If you have PS Plus Extra, download The Crew Motorfest on April 21. It is not better than Forza Horizon 5, and the handling still has that slightly floaty Ubisoft feel, but getting a 21-hour open-world racer with hundreds of cars for the price of your subscription is an easy win. Normally it is $69.99 on Steam, and free through the April PlayStation Plus Game Catalog drop is the exact kind of deal this service is supposed to deliver. Honestly, I expected a weaker Horizon clone. What surprised me is how often Motorfest just gets out of its own way and lets you have fun.
The Crew Motorfest PS Plus release date and what you get
Sony confirmed on the official PlayStation Blog that The Crew Motorfest joins PS Plus Extra and Premium on April 21, 2026. This is the PS4 and PS5 version of Ubisoft’s Hawaii-set arcade racer, first released in September 2023.
The pitch is simple. You get a huge car-culture sandbox on Oahu, more than 700 vehicles according to Ubisoft, themed playlists built around different racing scenes, and enough events that you can treat it as either a casual “drive around and chill” game or a checklist-heavy collectathon. If you use subscriptions to try expensive games you would never touch at full price, this is exactly that kind of download.
The timing matters too. April’s PS Plus monthly games already included Tomb Raider I-III Remastered, and the site already covered why Blue Prince on PS Plus Extra is a must-download. If you want a broader roundup instead of one game, our free games this week post covers the rest of the current budget-gaming landscape. Motorfest gives the April lineup a different lane: big-budget, dumb-fun, easy-to-dip-into racing.
Is The Crew Motorfest actually worth your time?
Yes, with one condition: you need to want an arcade racer, not a sim. If you go in expecting precise physics, tire strategy, or anything close to Gran Turismo 7, you are going to bounce off it fast. If you want to jump between street races, off-road events, motorcycles, boats, and planes while a game throws loud menus and shiny unlocks at your face, Motorfest absolutely works.
The best thing here is the playlist structure. Instead of one giant career mode that turns into mush after a few hours, Motorfest breaks its content into themed campaigns. One playlist leans into vintage classics, another into supercars, another into made-for-Instagram car-culture spectacle. That structure keeps the first 8 to 10 hours moving because the game is always giving you a new toy or a different set of rules.
The weak spot is still handling. It is better than older Crew games, but it never fully loses the sense that your car is skimming across the road instead of digging into it. That is fine for casual players. It is also the reason some racing fans will play five hours and go right back to Forza. Steam user reviews are still Mostly Positive, with 77% positive from 8,891 reviews, which feels about right for a game that is easy to enjoy and easy to nitpick.
Critics landed in a similar place. Metacritic has it at 76, which is good but not elite. That score makes sense. This is not the racer that changes your life. It is the racer you install because you want a good weekend game and then accidentally keep around for two months.
How long is The Crew Motorfest on PS Plus?
According to HowLongToBeat, the main story path runs about 21.5 hours, and completionists can spend around 40 hours. In practice, Motorfest is one of those games where raw hours do not tell the whole story, because half the appeal is sampling stuff. You might do three races, customize a car, try a bike event, mess around with photo mode, and call it a night. That counts as progress here.
That makes this a strong subscription game. A short single-player game on PS Plus can be great, but a racing sandbox has a different value proposition. You do not need to finish it cleanly. You just need enough fun per session to justify the download. Motorfest clears that bar pretty easily.
If you are a budget player trying to stretch one subscription across a month, this is exactly the kind of install that helps. It sits nicely next to heavier games. You can play a story-driven thing for an hour, then unwind with a few races before bed. That same “good filler game” logic is why services like Game Pass keep winning when they add strong mid-tier games instead of only chasing prestige releases. If you need more cheap gaming options after this, our guide to the best free Steam games in 2026 is still the better place to start than spending $70 blindly.
Who should download it, and who should skip it
Download it if you like:
- Arcade racing more than simulation
- Open-world checklist games with lots of unlocks
- Forza-style festival energy
- Switching between cars, bikes, boats, and planes
- Subscription games you can play in short bursts
Skip it if you want:
- Serious sim handling
- A focused story campaign
- A racer that feels radically different from Ubisoft’s usual open-world formula
- Offline-only simplicity with zero account friction
That last point matters more than it should. The Steam version notes third-party account requirements through Ubisoft, and that kind of friction annoys people for good reason. It is not a dealbreaker, but it is part of the honest verdict. Motorfest is fun. It is also a modern Ubisoft game, with all the little strings attached that phrase implies.
The verdict on The Crew Motorfest PS Plus drop
Claim it, download it, and give it at least two hours. The Crew Motorfest is not the best racing game on the market, but on PS Plus it does not need to be. It needs to be worth your storage space and a few nights of your time. It clears that bar.
If you love racers, you will probably enjoy the map, the car variety, and the playlist structure, then complain about the handling anyway. If you do not usually play racers, this is actually a pretty good low-risk place to try one. Free through PS Plus Extra is the perfect price for a game that is better than its reputation, worse than the genre’s top dogs, and still easy to recommend.
