Whether you’ve seen my guide to FH5’s creative accolades or read previous posts professing my love for Forza Horizon, it should be clear I’m a completionist! In this post, I’ll explain my definition of “finishing” the game, and my progress towards these 7 goals after 27 days(!) of in-game time.

97/97 Achievements

Completing all achievements for the game is the standard completionist target for most games. Luckily for Forza Horizon 5, they are all fairly straightforward, with the “rare” ones being more niche or Hot Wheels DLC-specific than difficult.

Most of these will actually be unlocked during normal gameplay, and even the rare ones are pretty straightforward. The most challenging is probably “Min, Meet Max”, which requires completing all non-DLC events in a series (4 weeks in a row). These won’t be challenging if using the weekly r/forza threads, but it may be inconvenient to keep track of.

forza horizon 5 completionist achievements

654/654+ Cars

Now we’re onto the unofficial completionist objectives!

Owning every car in the game isn’t hard if you have been keeping up to date with playlists, but completing this months after release will unfortunately take quite a lot of credits to buy them all. I’ll save money making for another article, there are plenty of existing videos / reddit posts providing help on earning it!

Each month, 4-5 new cars will be released, so keeping this completed will require constant maintenance!

forza horizon 5 completionist cars

2/2 Secret cars

So, your Car Collection shows all cars, surely you have… all cars? Nope!

There are 2 secret cars, both of which require purchasing items in real life, or a key from a 3rd party site. Redeeming either key will add the car to your collection, and increase the maximum car number shown in your Car Collection.

#1: Ford GT ‘OPI Edition’: This special edition (same as normal Ford GT, with slightly boosted stats and unique livery) variant was free with specific make-up purchases, and can no longer be obtained legitimately. I purchased a key from a 3rd party for around $20, which is very expensive for a reskin of a car!

#2: Ford De Luxe Five-Window Coupe Horizon Edition: This special edition car was free for anyone who purchased the Forza Horizon 5 controller. Since this controller was very expensive, and is now sold out everywhere, obtaining this car variant will cost a painful $40-50.

forza horizon 5 bonus cars

1,974/1,982 Accolades

What? Not all the accolades? Nope, 8 of them (see below) are 100% unobtainable!

The accolades are probably the main “over the top completionist” goal in this game, since there are nearly 2000 of them covering every single element of the game. Most of them are fairly straightforward, but there are a few potentially tricky areas:

  • Evolving World: The first tab of accolades within this category are for a limited time only, such as christmas. They can likely be reobtained the next time this event takes place, but you could be waiting up to a year!
  • Creative: These accolades are extremely hard to do, and will require sustained, repetitive effort. I’ve written a full guide in the past!
  • Broken Accolades: There are 6 accolades for vinyl shape uses that have been broken since release. This also means the overall creative accolade in the hall of fame can’t be obtained, nor can the accolade for completing all other accolades. As such, the 8 final accolades can currently nor be obtained.

forza horizon 5 accolades

27/27 Badges

Badges were added to Forza Horizon 5 relatively recently, and are displayed next to your name in most places in-game. They are generally unlocked through Horizon Open (online) events, primarily overall level. Some of the badges require grinding a specific action (“Earn 6000 drifting skills”), but most simply require completing hundreds of races or drift events, or increasing your overall level.

Completing all of the level-based badges requires level 1000, which realistically will take 100+ hours. The easiest technique is only racing S2 road races, as XP is based on distance travelled and position finished. I’ve written a full guide to earning all badges.

Finally, the last few badges require playing the game during the (current) 10-year celebration, but hopefully they will be unlockable through alternative methods in the future!

forza horizon 5 badges

670+/656+ Car photos

Horizon Promo (accessed via Pause Menu -> Cars -> Horizon Promo) is probably the most unsatisfying area to try and complete.

Achieving 656/656 (or higher) is relatively easy, just photograph all the cars in the game. However, if you go to Horizon Promo and filter for “Uncaptured” cars, you see… all kinds of things! Cars from story missions, traffic cars, and alternate versions of actual cars. Some of the normal cars are also bugged.

Ultimately, finding the “maximum” number is pretty hard due to various bugged cars, so achieving above the maximum should count as enough. If you do want to get all the traffic cars, I recommend driving down the highway and just taking photos every few seconds.

forza horizon 5 photos

All cosmetics

Finally, everyone’s favourite part of Forza Horizon: cosmetics. No? Alright, well it’s a part of the game at least.

Most of the cosmetics can be purchased for a few credits, but quite a few are past festival playlist rewards. Unfortunately unlike cars these can’t be traded, so past cosmetics cannot easily be obtained. Instead, the only option is to hope they appear in a future playlist.

Additionally, there is an absolutely absurd outfit earned via purchasing another real-world item, Doritos. I spent $6 on a code for this, and experienced a (now fixed) bug where I could no longer change my outfit or enter online races, so I strongly dislike this cosmetic!

forza horizon 5 outfit

My progress

  • ✔️ Achievements
  • ✔️ Cars
  • ❌ Secret cars (missing Coupe)
  • ✔️ Accolades
  • ❌ Badges (missing 3x level badges, and 2x additional)
  • ✔️ Photographs
  • ❌ Cosmetics (missing a couple of weekly rewards)

Conclusion

The 7 categories covered here should be enough to keep any completionist busy for a long time, whilst still being possible. Good luck to anyone attempting this, and let me know if there are any additional categories I’ve missed!