laravel middleware order (auth sanctum)

I'm using a small middleware to ensure all requests to /api* are answered by JSON by laravel (enforcing JSON).

class ForceJsonResponse
{
	public function handle($request, Closure $next)
	{
		//only to see if called
	    dd("called");
	    //force JSON response from API
	    $request->headers->set('Accept', 'application/json');
	    $request->headers->set('Content-Type', 'application/json');
	    return $next($request);
	}
}

First of all I tried to use this middleware directly inside Kernel.php under $middlewareGroups like this:

'api' => [
        \Laravel\Sanctum\Http\Middleware\EnsureFrontendRequestsAreStateful::class,
        'throttle:api',
        \Illuminate\Routing\Middleware\SubstituteBindings::class,
        \App\Http\Middleware\ForceJsonResponse::class,
    ],

My routes file (middleware) at this moment:

Route::middleware(['auth:sanctum', 'throttle:sanctum_token_limit'])->group(function () {

    //API Routes

});

I was able to see the middleware is never called when a user is unauthenticated (I expect the output to be called, even if the user is NOT authenticated) / no bearer token is present in request.

I tried to include the ForceJsonResponse middleware directly into the middleware() call of route, because so I thought I can enforce the order of the middleware are being used, so I ended up by using this inside Kernel

    'api' => [
        \Laravel\Sanctum\Http\Middleware\EnsureFrontendRequestsAreStateful::class,
        'throttle:api',
        \Illuminate\Routing\Middleware\SubstituteBindings::class,

    ],
];

protected $routeMiddleware = [
    'forceJson' =>  \App\Http\Middleware\ForceJsonResponse::class,

Inside my middleware() of routes I called it like:

Route::middleware(['forceJson', 'auth:sanctum', 'throttle:sanctum_token_limit'])->group(function () {
	//routes...
}

This doesn't call my custom ForceJsonResponse middleware too, where did things go wrong?