If you made a list of the most exciting categories at The Game Awards, Best Sports/Racing Game would usually come near the bottom (though above the pointless Best Fighting Game, which struggles to fill five nominees every year). Year after year, it is one of the most hidebound and predictable awards, both in its choice of nominees and eventual winner.
The Sports/Racing category has a number of almost inviolate rules, which are as follows:
- Racing games win. Sports games don’t: A racing game has won this category nine times out of 12. The only exceptions are Rocket League (a viral smash), Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 (a remaster of two beloved classics), and EA Sports FC 25, which won in a historically weak year for racing games.
- Forza rules: Of those nine racing wins, Gran Turismo and Crash Team Racing have one each, Mario Kart has two, and the Forza series took the other five — three wins for Forza Horizon titles, and two for Forza Motorsport. The franchise hasn’t missed a win since 2015, when Forza Motorsport 6 lost to Rocket League.
- FIFA/FC, NBA, and F1 will be nominated: EA’s soccer game, whether under the FIFA banner or as EA Sports FC, is nominated every single year, without fail. Codemasters’ F1 series — a natural for this category, as both a sports and a racing game — has been nominated seven years in a row. 2K Games’ NBA franchise is a little more fallible, but it still has eight of the possible 12 nominations.
- Only sports with global appeal need apply: As borne out by the previous rule, sports that only have local appeal in the U.S. are not going to get past The Game Awards’ international jury. Madden and NHL games have never been nominated; neither has EA’s excellent recent revival of College Football. There’s been only one MLB The Show nomination and one for a WWE game. Tennis and skateboarding games have a couple each, while Konami’s dodgy eFootball/Pro Evolution Soccer series somehow has five nominations to its name.
All that being the case, it’s easy to predict that the 2026 nominees for Best Sports/Racing Game will be as follows:
- Forza Horizon 6
- Star Wars: Galactic Racer
- EA Sports FC 27
- NBA 2K27
- Mario Tennis Fever
And presumably, Forza Horizon 6 will win, right? Well, this is where things finally get interesting. For the first time in a long time, we have a race (sorry) on our hands. Forza might actually lose — not to any of the sports games, of course, but to Star Wars: Galactic Racer.
On the face of it, Forza enjoys overwhelming superiority in this category. It clearly has the Game Awards track record, it’s hugely popular and widely played, and with a rating of 90 on Metacritic it’s one of the best-reviewed games of the year, hands down.
Galactic Racer didn’t quite enjoy such universal acclaim. But with a Metascore of 88, it’s not far off. And it has a couple of strong advantages over the favorite.
Firstly, there’s a much more alluring narrative around it that might draw jury members in. Forza Horizon 6‘s story is one of iterative excellence; it’s good because Forza Horizon is always good, but it does nothing new. Galactic Racer, however, is out to shake up a stale genre with its daring roguelike structure, buildcrafting elements, and innovative multiplayer design.
Get Polygon’s Wishlister newsletter
A weekly cheat sheet to what you’ll eventually love to play. No buying, no
commitment — just saving for later.
Sign up free
Free. Unsubscribe anytime.
Secondly, while Galactic Racer is nowhere near as popular as Forza Horizon 6, I think there’s a good chance that it reached more members of the jury, including many who don’t often play games in this category. Part of that is the Star Wars license. It also has roots in two arcade racing lineages that critics have deep nostalgia for: Burnout and Wipeout. Finally, critics are drawn to any game that’s willing to innovate within its genre.
You wouldn’t quite call it an upset if Galactic Racer wins. But Forza hasn’t faced an insurgent that might actually beat it to this award in a decade. That still might not make this the most exciting category. But it’s great news for the creative health of racing games.