Best Split-Screen Racing Games

Buy Mario Kart 8 Deluxe if you have a Switch. If you do not, buy Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds

The decision in this category is not which racing game is best. It is how many of you there are. Split-screen racers come in two sizes - four players on one screen, or two - and the box does not tell you which one you are buying. Get that wrong and somebody sits on the arm of the sofa watching, which is the single most common way money gets wasted here.

If there is a Nintendo Switch in the room, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the answer and it has been for years: four players on one console, no instructions required for anybody, and a skill floor low enough that a complete beginner still finishes a race in contention. If the room has a PS5, an Xbox or a PC instead, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is the pick - it is the only genuinely new four-player split-screen racer that runs on all three, and it crossplays if you later want a friend to join from a different machine.

If you want four players and the group has already worn Mario Kart out, Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled is the one to buy. If there are exactly two of you and you want real driving rather than items, Gran Turismo 7 on a PS5. And if you want to spend as little as possible to find out whether two of you enjoy a racing game at all, Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 - Turbocharged is usually the cheapest thing in the category and it is the one that also splits the screen on a PC.

Read this first: the local cap is four or two, and it is usually two

“Split-screen” on a store page means two or more players on one machine. It does not mean four. In this category the four-player games are the minority and they are nearly all kart racers: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Mario Kart World, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds and Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled all seat four on one console, and Nintendo's own listings say so in plain numbers - “Single system (1-4)”. Go anywhere near a simulator or a licensed racing series and the number drops to two. Gran Turismo 7 has a two-player split screen. Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 is listed as “Single system (1-2)”. That is the whole difference between a game night for four and a game night for a couple.

The second fact nobody states: you need one copy, not four. Every pick on this page runs its full local player count from a single purchase on a single console, so four people racing costs one game plus however many controllers you are short. That is a fraction of what the same four people would spend joining each other online, and it is the reason this list stays worth reading even though the industry mostly stopped making these. Our second controller guide covers which pads work on which console, and the same logic scales to four.

If your four players are all at one PC, read this before you spend anything

Split-screen racing on PC barely exists, and that is not an opinion about the platform - it is what the store listings say. A PC game only splits the screen if its Steam feature list carries the “Shared/Split Screen” flag, and on racing games it almost never does. Two of the picks here have it: Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds (up to four) and Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 (two). Mario Kart does not exist on PC in any legitimate form. Gran Turismo is PlayStation-only. If you are a PC household wanting four people racing in one room, the honest answer is that a used console and one kart racer will do it better than anything you can install, and our split-screen on PC page explains the workarounds for everything else.

What a split-screen racer costs you beyond the purchase

Nothing, if you stay local. None of these games needs an internet connection or a subscription for split-screen play on one console - the two titles on this site that break that rule are both shooters, not racers. The moment you take any of them online on a PS5 or an Xbox, though, you are into PlayStation Plus or Game Pass territory, and Gran Turismo 7's own PlayStation page is blunt about it: the 20-player online races need PS Plus. A group that only ever races on one sofa can ignore all of that.

A screen you can actually divide. Two-player split is comfortable on almost any television. Four-way split quarters it, and a racing game quartered on a 32-inch set gives each driver a viewport about the size of a paperback - survivable in a kart racer where the track is wide and the information is big, genuinely unpleasant in a simulator with a lap timer and a tire-wear readout. If your screen is small, that is another vote for Mario Kart over Gran Turismo.

How these six are ordered

By how reliably a mixed group gets a good evening out of them on one screen - not by review scores and not by how good the driving model is. A game that seats four beginners ranks above a better-reviewed game that seats two experts, because the question this page answers is “what do we put on tonight”. Within that, the tiebreakers are: does a complete beginner stay in contention, does the local cap match the size of a normal group, and does it still get played in six months.

Matching the pick to your room

Four people, mixed ages, one television. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Nothing else in racing is this good at keeping a seven-year-old and an adult in the same race, and it is the only one of these where nobody needs a tutorial. If the console in the house is a Switch 2, Mario Kart World does the same job with a bigger course list and a 24-player online mode.

Four people on a PS5, an Xbox or a PC.Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds. The Steam listing carries both the Shared/Split Screen and Cross-Platform Multiplayer flags, and the local mode runs to four with the race rules exposed - speed class, item sets, AI difficulty - so you can flatten the skill gap in a group that has one very good driver in it. It is the most “systems-heavy” pick here, which is the trade: gadgets and gears take a night to settle into.

Four people who are sick of Mario Kart. Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled. Same four-on-one-console structure, completely different handling model - it rewards holding a power-slide through a corner rather than hoping for an item, so a group with a competitive streak tends to get more out of it. Check which version you are buying: the PlayStation and Xbox releases are last-gen discs running through backward compatibility rather than native current-gen builds.

Exactly two of you, and one of you likes cars. Gran Turismo 7 on a PS5. It is the only pick on this page with licensed cars and real circuits, and the only one where the split-screen race feels like a driving contest rather than a party. Be honest about the passenger problem first: a player who does not care about cars will be lapped and bored, and no assist setting fixes that.

Two of you, as cheaply as possible - or two of you at one PC. Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 - Turbocharged. It is routinely the cheapest racer in this category, the local cap is two, and it is the only pick that splits the screen on a PC as well as a console. For a parent and a child, or for a couple testing whether racing games are their thing, it is the lowest-risk purchase here.

Racers people ask about that are not on this list

Rocket League.Free, fully crossplay, and the closest thing to a universal multiplayer car game - but we are not going to print a local player cap for it, because its own Nintendo listing says “Single system (1)” in the players field while the page is simultaneously tagged “Play together on one console”. Those cannot both be the whole story. It is free, so the no-risk move is to install it and look at the party screen on your own console before you plan an evening around it. It is on our free picks for exactly that reason.

Forza Horizon and the other open-world racers. The reason they are absent is the skip box above: the modern open-world racer is built around online sessions, not a divided screen. Buying one for two people in one room is the mistake this page exists to prevent.

The licensed series - F1, WRC, NASCAR.Several of them do carry a two-player split screen, and they come and go with each annual release, so a page with live prices on it is the wrong place to make promises about this year's edition. If you want one, check the current year's store listing for the Shared/Split Screen flag before you buy, the same way you would check it for anything here.

Older four-player classics. The split-screen racing catalog was far deeper two console generations ago. Most of it is not buyable as a current-generation release, which is why it is not on a shopping page - why split-screen disappeared covers what changed and why it is slowly coming back.

Where to go next

If racing is only one option for the evening, four-player split-screen games is the wider list of titles that seat four on one screen, and our main split-screen page covers every genre. If the group is spread across different consoles rather than one sofa, the crossplay hub is the right starting point - and Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds above is the one racer here that works for both situations.

Two of the picks above now have reviews of their own: Mario Kart World, which is the four-player answer for a Switch 2 and nothing else, and Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, which is the only racer here that seats four on one screen and still crossplays between PS5, Xbox, PC and Switch.