I see a strange intermediate focusOwner change when navigating with the keyboard. If you run this code snippet:
package test;

import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.beans.value.ChangeListener;
import javafx.beans.value.ObservableValue;
import javafx.collections.FXCollections;
import javafx.scene.Node;
import javafx.scene.Scene;
import javafx.scene.control.ListView;
import javafx.scene.control.SplitPane;
import javafx.scene.control.Tab;
import javafx.scene.control.TabPane;
import javafx.scene.control.TextField;
import javafx.scene.layout.BorderPane;
import javafx.stage.Stage;

public class TestFocusNavigation extends Application {

@Override
public void start(Stage primaryStage) {
SplitPane p = new SplitPane();
p.getItems().add(new ListView<String>(FXCollections.observableArrayList("V1","V2","V3")));

TabPane tab = new TabPane();

{
Tab t = new Tab();
t.setText("T1");
BorderPane content = new BorderPane();
content.setTop(new TextField());
content.setCenter(new TextField());
t.setContent(content);
tab.getTabs().add(t);
}


p.getItems().add(tab);

Scene s = new Scene(p,400,400);
s.focusOwnerProperty().addListener(new ChangeListener<Node>() {

@Override
public void changed(ObservableValue<? extends Node> observable, Node oldValue, Node newValue) {
System.err.println("Focus shifted to: " + newValue);
}
});
primaryStage.setScene(s);
primaryStage.show();
}

public static void main(String[] args) {
launch(args);
}
}

and put the cursor into the first text-field in T1 and type SHIFT-TAB you'll the console holds the following lines:

Focus shifted to: ListView[id=null, styleClass=list-view]
Focus shifted to: TextField[id=null, styleClass=text-input text-field]
Focus shifted to: ListView[id=null, styleClass=list-view]
Focus shifted to: TabPane[id=null, styleClass=tab-pane]

The intermediate "ListView" is not making any sense to me why does FX move the focus there at first? I need to track the current focused control in my application to scope keybindings, ... and this intermediate focus traversal is causing me some troubles. A workaround I found is to schedule a Runnable with Platform.runLater and rule out the intermediate focus-control but this looks like it might break anytime.