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Join Now!Italian racing developer Milestone are looking at a fantastic 1-2-3 for this first half of 2026 – the best-in-series RIDE 6, the exhilarating reboot of Screamer, and the new yearly upgrade to what was already the best bike racing videogame on the market. Time to dig in with our MotoGP 26 Review, tested on Xbox Series X!
Half the wheels, twice the excitement
This time last year, the title fight seemed fairly straight-forward already. Already multi-champion Marc Marquez was winning the vast majority of races, though a fall or two kept his brother Alex in the hunt as well. Eventually, Marc ended up wrapping up the championship with various races to go, but a season-ending injury cast doubts over his shape for 2026.
Coinciding with that, the once Ducati-dominated series saw many consecutive Aprilia wins, mainly by the hands of Marco Bezzecchi, who’s leading the standings at this time. Though, once more, a few mistakes too many are keeping the title fight wide open, with his teammate Jorge Martin, but also the Marquez brothers and Pedro Acosta on the KTM, and even Fabio Di Giannantonio absolutely within reach of the crown. An all out brawl between Spanish and Italian riders, essentially.
Thus, it’s easy to say this current season is more exciting on paper than the last, and what better way to celebrate this than hopping onto our virtual bikes and duking it out in videogame form? MotoGP 26 is a fairly small, iterative upgrade over last year’s game – which I already called the best bike racing game on the market, but let’s see what’s really in store for those seeking the high-speed, two wheeled thrills of MotoGP!
A familiar feeling
Hopping onto the Ducati, the Aprilia, the KTM, the Yamaha or the Honda feels as good as ever in MotoGP 26 – for the last two brands, arguably better than in real life. The game takes the excellent work done in previous years, and further refines it all. The simulation-style handling has been improved, with an even larger focus on the rider’s weight-management and bigger differences between riding styles.
The optional arcade riding style has also seen tweaks – as last year’s frankly OP levels of grip have been made a bit more reasonable, offering an accessible experience that doesn’t feel comically easy anymore. Granted, if you keep the rider penalties not too strict, you can straight-up go straight even at the infamous chicane in Austria, gaining 5-6 seconds per lap with a single warning. So I guess the best way to play, even for newcomers, is finding the compromises between simulation and arcade settings.
Adaptive AI difficulty also make a comeback, which renders every race hard-fought and exciting, if a bit artificial. It feels wild to see the AI suddenly start lapping 3 seconds faster than it did before, solely because the game adapted to our pace now. But with great presentation, immaculate performance, countless options available for all sorts of races, including practices, sprint races and qualiifying sessions even, MotoGP 26‘s rendition of this high speed sport remains unmatched.
Against the AI and against the world
Once more, the best way to grasp the ins and outs of the world of MotoGP is jumping into the career mode, which this time lets us both create our own rider or hop into the shoes of any of the real life ones. We can start all the way down in Moto3 as a rookie, or even take the role of Marc Marquez as he tries to win yet another title in his glorious career. A new, 3D paddock view gives even more atmosphere to the mode, making my yearly career run through the ranks an even more enjoyable romp this year.
Naturally, competition against real players is a thing, too. Not only there are leaderboards for the various tracks, but, of course, even proper online multiplayer is present. With high customization of the rulesets and servers supporting up to grids of 22-riders, it’s easy to create incredibly chaotic yet exciting races, with the dynamic weather options and such offering incredibly thrilling events on the regular. With crossplay to boot between Xbox, PlayStation and PC (Switch and Switch 2 versions are excluded, unfortunately), hopefully the game’s playerbase will be big enough to sustain this lofty online.
MotoGP 26 even features a new mode, where players can obtain collectible cards simply by racing around and completing objectives. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s nice to have. The various, alternative activites like the motard races and such make a comeback, too – but with only a handful of tracks and modes, and a physics system absolutely not as refined as the main dish, it’s a short-lived fun. I also noted a few more technical gremlins than usual, this time – a few crashes, but also an occasional weird visual glitch where the screen gets covered up glitched raindrops on wet track – requiring pausing and restarting the game to make it go away. Nothing too serious, fortunately.
A small step forward
While not as groundbreaking of an evolution as last year’s game, MotoGP 26 pretty much does everything right. It tweaks both the simulation and arcade riding styles, it adds more options to career and multiplayer modes alike, and offers plenty of content and customization options. It has a few technical issues that are atypical for this series, and it may still lack the incredible depth and variety of the licensed F1 games. Yet, MotoGP 26 is a fine step forward for an already excellent racer, even if its iterative nature makes it a less essential upgrade than last year’s game.
MotoGP 26
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- Even better than MotoGP 25 in most ways
- The arcade riding model is better than ever
- Expanded career options
- Online multiplayer with 22-rider races
CONS
- Less noticeable and impactful upgrade than last year
- The side activities remain a bit weak
- A few more technical gremlins than usual
