It has to be configured though. This is because the command that allows cycling thru editor panes (aka editor groups) has no default keyboard mapping/binding. Open the "Keyboard Shortcuts" menu option and search for workbench.action.navigateEditorGroups . Click the + icon to add/assign a keybinding. I mapped it to Alt+Q because on a qwerty keyboard 'q' is right next to the Tab key. Given that Alt+Tab cycles thru open OS Windows, it seems sort of natural there.
By default, Ctrl+Tab cycles through editors in the current group, but not between groups. We can simply extend the default shortcut to get the behavior we want. The VS Code user guide tells us what we need to add to our keybindings.json:
While it won't directly switch between groups, I prefer this solution since it combines both types of navigation (moving between groups, moving between editors) into a single shortcut that is already in my muscle memory.
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