The Crew Motorfest Year 4 adds a free island and Lara Croft

Ubisoft used The Crew Showcase 2026 on 17 September to lay out Year 4 of The Crew Motorfest, which begins on 7 October with Season 11 and a new free island called Kauai. It is a reveal that says as much about where a live-service racing game is heading as it does about the map: Kauai is billed as wilder, farther and less populated than the islands already in the game, with dense swamps and a large natural formation called Red Canyon.

Kauai is a playground built for the winch

Season 11's headline addition is the Kauai Expedition Playlist, a free offroad-focused campaign that leans on a new Winch feature. Fitted to selected vehicles, the winch clears blocked paths, drags obstacles aside and moves cargo during certain activities. Ubisoft is also adding an exploration layer that rolls out across every island, plus wildlife: more than 40 species of land, sea and air animals that players are invited to observe and photograph.

The cars, and the crossover nobody expected

The star vehicle is the Bugatti Tourbillon, which gets a dedicated Special Event and Summit Contest. It shares the show with the Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato, a Suzuki Jimny fitted with the winch and the Hyundai Crater Concept. The bigger surprise was Tomb Raider: Secrets of Niʻihau, a premium adventure made with Crystal Dynamics that lands on the same day as Season 11. It adds a Playlist, five exclusive vehicles and access to Niʻihau, an island that stays visible on the map for everyone but is locked unless you own the Year 4 Pass or buy the pack on its own. Lara Croft guides the player through ruins and conundrums to find her missing friend Jonah and an ancient relic, while dinosaurs including a Mosasaurus and a T-Rex chase roam the island.

A Switch 2 launch, then Asia in January

The Crew Motorfest arrives on Nintendo Switch 2 on 8 October, a day after Season 11. Season 12 follows in January 2027 and moves the festival to Asia, covering Japan, China and South Korea, and adds the Yangwang brand with the U9 Xtrem alongside the Honda Prelude (2026) and the Mitsubishi Eclipse GT V6 (2009).

Our opinion

The interesting decision here is what Ubisoft chose to give away and what it chose to sell. Kauai is free, the wildlife photography is free and the exploration layer is free; the island with Lara Croft on it is not, and the game will happily show you that island on the map and then charge for the door. That is a more honest piece of packaging than burying the hook inside a pass you have already paid for, and it also tells you where the margin lives. Two smaller details matter more than the trailer's runtime. The Switch 2 version arrives the day after Season 11, which means Year 4 was scheduled around hardware rather than around content, and Season 12 leans on a Yangwang hypercar and a 2009 Mitsubishi rather than another headline supercar. Racing games have spent a decade chasing the next top-speed number, and Motorfest's 40 species of wildlife suggest it has finally noticed that the people taking photographs outnumber the ones chasing lap records.