Forza Horizon 6 brings back the Wristband system as the spine of its Festival campaign, and the number players actually need to chase is a small one. You start in Japan as a tourist with no reputation, and each band you earn pushes you into faster car classes and tougher events until you reach the endgame.
The 7 Wristband tiers in order
Each Wristband is a color-coded tier you earn by completing Horizon Festival activities and then clearing a gated Wristband Event. The first one comes from finishing the Horizon Qualifiers and the Horizon Invitational, and every band after that raises the car class ceiling for official Festival races.
| Order | Wristband | Achievement title | Gamerscore |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yellow | Welcome To Horizon | 10 |
| 2 | Green | Festival Fan | 10 |
| 3 | Blue | Making Waves | 10 |
| 4 | Pink | What, Like It's Hard? | 20 |
| 5 | Orange | Orange You Glad You Made It? | 20 |
| 6 | Purple | In The Spotlight | 30 |
| 7 | Gold | Horizon Legend | 50 |
How you earn each Wristband
Wristbands are not awarded for hitting a level number. You fill a points bar by playing Horizon Festival content, and once the bar is full, a special Wristband Event appears on the map. Clearing that event is what actually hands you the next band.
Festival activities that feed your progress include Road, Dirt and Cross Country Races, Time Attack Circuits, Drag Meets, PR Stunts, and Bonus Boards. Anything in the Horizon Festival side of the campaign with an "H" icon counts toward this track. Discover Japan activities like photography, Touge Battles, night Street Races, and the Raku-Raku food delivery job feed your Stamps instead, not your Wristbands.
The Wristband Events themselves come in two flavors. Showcase Events are the big set pieces, including a race against Chaser Zero, the Festival's racing mech. Horizon Rush is the new format: timed obstacle courses graded on stars, set at locations like the Tokyo City Docks, the Sotoyama Ski Resort, and the Irokawa Space Center.
What each tier actually unlocks
The Wristband you hold controls which car classes you can enter into official Festival races. You can drive anything you own in free roam, but Festival events enforce class restrictions tied to your current band. Hypercars, for example, are locked out of Festival races until you reach at least the Purple Wristband, which sits late in the campaign.
Once a race is completed, the Race Customizer opens for that specific event. From then on, you can pick any car in your garage for replays and adjust Drivatar count, weather, season, laps, time of day, traffic, Rewind, and camera lock.
Wheelspins also tie into this system. They are locked until you finish the Horizon Qualifiers and Invitational, and both standard Wheelspins and Super Wheelspins are rarer than in earlier Horizon games, with more valuable rewards when they do drop.
The Gold Wristband and Legend Island
The Gold Wristband is the final tier and the only one that opens Legend Island, the gated island in the southeast corner of the map. You cannot fast travel to it or drive there early; it stays locked until the Gold Wristband Event is cleared.
Reaching it requires accumulating enough Horizon Festival Points across the previous tiers and then beating the final Wristband Event. Once Gold is yours, you are titled a Horizon Legend, and the island unlocks with its own content, including the Legend Island Circuit, the standard Goliath race, and The Colossus, a freeway loop around the entire Japan map built for R-class cars. Scattered XP Bonus Boards on the island also become reachable at that point.
Crossover from Horizon Play
Wristbands are a single-player Festival track, but multiplayer feeds into them. Horizon Play has its own level system that runs up to Level 100, and each Horizon Play level you earn up to Level 25 grants Horizon Festival Points toward your next Wristband. Modes that count include The Eliminator, Hide & Seek, Touge Showdown, Spec Racing, and the standard Horizon Racing and Horizon Drift playlists.
Stamps, the other progression track, do not contribute to Wristbands. There are 7 Stamps in Discover Japan, mirroring the Wristband count, but they unlock player houses, Barn Find Rumors, and The Estate rather than Festival access.
Confirming you got the Wristband
The game makes the moment hard to miss. After clearing a Wristband Event, a full-screen "New Wristband Unlocked" sequence plays, showing the next color, and the matching achievement pops on Xbox and PC with the Gamerscore listed above. Your Collection Journal also updates with the new tier, and any car class restrictions tied to that band immediately loosen in the Festival event menus.
If the next band's events still look locked after a Wristband Event, check that you actually finished the gated race or Horizon Rush rather than just qualifying for it. Filling the points bar is only half the requirement; the event itself has to be completed for the band to be issued.