The Best Rally Games in 2026

Rally is the purest test of car control there is. No wheel-to-wheel racing line to hide behind, no braking markers – just you, a co-driver reading the road a few seconds ahead, and a car you are constantly catching on the very edge of grip. It is my favourite discipline to drive, and it is one we spend a lot of time on here – our rally in the sim beginner’s guide goes deep on the hardware and the technique – because getting a rally car to feel right on a wheel is a proper craft. So this is the list I would give anyone asking where to start, ranked with our score out of ten.

The list at a glance

Short on time? Start with DiRT Rally 2.0 – it is the best all-round rally sim and the easiest to get into. When you want to go deeper, Richard Burns Rally with the RSF mod is the purist benchmark, and Assetto Corsa Rally is the exciting new one to watch. Here is the whole list.

Game	Type	Our score
DiRT Rally 2.0	Rally sim	9.0
Richard Burns Rally (with the RSF mod)	Hardcore rally sim	9.0
Assetto Corsa Rally	Rally sim	8.5
art of rally	Stylised semi-arcade rally	8.0
EA Sports WRC	Official WRC sim	7.5
WRC Generations	Official WRC sim (legacy)	7.0
DIRT 5	Arcade off-road	6.0

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The list at a glance | DiRT Rally 2.0 | Richard Burns Rally | Assetto Corsa Rally | art of rally | EA Sports WRC | WRC Generations | DIRT 5 | Which should you play?

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DiRT Rally 2.0

Platform: PC, PS4, Xbox
Type: Rally sim
VR: Yes (excellent)
Our score: 9.0/10

If you asked me where to start with rally, this is still my answer, and it has been for years. DiRT Rally 2.0 came out in 2019 and it has aged like nothing else in the genre – the handling model sits in that perfect spot where a stage feels dangerous and alive without being impossible, and the surface deformation (the ruts that build up on a gravel stage as cars run it) is something the newer games still struggle to match. It is the one I keep coming back to.

What really makes it for me is force feedback and VR. On a decent wheel the road texture and the moment the car breaks traction come through with real clarity, and in a headset, threading a Group B car through a narrow Welsh forest stage is about as intense as sim racing gets. Our DiRT Rally 2.0 wheel settings guide will get your FFB dialled in.

The one caveat in 2026 is that EA has moved on, so the official online servers are winding down – but the community being the community, modders built a tool called DirtForever that keeps leaderboards and multiplayer alive. So it is not going anywhere. For the money it usually goes for in a sale, nothing gives you more rally.

Richard Burns Rally (with the RSF mod)

Platform: PC
Type: Hardcore rally sim
VR: Yes (via the community)
Our score: 9.0/10

Yes, a game from 2004 belongs at the top of a 2026 list, and no rally driver will argue. Richard Burns Rally has a physics model that a lot of serious co-drivers and stage racers still consider the finest ever made. The way weight transfers over a crest, the way you have to place the car and commit to the line long before the corner arrives – newer rally games are only now catching up to what RBR did two decades ago. It is the benchmark the whole discipline measures itself against.

What keeps it not just alive but thriving is the Rallysimfans (RSF) mod, a community project that has effectively rebuilt the game around that legendary core: hundreds of stages, a huge car roster, laser-scanned content, modern online rallies and leaderboards, and an installer that sorts the old compatibility headaches for you. It is free, and it is the reason a two-decade-old game runs weekly events in 2026.

Be warned, though – this is the deep end. There is no hand-holding, the learning curve is close to vertical, and it will punish sloppiness without mercy. But if you want the purest rally driving on a PC and you are willing to earn it, nothing else quite gets there. Start on DiRT Rally 2.0, graduate to this.

Assetto Corsa Rally

Platform: PC (Steam Early Access)
Type: Rally sim
VR: Yes
Our score: 8.5/10

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This is the exciting one. Assetto Corsa Rally arrived in Steam Early Access in November 2025, built by Supernova Games in a technical partnership with Kunos – and worth clearing up a common mix-up, it is not the same engine as Assetto Corsa EVO. It runs on Unreal Engine 5 with a refined version of the original Assetto Corsa physics underneath, which is a very promising combination on paper and, so far, in the car.

It launched with ten licensed cars and over 33km of laser-scanned real-world stages, and the reception has been strong – “Very Positive” on Steam – with the sim community praising the handling and the surface feel. It is Early Access, so the content is still thin next to DiRT Rally 2.0 and there are rough edges to expect, but the foundation is seriously exciting and it is being added to steadily. This is the one I would keep the closest eye on over the next year.

If you are already deep in the Assetto Corsa world, that familiar physics DNA will feel like home the moment you load a stage.

art of rally

Platform: PC, PS4/5, Xbox, Switch
Type: Stylised semi-arcade rally
VR: No
Our score: 8.0/10

Now for something completely different, and do not let the look fool you. art of rally is a stylised, top-down love letter to the golden age of rallying – the 60s through the Group B monsters – and it is one of the most quietly respected rally games there is, sitting at “Overwhelmingly Positive” on Steam for good reason.

Here is the thing people miss: under that clean, minimalist art style is a surprisingly nuanced weight-transfer model. It is not a full sim and it plays beautifully on a pad, but there is real car control to learn here, and the sense of speed and commitment is spot on. It is the rally game I recommend to someone who bounced off DiRT Rally 2.0 because it felt too punishing – it teaches you the rhythm of rallying without the intimidation, and it is gorgeous while it does it.

It is on everything too – PC, PlayStation, Xbox and Switch – so there is no wrong place to play it.

EA Sports WRC

Platform: PC, PS5, Xbox
Type: Official WRC sim
VR: No
Our score: 7.5/10

EA Sports WRC is the most complete official rally package you can buy – the full WRC licence, a massive car roster spanning the modern classes and the historic greats, and enormous 1:1 scale stages that dwarf anything else on this list for sheer length. When it clicks, the handling is very good, and the Builder mode for making your own liveries and cars is a lovely touch.

Two things hold it back, and it is only fair to be straight about them. The Unreal Engine version launched with stuttering issues that soured a lot of first impressions, and the lack of VR is a genuine miss for a rally game in 2026. The community score reflects that – it sits “Mixed” on Steam rather than where the content alone would put it. Get your wheel set up properly and a lot of the frustration lifts, though: our EA Sports WRC wheel settings guide covers Fanatec, Moza, Simucube and Logitech.

There is a caveat that shapes its future, too: EA has paused development, and the WRC licence moves to a Nacon studio (Grit Games) for a new game in 2027. So this is the finished article rather than the start of a series – which is fine if you want the definitive modern WRC game today.

WRC Generations

Platform: PC, PS4/5, Xbox, Switch
Type: Official WRC sim (legacy)
VR: No
Our score: 7.0/10

Before EA took the licence, the WRC games were made by KT Racing, and WRC Generations was their swan song. It is worth knowing about for one specific reason: a lot of rally drivers still prefer its tarmac physics to DiRT Rally 2.0. If Monte Carlo and the sealed-surface stages are your thing, the way the KT games modelled grip on tarmac has a following that never fully migrated to the newer titles.

The whole package feels dated now next to EA WRC, and its Steam reception is “Mixed”, so it is not a first recommendation. But it is cheap, it is the last of a respected era, and for the tarmac specialists it is a genuine reason to keep it installed. One for the enthusiasts rather than the newcomers.

DIRT 5

Platform: PC, PS4/5, Xbox
Type: Arcade off-road
VR: No
Our score: 6.0/10

A word of warning first, because the name is misleading: DIRT 5 is not a sim, and it is not really rally either. It is a flashy, arcade off-road racer – big jumps, mud, ice, stadium events – that pivoted hard away from the sim-focused DiRT Rally line. If you come to it expecting DiRT Rally 3, you will be disappointed, and a chunk of its “Mixed” reception is exactly that mismatch of expectations.

Judge it for what it really is, though, and there is fun to be had. It is loud, it is colourful, it has a proper split-screen party mode, and it is the one to reach for when you want to switch your brain off after a punishing evening on RBR. Just go in knowing it is the arcade end of the shelf, not the sim end.

So which rally game should you play?

If you buy one, buy DiRT Rally 2.0 – it is the best balance of realism, accessibility and content, and it is superb in VR. When it stops feeling like enough, Richard Burns Rally is the mountain to climb, and Assetto Corsa Rally is where the future is heading. Want the full official WRC roster? That is EA Sports WRC. Prefer tarmac? Keep WRC Generations around. And when you just want to throw a car sideways with a grin on your face, art of rally and DIRT 5 have you covered.

Whichever you pick, rally lives and dies on your force feedback – a twitchy, badly-set-up wheel will fight you the whole stage. We have per-game settings guides to get it right: DiRT Rally 2.0 and EA Sports WRC for Fanatec, Moza, Simucube and Logitech, and our full guide to rallying in the sim walks you through the technique from pace notes to left-foot braking. And if you race across platforms, our rundowns of the best PS5 racing games and best PC sim racing games cover the rest. Now grab a co-driver and get amongst it – I’ll see you out on the stages!

Topic: Rally Sim Racing