallery” should look similar to this:

my liveries

Downloading & liking

Due to only 100 likes being needed to earn all accolades, efficiency is less important here than other categories. The entire process can also be done in a single swap with someone / your other account.

First, follow the account you want to bulk like photos on. This can be done by searching by gamertag for a tune / livery by them, then “Follow creator”. This will help make the process easier, but can take a few minutes to update your “Followed players” list.

  1. In the pause menu, navigate to “Creative hub” -> “Followed players” (left stick in) -> Your target player.
  2. Select “Photos”.
  3. For every photo, download (A) and like (X) it, then navigate back (A then B) and move on to the next photo.
  4. Repeat step 3 for every photo

This process is pretty quick, with the only delay of up to a second when initially downloading each photo.

Vinyl shapes

Vinyl shapes are probably the easiest (besides photos) to download and like in bulk, so are a good set of accolades to start completing.

This includes the download accolades “On the palette”, “Illustrator”, “Proper adhesion”, “Vinyl emporium”, “This was a triumph”, and “Masterstroke”. It includes the like accolades “Admired”, “Commended”, “Distinguished”, “Lauded”, “Celebrated”, and “Exalted”.

Creating

As a reminder, you’ll want to create 50 vinyl shapes to start. This can obviously be done however you want, but here’s the most efficient away:

  1. Enter your house, and navigate “Garage” tab -> “Designs & paints” -> “Create vinyl groups”.
  2. Create a new layer, use “Apply a vinyl shape”, and apply a vinyl. It can be any colour, size, shape, etc.
  3. Repeat step 2, as 2 layers are needed to save a vinyl.
  4. Press “Save”, “Save vinyl group”, and call it something short like “V1”, then press “Share”.
  5. Repeat steps 2-4, increasing your vinyl’s name (e.g. “V2”, “V3”) until you have 50.

After creating your 50 vinyls, your “My vinyl groups” should look similar to this:

my vinyl groups

Downloading & liking

First, follow the account you want to bulk like vinyl shapes on. This can be done by searching by gamertag for a tune / livery by them, then “Follow creator”. This will help make the process easier, but can take a few minutes to update your “Followed players” list.

  1. In the pause menu, navigate to “Creative hub” -> “Followed players” (left stick in) -> Your target player.
  2. Select “Vinyl groups”.
  3. With the first vinyl selected, download (A), confirm (A), then navigate to the next vinyl.
  4. Repeat this process until all vinyls have been downloaded.
  5. Enter your house’s “Garage” tab -> “Designs & paints” -> “My vinyl groups”.
  6. With the first downloaded vinyl selected, open it (A), navigate to the 2nd option (down), “Like” it (A), delete it (X), confirm deletion (A).
  7. The next vinyl will be auto-selected, so just repeat step 5 until you have no more downloaded vinyls.

The only slow part of this process is step 3-4, with the subsequent liking and deletion being instant.

Note: Be careful when speedily completing steps 5-6, you may occasionally select the “Report” option! Make sure to back out of this menu if you do end up there.

Livery designs

Livery designs are trickier than vinyls to grind downloads and likes for, but it can of course still be done!

This technique covers the download accolades “In demand”, “Prevalent”, “Established”, “Work of art”, “Pièce de résistance”, and “Legendary painter”. It covers the like accolades “Popular culture”, “Showpiece”, “Chef-d’œuvre”, “Crowning achievements”, “Masterpiece”, and “Magnum opus”.

Creating

Due to a glitch with downloading liveries, the most efficient way to farm livery downloads and likes is… to have each livery on a different car! This unfortunately makes the creation a process a little bit trickier:

  1. Enter your house, change to the first car in your garage, and navigate “Garage” tab -> “Designs & paints” -> “Paint car”.
  2. Press “Save”, “Save new livery”, call it something short like “L1”, then “Share”.
  3. Change to the next car in your garage, and enter the car painter again.
  4. Repeat steps 2 & 3, increasing your vinyl’s name (e.g. “L2”, “L3”) until you have 50.

After creating your 50 liveries, your “My designs” should look similar to this:

my liveries

Downloading & liking

First, follow the account you want to bulk like livery designs on. This can be done by searching by gamertag for a tune / livery by them, then “Follow creator”. This will help make the process easier, but can take a few minutes to update your “Followed players” list.

  1. In the pause menu, navigate to “Creative hub” -> “Followed players” (left stick in) -> Your target player.
  2. Select “Liveries”.
  3. With the first livery selected, download (A), confirm (A), then navigate to the next livery.
  4. Repeat this process until all liveries have been downloaded.
  5. Enter your house’s “Garage” tab -> “Designs & paints” -> “My designs”.
  6. With the first downloaded livery selected, open it (A), “Like” it (A), delete it (X), confirm deletion (A).
  7. The next livery will be auto-selected, so just repeat step 6 until all downloaded liveries have been liked and deleted.

Step 3 is very slow, with livery downloading often taking multiple seconds. Due to this delay, it can be hard to get into a rhythm of downloading, making it a quite tedious process.

Note: If you come across a livery for your current car during step 6, the “Like” option will move position, careful you don’t misclick!

Tuning setups (tunes)

Finally, tuning setup accolades. These are slightly more awkward to farm than liveries, but still very doable.

This farming technique works for the download accolades “Yaassss”, “#winwin”, “What a tune”, “Design talent”, “Critical acclaim”, and “Work of genius”. It also works for the like accolades “Blessed”, “On fleek”, “Hype”, “In the limelight”, “Stardom”, and “#famous”.

Creating

Unlike liveries, tunes can luckily all be created on the same vehicle. I recommend picking a starter car, or a very cheap one, e.g. the 2001 Acura Integra Type R (25,000 credits).

  1. Enter your house, change to your target car, and navigate “Garage” tab -> “Upgrades & tuning” -> “Custom tuning”.
  2. Press “Setup manager” -> “Save setup” -> “Save tune”, call it something short like “T1”, then “Share”.
  3. Repeat step 2, increasing your tunes name (e.g. “T2”, “T3”) until you have 50.

After creating 50 tunes for your car, your “My tuning setups” page should look similar to:

my liveries

Downloading & liking

Unfortunately tuning setups are the slowest & most complex creative item to bulk like, and are quite unlike the other methods. Luckily OTON has worked out yet another efficiency innovation!

  1. Drive the car that has tunes to like (e.g. 2021 Bronco).
  2. Navigate to your house’s “Garage” tab -> “Upgrades & tuning” -> “Find tuning setups”
  3. Search by your creator’s gamertag, you should get 50+ results.
  4. For each tune, favourite it (Y) and navigate to the next one until all have been favourited.
  5. Exit & reenter the “Find tuning setups” screen and switch to “My Favourites” (RB).
  6. For the first favourited tune, unfavourite it (Y), download it (A), select download and save (down), and confirm (A). You will be kicked out of the tuning setups screen.
  7. Repeat steps 5-6 until there are no more favourited tunes.
  8. Go to “My tuning setups”, the first downloaded tuning setup will be autoselected.
  9. Select it (A), navigate to “Like” (down), “Like” it (A), delete it (X), and confirm (A).
  10. Tap the analog stick left to select your first tuning setup.
  11. Repeat step 9-10 until there are no remaining downloaded tunes.

Note 1: After repeating steps 9-10 around 10x, the screen will glitch and have to be exited and reopened.

Note 2: If you already have lots of tunes, you may eventually hit a maximum number of tunes. To resolve this, navigate through your cars and delete all tunes on them (this doesn’t delete the currently applied tune).

Note 3: The “favouriting” steps seem pointless, but help skip a few loading screens and definitely optimises the process.

Unlock “uses” accolades

Vinyls

December 2022 update: Vinyl uses are now fixed, and this method works to earn “Getting creative”, “Happy little shapes”, “The joy of vinyls”, “Catalogued”, “Sticker album”, and “Master painter”.

To gain a vinyl “use”, another player just needs to apply it to a car, with every application counting as a new use. As this only takes 1-2 hours, I recommend using the “Self-farming method” above.

Two important notes:

  1. The “clone” option does not work, vinyls must be added individually as described below.
  2. You only need 1 vinyl, it can be applied many times.

Once you have a vinyl group downloaded that you want to farm uses for:

  1. Inside your garage go to “Designs & Paints” -> “Apply Vinyls & Decals”.
  2. With the [+] (add layer) button selected, tap A to add.
  3. Navigate 2 options down to “Load a vinyl group”, tap A to select.
  4. Select your downloaded vinyl, tap A to load, tap A to confirm placement.
  5. Press “up” to move to the new [+] (add layer) button.
  6. Repeat steps 2-5 1000x!

Luckily, it’s easy to keep track of how many vinyls you’ve added. If the vinyl group has 2 vinyls in it, every time you add it (1 “use”) the count in the bottom left will go up by 2. In the screenshot below, I have 2006/3000 layers used, this means I have applied the vinyl 1003 times:

my vinyl group layers

These uses are very quick to grind, since there’s no downloading or loading to do. This means a single “use” takes 3-4s to earn, giving a total grind time of under 60 minutes if you’re fully efficient!

Tunes & Liveries

The livery / tune uses accolades are some of the most frustrating accolades in the game. There’s no real shortcut, someone has to be driving a car with your livery / tune!

You earn around 4-5 uses per hour, and need 1000 uses in total per category, but you cannot earn them on your own account. As you can imagine, this is almost impossible to do legitimately, luckily there are a few shortcuts we can take.

The tactic is pretty simple, you just need an alternate account (see “Self-farming method” above), then follow these steps:

  1. Connect your controller over USB, to prevent any disconnection / battery dying.
  2. Apply your main account’s tune and livery to your car.
  3. Leave any areas with other players, then figure out a way to keep your controller’s trigger held down. I just wedge it against a solid object on my desk, others use rubber bands.
  4. Leave your Xbox / PC / browser overnight, and enjoy waking up to ~40-50 uses!

Of course, 1000 likes will still take you ~20 days if you only gain uses overnight. This can be sped up by idling multiple accounts at once, or also idling during the day. I didn’t use these more complex methods to keep the overall process simple, the accolades are definitely extremely slow!

The livery design use accolades that can be earned via this are “Fresh canvas”, “Budding artist”, “Up and coming”, “Painters gonna paint”, “Design portfolio”, and “Tour de force”.

The tuning setup use accolades that can be obtained this way are “What’s mine is yours”, “Create, release, repeat”, “Good samaritan”, “Tuner life”, “Enterpreneur”, and “The creator”.

Summary

Overall these accolades are far trickier than the “Gold Card” that was in Forza Horizon 4, and I’m really not a fan of requiring likes / uses from other players for full completion. Most of the advanced accolades are likely impossible unless you already have a large following elsewhere, and don’t seem fair to regular players.

That being said, I hope this guide helped you a bit, it’s quite a relief when all these accolades are finished!