Playground Games has released a big Forza Horizon 6 update with fixes, patches, and balancing tweaks.

Today, Playground Games released a big Forza Horizon 6 update with a long list of fixes, patches, and balancing tweaks that the studio promised earlier. Version 375.327 is now available on Steam, Microsoft Store, and Xbox, offering users improvements for AI, audio, design, performance, road discovery, upgrades, visuals, online play, and more.

Some of the most notable changes in the Series 2 update include rebalanced drivatars, particularly their difficulty and race start behavior. As such, the game should be more balanced on higher difficulty levels, and AI cars should not shoot out when the race starts as if they have rocket boosters. Speaking of difficulty, developers nerfed Drag Tires physics for a more expected and realistic behavior. They are no longer the go-to option for record-breaking times in road racing, and all leaderboard entries with drag tires will be removed.

Completionists will also be glad to get a new feature that lets you see road discovery percentage in each region, which should make discovering all roads easier while keeping it quite challenging and interesting (I spent quite a long time finding the last road).

Festival Playlist is also getting some much-needed fixes, including patches for bugs that allowed completing Seasonal Jobs ahead of time or where weekly challenges would not unlock for some players. Developers will retroactively give reward points to all who could not complete all challenges due to these bugs.

Other changes include changes to Horizon Play progression so that it is easier to reach Level 100, audio improvements on lower-spec devices, fixes for visual glitches, including pixelated smoke, and more. Developers also addressed the currently non-working Eliminator, an online mode gamers used to farm credits with a Hummer EV exploit. Playground Games plans to re-enable it soon. As a gesture of goodwill, players will get a free McLaren Sabre. Those who used the exploit will not be banned, but developers plan to roll back credits to a maximum of 10M for all who farmed credits using the exploit.

You can find the complete changelog for the latest Forza Horizon 6 update here.

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With the June 2026 Patch Tuesday update (KB5094126), Microsoft pushed the Secure Boot 2023 certificate update to a significantly wider set of Windows 11 and Windows 10 devices. For the better part of two years, this rollout has been cautious and phased, held back by firmware compatibility checks. With the June update, the vast majority of supported consumer PCs that Microsoft has diagnostic data for are now in the high confidence category, which means the certificates are either already applied or on their way without any action needed from you.

Secure Boot has been one of the more misunderstood topics in Windows lately. Since a lot of coverage has been aimed at IT professionals, regular home users are left wondering if they need to do anything at all. The short answer for most people is no. The longer answer depends on a few things, and we cover all of them here.

What is Secure Boot and why is it important for your PC?
Secure Boot is a security feature built into the firmware of your PC, specifically the UEFI (the modern replacement for BIOS). When you power on your computer, Secure Boot checks the cryptographic signature of the software trying to load before Windows even starts. If something unauthorized tries to run at that early stage, like a rootkit or a bootkit that hides from your antivirus, Secure Boot blocks it. It has been required for Windows 11 since its launch and is on by default on all modern PCs.

The certificates that back this system were originally issued in 2011. Those 2011-era certificates are now expiring in stages, starting June 24, 2026, with additional expirations stretching to October 2026. Microsoft has been rolling out replacement certificates, called Secure Boot 2023, so that PCs can continue receiving boot-level security updates after the old certificates stop being useful. We covered what happens to Windows 11 PCs if you ignore this deadline in detail earlier.

If you’re a regular Windows 11 or Windows 10 user, here’s what to do
Check your status in Windows Security

For most home users, nothing needs to be done manually. The Secure Boot 2023 certificates are being delivered through Windows Update, and if your device qualifies and Windows Update is not paused, the update happens in the background. However, you should still verify your status. Since the April 2026 update, Windows 11 shows your Secure Boot certificate status directly inside the Windows Security app. Open Windows Security > Device Security > Secure Boot section. A green checkmark means your PC is fully updated, and no further action is needed.
Via windowslatest

These updates deliver improvements like those to the setup files and also help in recovery of the OS. Earlier this week Microsoft released its newest Patch Tuesday updates (KB5094126 / KB5093998 on Windows 11 and KB5094127 on Windows 10). Alongside those, Microsoft also released new dynamic updates.

These Dynamic Update packages are meant to be applied to existing Windows images prior to their deployment. Dynamic Updates also help preserve Language Pack (LP) and Features on Demand (FODs) content during the upgrade process. VBScript, for example, is currently an FOD on Windows 11 24H2.

This time both recovery and setup updates were released for Windows 11 as well as Windows 10. The company writes:

"KB5095185: Safe OS Dynamic Update for Windows 11, version 26H1: June 9, 2026

This update makes improvements to the Windows recovery environment (WinRE). After installing this update, the WinRE version installed on the device should be 10.0.28000.2269.

KB5094149: Safe OS Dynamic Update for Windows 11, versions 24H2 and 25H2: June 9, 2026

This update makes improvements to the Windows recovery environment (WinRE). After installing this update, the WinRE version installed on the device should be 10.0.26100.8655

KB5095971: Setup Dynamic Update for Windows 11, version 23H2: June 9, 2026

This update makes improvements to Windows setup binaries or any files that setup uses for feature updates in Windows 11, version 23H2.


KB5094156: Safe OS Dynamic Update for Windows 11, version 23H2: June 9, 2026

This update makes improvements to the Windows recovery environment (WinRE). After installing this update, the WinRE version installed on the device should be 10.0.22621.7219

KB5098815: Windows Recovery Environment update for Windows 10, version 21H2 and 22H2: June 9, 2026

This update automatically applies Safe OS Dynamic Update (KB5094154) to the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) on a running PC. The update installs improvements to Windows recovery features.

KB5094154: Safe OS Dynamic Update for Windows 10, versions 21H2 and 22H2: June 9, 2026

This update makes improvements to the Windows recovery environment (WinRE). After installing this update, the WinRE version installed on the device should be 10.0.19041.7417.

KB5094153: Safe OS Dynamic Update for Windows 10, version 1809 and Windows Server 2019: June 9, 2026

This update makes improvements to the Windows recovery environment (WinRE). After installing this update, the WinRE version installed on the device should be 10.0.17763.8880.

KB5094152: Safe OS Dynamic Update for Windows 10, version 1607 and Windows Server 2016: June 9, 2026

This update makes improvements to the Windows recovery environment (WinRE). After installing this update, the WinRE version installed on the device should be 10.0.14393.9234."

Microsoft notes that both the Recovery and Setup updates will be downloaded and installed automatically via the Windows Update channel.
Via Neowin

The flagship laptop announced at Computex 2026 will feature Nvidia's new RTX Spark chip with up to 128GB of unified memory.


Kyle Kucharski/ZDNET

At Computex 2026, Nvidia announced its new RTX Spark processor, an ARM-based chip with some impressive performance specs across a cadre of new devices: up to 1 petaflop of AI performance, a 20-core CPU, and up to 128GB of unified memory to power creative tasks with the rough equivalent power of a GeForce RTX 5070.

At the head of the pack is Microsoft's new Surface Laptop Ultra -- the flagship RTX Spark laptop and a powerhouse that doubles down on its premium branding and an edgy, aggressive branding that speaks to developers, pro creators, and AI powerusers.

I went hands-on with the new Surface Ultra in Taipei, and have to say: it's a beast, with smooth gaming capabilities and impressive video editing performance. Of course, I tested it in the controlled space of a demo showfloor, and no benchmarking or real-world testing has been performed yet. Here's what stood out.

Flagship build

Microsoft went all-in with the Ultra's specs and a premium build. In fact, at Computex, none of the other new RTX Spark laptops were even allowed to be powered on. Only the Surface Ultra was running, powering all the demos across every category.

The physical build is absolutely solid, even if it resembles previous Surface laptops (on the outside). The 15-inch display is a mini-LED PixelSense Ultra touchscreen with 262ppi, a 3:2 aspect ratio, and up to 2000 nits of peak HDR brightness. It's exceptionally bright for a laptop, resulting in some truly eye-popping visuals.


Kyle Kucharski/ZDNET

Physically, it also takes inspiration from the MacBook (but what doesn't, these days?) with recessed black chiclet keys, stalwart aluminum body, and edge-to-edge glass panel. The haptic touchpad felt very responsive and precise during the hands-on, and is appropriately-sized. It also comes with a full suite of creator-friendly ports: two USB-C, one USB-A, HDMI, SD card reader, and a headphone jack.

The RTX Spark is the star of the show -- a "new class of GPU for AI", Microsoft says, with up to 128GB of unified memory, designed explicitly to run large models and access datasets locally.

All that compute is intended to be harnessed by creators across the array of AI-powered tasks like video upscaling and intelligent masking, as well as billions of parameters of AI models locally -- propelling the Surface Laptop Ultra to a whole new level of computing power than the previous generation.

Improved thermals


Kyle Kucharski/ZDNET

As expected, Microsoft redesigned the cooling infrastructure to deal with all the heat this kind of hardware will inevitably produce. To start, the laptop is slightly raised off the desk to allow for airflow underneath. Inside, you've got a dual-fan, dual heat pipe setup that funnels cool air in through the sides and out the back, moving as much air as possible through the device.

Microsoft had multiple Surface Ultra units powering games during the demo: "Pragmata" and "Indiana Jones and the Great Circle" -- both graphically demanding titles -- and as they had been running for several hours, the laptops were certainly warm to the touch.

Microsoft was so confident in the power of its new thermal system that it had a smoke machine demo lined up, but unfortunately the machine malfunctioned when it was turned it on. A bummer, but at least I can say the fans whirring at max power were still surprisingly quiet.

I was also a little surprised to see some attention given to device repairability. The backplate is removable, giving easy access to both the SSD and battery, and internal parts are tagged with QR codes for individual replacement.

Questions remain


Kyle Kucharski/ZDNET

Obviously, Microsoft and its partners wanted to project a cohesive narrative, here. Computex was all about dazzling with impressive hardware and promising next-level performance, but there are still a lot of unknowns.

The biggest question on my mind relates to configuration and price. Sure, the RTX Spark can support up to 128GB of unified memory, but what kind of minimum RAM configurations will be available? I doubt we'll see a Surface Ultra with 16GB of RAM, for example, as that would defeat the purpose of such a powerful processor and isn't enough to support these kinds of AI workflows.

I'd estimate the absolute minimum memory configuration to be 32GB, but 64GB seems more likely, which would all but relegate this laptop to the $2,500-plus price range at the low end. High-end loadouts could run upwards of $4,000 or more.


Kyle Kucharski/ZDNET

Besides benchmarking and performance metrics being a big question mark, battery efficiency is another open question. Each person I spoke to expressed confidence in the Surface Ultra's battery life, but the bottom line is a 3,000-nit mini-LED display is going to require a certain amount of power, regardless of how efficient the SoC is.

Availability is, surprise, another unknown. We'll learn more about the Surface Laptop Ultra in the months to come, as pre-orders (hopefully?) open in late summer/early fall and it ships sometime after that.

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What Build 2026 signals about the future of the Windows

Microsoft Build 2026 takes place on June 2 and 3 at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, returning to the city for the first time since 2016. CEO Satya Nadella will open the event with a keynote address, and Microsoft has billed the conference as a two-day, hands-on gathering for AI developers, technical leaders, and enterprise teams, promising "no fluff." In-person tickets are priced at $1,099, with the keynote and select sessions streaming live for free.

With speculation around Windows 12 running hot despite zero official confirmation from Microsoft, Build is worth watching closely this year. The company rarely announces a new consumer OS at a developer conference, but it often uses them to lay the foundation, surfacing platform directions, new developer APIs, and architectural hints that end up defining what comes next. For developers and IT teams planning their roadmaps, spotting those signals early is often the point of attending.

Microsoft has not officially announced Windows 12. The most recent public statement on the subject came at CES, when Microsoft EVP Yusuf Mehdi published a blog post describing 2025 as "the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh" — a clear signal that a new major OS was not on the immediate agenda.

That hasn't stopped a surge of viral speculation from filling the gap. In early March 2026, PCWorld published an article saying that Windows 12, codenamed "Hudson Valley Next," was on track to ship later this year, built on a modular CorePC architecture and requiring an NPU with at least 40 TOPS of performance for full functionality. The piece spread rapidly, but PCWorld's own executive editor has since added an editor’s note stating that a lot of these claims were unfounded. It was a translated syndication from German partner PC-Welt, published without secondary verification.

Windows Central's Zac Bowden, went further and debunked the report based on his own sources. There are no plans to ship Windows 12 in 2026, Bowden wrote, and the "Hudson Valley" codename dates to 2023, where it was tied to Windows 11 planning rather than a new OS. CorePC, likewise, was an internal 2023 project that was never shipped. As for Windows 12, Bowden's assessment is that 2027 would be the earliest realistic announcement window.

The rumor that Windows 12 would require a monthly subscription has also been thoroughly dismissed. Multiple news reports have called the claims "AI hallucinations," tracing them to AI-generated content that was scraped and republished across multiple sites as if it were original reporting. A more plausible scenario, if any subscription element ever materialises, is that it would apply to premium AI tiers rather than locking the basic Windows desktop behind a subscription paywall.

So what is Microsoft actually doing with Windows in 2026? According to Windows Central's reporting on an internal initiative codenamed Windows K2, the company assembled a concerted quality programme in late 2025, targeting the biggest complaints about Windows 11: performance, reliability, and AI feature bloat. Windows K2 is not a new OS release — it's an ongoing effort running through 2026 and into 2027, covering a rebuilt Start menu, faster File Explorer, and a pullback from unsolicited AI integrations across the shell.

None of this rules out Windows 12 as a longer-term product. The Copilot+ PC hardware tier, Microsoft's investment in on-device AI, and the natural pressure of Windows 11's support lifecycle ending in October 2027 all point toward some kind of platform evolution ahead. But for now any specific 2026 launch claims have been broadly debunked, though that does not do anything to make Build 2026 any less significant for the future of the Windows ecosystem.

Build is where Microsoft has historically laid the groundwork for major platform shifts, giving the developer community an early look before any public announcement. The 2011 inaugural conference introduced the Windows 8 Developer Preview, Build 2013 unveiled Windows 8.1, and Build 2015 gave developers an early look at the Universal Windows Platform months before Windows 10 reached the public in July.

The pattern has held since. Whenever there’s a major platform shift in the works, Build is where the technical community gets its first substantive look, along with the first opportunity to ask the engineers behind it how their tooling needs to change.

Build's focus has shifted somewhat in recent years, moving toward Azure, AI tooling, and Microsoft 365. But even within that shift, Windows-specific news has landed consistently, often with more long-term significance than it first appeared. Build 2023 introduced Copilot for Windows 11; Build 2025 renamed the Windows Copilot Runtime to Windows AI Foundry and added MCP (Model Context Protocol) support at the OS level. Each of those moves now reads as groundwork for whatever the next major Windows platform looks like.

There’s more. In March, Windows corporate vice president Pavan Davuluri published a detailed commitment to improving Windows quality on the Windows Insider blog, covering WinUI 3 performance, taskbar customization, and reduced Copilot clutter. Then, at Microsoft's Q3 FY2026 earnings call on April 29, Nadella said the company is doing "foundational work to win back fans" across Windows, Xbox, Bing, and Edge, with native applications and AI-optimized PCs at the center of that effort.

There is no official indication of a Windows 12 announcement at Build 2026. Microsoft has positioned this event explicitly for AI developers, technical leaders, and enterprise developers, and the company has scaled back in-person attendance compared to recent years. A consumer OS reveal would be atypical for a conference this narrowly scoped.

Yet what the conference will almost certainly cover is the current state of Windows platform development, and based on what Microsoft has already shipped and announced in the weeks approaching Build, that story is substantial. Here is what we expect developers to hear about, cobbled together from Build 2026’s Session Catalog, official announcements, and recent release trajectories at Microsoft.

This may be the most significant ongoing Windows platform story for app developers, and it predates Build by several months. In March, Rudy Huyn, Partner Architect at Microsoft, confirmed he is forming a dedicated team to build 100% native Windows apps using WinUI 3, ending the company's reliance on WebView2 wrappers for first-party applications. That same month, Davuluri confirmed the Start menu itself is being rebuilt in WinUI to reduce latency.

A string of tooling releases followed quickly. Microsoft shipped WinUI 3 Gallery 2.9, a new Windows App Development CLI (v0.3), and a set of new WinUI templates that let you scaffold, run, and package native Windows apps from the command line without opening Visual Studio.

Most notably for AI-assisted development workflows, Microsoft also released a WinUI agent plugin for both GitHub Copilot and Claude Code, with eight built-in development skills covering UI design, code review, testing, packaging, and WPF migration. Software engineer Beth Pan published benchmarks showing a 25% performance improvement for WinUI 3's portion of File Explorer, with 41% fewer memory allocations and 45% fewer function calls.

The upcoming "Build and ship faster with a developer-optimized experience on Windows" session at Build 2026 covers this territory directly, alongside WSL and PowerToys improvements. Expect Microsoft to use Build to pull these threads together into a coherent pitch for native Windows development, especially as the industry pushback against resource-heavy Electron and web-wrapper apps continues to grow.

Build 2025 introduced Windows AI Foundry as the platform layer for local model deployment. Build 2026 looks set to deepen that story with three confirmed on-device AI sessions: a breakout covering Windows APIs for local model execution, a table talk aimed at desktop developers integrating local inference, and a demo session for Microsoft's Foundry Local tool on Windows hardware.

This area connects most directly to whatever comes after Windows 11. If the next major Windows version does set a higher NPU baseline, developers will need to understand:

• Which AI capabilities are available on-device versus cloud-routed

• How Windows AI Foundry abstracts that difference

• How to structure applications that degrade gracefully on hardware without a dedicated accelerator.

Build is the right venue for that developer guidance, regardless of whether a new OS announcement accompanies it.

Agent development is central to Build 2026 across every platform, and Windows is no exception. The "Claws on Windows: Designing Safe, Bounded Agent Actions" table talk addresses one of the more pressing questions in Windows development right now. How do you give an AI agent useful system access without creating a security liability? The session looks at real claw design failures and how developers can architect safer, scope-limited alternatives.

"AI & Agent-Augmented coding you can trust on Windows" examines how agents discover, reason about, and execute tasks within Windows' enforced boundaries, covering packaged app permissions, execution constraints, and lifecycle management. For developers building agentic applications targeting Windows, these sessions represent the kind of security architecture guidance that has been largely absent from the available documentation.

The security track extends further with "The Windows Security Features That Matter Most for Developers," a lightning talk covering post-quantum resilience and the platform-level foundations developers should be building on as agentic workflows become more common. Analysts following the longer-term Windows roadmap have consistently flagged tighter default security as a pillar of any next-generation OS; this session is likely to preview some of that direction.

At Build 2025, Microsoft open-sourced most of WSL. The confirmed "What's new in Windows Subsystem for Linux" session at Build 2026 will show where that effort has gone since. According to Microsoft's April 2026 Windows quality roadmap, WSL is receiving many performance upgrades this year: faster file access between Linux and Windows environments, better network throughput and localhost reliability in WSL2, simplified onboarding, and stronger enterprise policy controls for managed deployments.

For the significant portion of the developer community that runs Linux toolchains on Windows hardware, these improvements speak directly to daily workflow friction. The "Elevate your developer productivity with Windows Terminal" lightning talk sits alongside this, covering improvements designed to reduce context switching for developers working across Windows and Unix environments.

The "Build, deploy, and scale agents with Windows 365" lab runs multiple times across both conference days, covering how Windows 365 provides preconfigured, governed computing environments for AI agent deployment. A digital version of the same lab is available for online attendees.

For enterprise developers and IT architects, this is worth watching closely. Windows 365 is the likely delivery mechanism for governance-sensitive Windows AI features, and the architecture on display here, covering how agents are provisioned, constrained, and monitored in managed environments, reflects how Microsoft is thinking about enterprise-scale Windows deployment more broadly.

Build 2026 is a tighter event than recent editions, running just two days with a smaller in-person attendance cap and a deliberate focus on technical depth.

For developers building on Windows or integrating AI into desktop and enterprise applications, the combination of confirmed tooling announcements, exec-level platform commitments, and a strong Windows session track makes this year's conference worth close attention.

In-person tickets are priced at $1,099, with registrations open by clicking here.

Microsoft is offering visa support for international attendees whose registrations are accepted and will refund tickets if visa applications are unsuccessful.

If you can't make it to San Francisco, the keynote and a selection of sessions stream live for free at the same address, with on-demand recordings available after the event.

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