Burj Khalifa

Lore & Background

In the Forza racing community, the Burj Khalifa zone carries a certain mythic weight. It is the track racers talk about when they want to describe the feeling of speed made architectural—where the city itself seems to lean into the curve, where the tower's needle-tip vanishes into a haze of heat shimmer above the racing line. Fans describe the experience of threading between the fountain jets and the glass-clad podiums as 'racing through a jewel box that someone accidentally left open.'

In Their Own Story

The sun is dying over the Arabian Gulf, painting the Burj Khalifa in bands of amber and violet. You drop the clutch, and the asphalt sings under the rear tyres as you slide wide through the fountain plaza, mist catching the last light in a thousand tiny rainbows. Up above, the tower's upper floors are already dark, a black needle against the bruised sky. You hit the apex, feel the steering wheel go light, and for one suspended heartbeat the only sound is the hiss of rubber and the distant, almost subliminal thrum of the city breathing. You lift. You accelerate. The spire shrinks behind you, and the desert road unspools like a golden thread into the dark.

Reader's Guide

Burj Khalifa – Forza Horizon (open-world street circuit)

The circuit hugs the base of the 828-metre tower and sweeps through the surrounding plaza complex. The surface is immaculate, low-grip asphalt that runs warm under the desert sun, with occasional damp patches near the fountain jets that catch your rear tyres if you're not careful. Elevation is minimal—this is a flat, wide track—but the visual drama is enormous: you are always looking up, always aware of that impossible vertical line above you.

Key zones to master: the Fountain Plaza chicane (tight, wet, requires early braking and a clean exit), the Grand Arc (a long, sweeping right-hander that wraps the tower's podium where you can feel the speed build and the tower loom closer), and the Skyline Straight (a long, flat run where the tower's tip finally disappears into the haze and you're just you and the horizon).

Dynamic elements include the fountain jets spraying across the racing line during certain times of day, heavy ambient heat shimmer that distorts the distant track, and dense pedestrian and vehicle traffic in the outer plaza sections that you must weave through at speed. Golden-hour lighting shifts the entire palette from cool blue to molten gold, changing how the surface reads under your headlights.

Pro tip: trust the wide corners. The grip is there if you commit early and stay smooth. Fight the instinct to brake late into the Arc—the tower is not a wall, but your ego might be.

Did You Know?

• The Burj Khalifa stands at 828 metres (2,717 ft), making it the tallest structure on Earth and the visual anchor of this entire racing environment.
• The building's design incorporates a Y-shaped floor plan that provides structural stability against the extreme desert winds that would otherwise make a tower of this height impossible.
• The fountain plaza at the tower's base, which features in the track's tightest section, is one of the largest choreographed fountain displays in the world, shooting water up to over 150 metres.
• Dubai's desert climate means the track surface can exceed 60 °C in summer months—a detail the Forza environment captures through visible heat haze and the way the asphalt seems to ripple in the distance.