Antonio Forcione was born on May 2, 1960, in Italy's Molise region, on the Adriatic coast. By age eleven he was playing guitar and mandolin alongside his two accordion-playing uncles in the local Italian folk repertoire, and by thirteen he was touring with a band led by his brother, having taught himself the instrument with help from a local barber. He went on to study art and sculpture at the Art Institute in Ancona, studied drums alongside guitar, and later moved to Rome to study harmony under Sergio Coppotelli.

In May 1983, Forcione relocated to London, where he began busking in Covent Garden. He won the Covent Garden Street Entertainer of the Year competition within his first two months in the city, a result that led to a BBC television appearance and a European support tour with the rock band Barclay James Harvest, culminating at Wembley Arena. He released his debut studio album, Light & Shade (1984, Sol International Records), followed by Eurotour (1985) and Celebration (1987, Venture).

Through the late 1980s and early 1990s, Forcione recorded and toured extensively in a duo with Spanish-Moroccan guitarist Eduardo Niebla, a partnership that produced four albums including Poema (1992, Jazzpoint Records), with bassist Rufus Philpot and percussionist Paul Clarvis. In 1991 he also formed "Acoustic Mania," a duo with guitarist Neil Stacey, and joined comedian Paul Morocco's Edinburgh Festival revue "Olé," a music-comedy collaboration that continued into the 2000s and won the Best Spirit of the Fringe Award in 2001.

Forcione's leader catalog turned toward a fuller band format with Acoustic Revenge (1993), which paired his acoustic guitar with flamenco guitarist Marcial Heredia Fernandez and Italian bassist Davide Mantovani; it is the first of his albums to carry a Discogs "Jazz" genre tag, alongside "Latin" and "Flamenco." In 1997 he signed to the UK audiophile label Naim's dedicated "Naim Jazz" imprint, beginning a recording relationship that ran through most of the rest of his catalog: Meet Me In London (1998) and Ghetto Paradise (1998, featuring Indian percussionist Trilok Gurtu) were followed by the concert album Live! and the duo record Vento Del Sud (both 2000, with singer Benito Madonia), Touch Wood (2003, featuring fellow guitarist Giorgio Serci and drummer Enzo Zirilli), Dedicato (2004, with saxophonist Julian Argüelles, double bassist Malcolm Creese, and liner notes by guitarist Martin Taylor), and Tears Of Joy (2005).

In 2006 Forcione recorded Heartplay for Naim with double bassist Charlie Haden, an album of duets split between originals by both musicians plus Fred Hersch's "Child's Song." All About Jazz critic John Kelman placed the record alongside Haden's earlier duo album with Pat Metheny, Beyond the Missouri Sky, as a companion piece in the same intimate duo tradition. After a five-year gap, Forcione released Sketches Of Africa (2012, ANTASTIC LTD), drawn from tours of Zimbabwe and South Africa and featuring Senegalese kora player Seckou Keita, Gambian riti player Juldeh Camara, and Zimbabwean singer Chiwoniso Maraire. The EP Comfort Zone followed in 2015, then Compared To What (2016), a full collaborative album with vocalist Sarah Jane Morris addressing subjects including the refugee crisis. His two most recent releases return to his Italian roots: InCanto (2024), a trio recording with singer/multi-instrumentalist Benito Madonia and guitarist Giorgio Serci revisiting Neapolitan song repertoire, and Storytellers (2025, Jazz Plus).

Forcione's music sits at a genuine crossing point between jazz and several other traditions rather than inside one single lane. Wikipedia's infobox lists "Jazz" as his sole genre, AllMusic and Discogs likewise classify him under Jazz, and critic Charles Alexander, writing in Jazzwise, credited him with "influences ranging from flamenco to Balkan and from Arabic to American acoustic guitar styles" while judging him "thoroughly conversant with the jazz language." That description holds up against his catalog: from Acoustic Revenge (1993) onward, thirteen of his eighteen studio albums carry a Discogs "Jazz" genre tag, several of them released under Naim's dedicated "Naim Jazz" imprint, alongside style tags spanning Contemporary Jazz and Smooth Jazz to Flamenco and African. His most explicitly jazz-idiom record, Heartplay (2006), placed him in a straight duo format with Charlie Haden, the bassist best known for his work with Ornette Coleman and Pat Metheny. At the same time, several of his working groups, including the AKA Trio with West African kora player Seckou Keita and the current Antonio Forcione Quartet, are billed and reviewed as world-fusion acts, and he has played world-music circuits including WOMAD alongside UK jazz festivals such as Love Supreme and the Southend International Jazz Festival. Forcione plays a self-modified instrument he calls the "oudan," made by removing frets from an oud and adding some of a guitar's, and cites Carlos Santana, Jimi Hendrix, John McLaughlin, and David Gilmour as guitar influences alongside the flamenco and Italian folk music of his childhood.