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Cellular forces are critical for their collective migration on matrices of various stiffness and topographies. While migrating cells can align collagen fibers, it remains unknown whether such force requirement changes with pre-aligned fibers. On soft surfaces with aligned collagen fibers, we discovered a new mode of fast collective cell migration that requires drastically lower traction forces, compared to surfaces without aligned fibers. Through monolayer stress microscopy calculations and a motor-clutch model, we further discovered that this novel mode of “fast and force-effective” collective cell migration is achieved by rapid stabilization of cellular contractile forces. Although high traction forces have conventionally been associated with fast cell migration, our findings show that aligned fibers relax that force requirement via fast contractility stabilization.