The Crew Motorfest is expanding further with its upcoming Season 11 update, and Ubisoft provided us with an early access preview build to try it out. Season 11 drops in October and brings two brand-new islands for you to explore: Kauai and NI’IHAU. The update also brings a free Playlist, a premium Playlist, along with over 20 new vehicles for you to collect. Ubisoft has also revealed that The Crew Motorfest is coming to Nintendo Switch 2 on October 8, 2026. Throughout the 14 weeks, players will find new Live events featuring new playlists and vehicles added in the update. This is our preview of The Crew Motorfest Season 11 on PC via Ubisoft Connect, in which we explore a dino-filled island and try to take a picture of a whale without spooking it.
Starting with the best, the preview build gave me a small look at the two upcoming playlists for The Crew Motorfest Season 11 as well. The first one, Kauai Expeditions, is a free Playlist, and it will be available for all players starting October 7, 2026. This brand-new playlist sees players going off the map, into uncharted areas with nothing guiding them apart from some clues and a compass. Set on the island of Kauai, this brand-new playlist introduces not just new events but also brand-new gameplay mechanics, including the new winch and towing, which can be done by any vehicle equipped with a winch.
To kick things off, the Playlist features the brand-new 2018 Suzuki Jimny SPE Edition, which is a jacked-up, off-road-focused version of the Jimny that comes with a winch. The preview build featured the first two missions of the playlist, with the first one leading me into a swamp in order to find a stuck Jeep and tow it back to the farm. The towing is easy, as you just have to aim towards an anchor point and press the fire button to engage it. The winch auto-switches from the front to the back and vice versa depending on your requirement. For example, if you want to pull stones or logs, the winch will remain at your front. However, if you want to tow, after attaching from the front, when you start driving, it automatically switches to the back anchor point.
This affects the vehicle’s performance as well, and since the mission was inside a swamp, it slowed me down considerably. However, the mission felt natural, and people who love off-roading and want to use the winch features in the game are going to love it. The second mission sent me deep into a forest to find a helicopter crash site and retrieve a box of supplies. Both missions had no markers or roads, and there were multiple obstacles along the way that I had to clear with the winch. These included pulling large rocks and logs of fallen trees.
The second playlist the preview build offered was the premium DLC playlist called Tomb Raider: Secrets of NI’IHAU. This playlist is set on NI’IHAU island, which is a closed-off, secret island not accessible by normal roads. This playlist brings some of the mechanics of the Expeditions playlist, such as using a winch, but introduces some key spelunking mechanics as well. It also brings Lara Croft to the game; while she is not present physically, she has voice-over dialogue and guides us for different tasks in the game alongside Cara. Her partner Jonah is also part of the playlist and is seen flying his plane over the island as we explore the terrain.
In its first mission, I had to first locate the starting point of the event, which was a mechanism that triggered the activation of the entrance. It showed me a picture of a map with a cross on the correct spot, and I had to figure it out by matching its exact location on the game’s map. Once I managed to open the door, I entered the secret entrance and was hit with a puzzle that I solved using the winch on the Jimny. Unlike pulling rocks and logs, this puzzle instead had fully functioning levers that you can pull using the winch. Once I found the path to the island, I had to cross a large underground cavern path with more levers to pull and more rocks to clear.
Once I arrived on the island, I had to look for the second mission’s starting point once again, and then night fell. I never thought I would say this, but exploring NI’IHAU at night actually terrified me, with dinosaur sounds and rustling keeping me on my toes. The original The Crew Motorfest looks pretty dark at night too, but NI’IHAU felt very atmospheric. Once I finally managed to start the second mission, I found myself on a boat chasing after a Mosasaurus, and then when things started to get dangerous, I jumped back to the land inside a Mercedes-AMG G63 6×6 and started chasing after a Quetzalcoatlus to find its nest. The mission concluded with me arriving at its nest and finding another key.
The whole NI’IHAU island looks like something straight out of Jurassic Park. The island feels deserted, with very few mechanisms or machinery. It has a lot of dinosaurs moving around it, which are mostly limited to specific areas and missions, but you actually have active dinosaurs in the game, which otherwise looks surreal for a racing game. Ivory Tower and Ubisoft have really gone to great lengths to make this playlist feel as authentic as possible, and the results are evident.
I like how the missions demand some focus, but they are not too difficult to complete. At least the first two missions of both playlists. The compass gives you a fairly good direction of where you have to go next. It is not overly simple and not overly complicated. The images on the left side of the UI that pop up with key locations while you are on a mission also give you a good idea of what you need to be looking for. I did get stuck finding the starting location of the second mission of the Tomb Raider playlist, but that was because it got pitch dark during the night and I couldn’t see the surroundings very well. Once the daylight started coming out, I instantly found the location and was able to resume the playthrough.
Both playlists share some gameplay mechanics with each other, like using the winch, no handholding with location markers, and the dependency on the compass for progression, but they are both unique in their own ways. While Expeditions takes place on a previously available location, the Secrets of NI’IHAU adds a brand-new island to the game and thus definitely feels premium. Both playlists will feature 8 missions when they arrive for all players in The Crew Motorfest, so there are probably some more surprises hiding in their later missions as well.
The new playlists are not the only thing that the preview build offered me. I also got to experience the raw performance of the Bugatti Tourbillon in its special Proving Laps event. The new Tourbillon is the hybrid hypercar successor to the Chiron and features a NA 8.3-liter V16 engine and three electric motors. The whole setup produces 1,800 hp and has a 0-62 mph time of just 2 seconds. It is only limited to 250 units worldwide, but in The Crew Motorfest, you can now drive it and experience its performance without any limitations.
The Tourbillon event offered me five laps of a circuit time trial to set my best time, with a different reward for two separate milestones. This was a fast-paced event that I completed multiple times just to experience the crisp handling and the quick acceleration of the Tourbillon. Moving on, I landed in the new TrackForge section for the all-new Pure Dirt creations. This is a brand-new addition to the ever-expanding TrackForge, which will add 200+ new elements to create off-road tracks by the community and publish them online. I did try some tracks created by Ubisoft for the preview, and safe to say, I loved them. The freedom these off-road tracks provided for races is something that no other TrackForge kit provides when it comes to how big a track can get in terms of openness.
Ever since I played The Crew Motorfest at its launch, I have been saying that Ubisoft is heading in the right direction when it comes to handling playlists and post-launch content. At this point, we have seen some of the post-launch content for both The Crew Motorfest and Forza Horizon 6, and I can easily say that The Crew Motorfest is drifting circles around Forza Horizon 6. The Crew Motorfest is not afraid of going a little off the path, and its playlists feel more grounded and alive. Each playlist brings enough new content and mechanics to the table that it does not feel like a grind anymore. Every time there is a new playlist announcement, I genuinely get excited to see what Ubisoft and Ivory Tower are bringing to the game with the new update.
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While I only got to see a small taste of the Season 11 content coming to The Crew Motorfest with the preview build, I can easily say that fans are in for a good time. The new playlists are bringing some exciting new features, and the extra content like wildlife photo ops, beacon hunting, and photoquests are fun exploration activities that will allow you to roam around the less-traveled areas more. Vehicle additions like the 2018 Suzuki Jimny, Bugatti Tourbillon, and the Lamborghini Sterrato are excellent choices already, but the complete season will add around 23 new vehicles, so the lineup is pretty huge with more reveals coming soon.
Disclaimer: An exclusive Preview Build for The Crew Motorfest Season 11 content was provided by Ubisoft for this preview. For a detailed breakdown of our scoring and review process, please refer to our Review Policy.
