Zwift Year in Review 2019

2019 was Zwift’s biggest year yet, in all the ways that matter. New game features? Yep, lots of those. New worlds/roads? Construction crews have been busy. Overall participation numbers? Bigger than ever before!

Let’s take a look at all the big Zwift news from 2019.

New Roads and Routes

Zwift has released more new roads and routes in the past year than ever before. It began in early January with the release of three new event-only routes for the zFondo series:

• Bambino Fondo
• Medio Fondo
• Gran Fondo

Several other event-only routes were unveiled at the same time:

• Keith Hill After Party
• London Loop with Box Hill Finish
• Volcano Climb After Party
• Gotham Grind

And in February yet another event-only route (NYC KOM After Party) was launched.

In April we welcomed the Fuego Flats Watopia Expansion, a beautiful desert-scape made for flat, fast TT efforts. This release included a handful of new Watopia routes:

• Über Pretzel
• Bigger Loop
• Out and Back Again
• Tick Tock
• Tempus Fugit
• Whole Lotta Lava

Next came May’s release of the Giro d’Italia Bologna TT course, an exact replica of the prologue ridden at this year’s Giro. Released on May 11th so Zwifters could ride it the same day as the pros, it’s a smaller course which is only used for events.

We also got two new event-only routes in May: Innsbruck KOM After Party and Leith Hill After Party.

In July the Watopia’s Waistband route was made official, even though it’s event-only. This began as a Rebel Route, so it was fun to see it show up in game!

August 1st saw the release of Titan’s Grove, the “National Forest” add-on to Fuego Flats. Titans Grove is a rolling course connecting to the ends of Fuego Flats, and it came with several new routes:

• Quatch Quest
• Muir and the Mountain
• Big Foot Hills
• Dust In the Wind
• Sand and Sequoias

Then the Yorkshire UCI route was released in early September. This replica of the finishing Harrogate circuit of the 2019 UCI Road World Championships lets us ride what the pros rode, without getting wet! Here are the six routes available in Yorkshire:

• 2019 UCI Worlds Harrogate Circuit
• Harrogate Circuit Reverse (event only)
• Tour of Tewit Well
• Royal Pump Room 8
• Queen’s Highway
• Duchy Estate

In early October, just released its first-ever singletrack route, named Repack Ridge. Just for mountain bikers, it is also where riders can test the in-game steering feature.

Then just in time for a little Halloween fun, Zwift released the event only “The Magnificent 8” for riders to traverse while picking up pieces for their costumes.

It felt like Christmas in mid-December when Zwift launched the race-focused Crit City, a small map with a short (1.2 mile) route which can be raced in the the clockwise direction (Downtown Dolphin) or counter-clockwise (Bell Lap).

Finally, just hours before this post was published, Zwift released the new Watopia “May Field” 400m running track.

That’s a total of 34 routes added in 2019. Chapeau, Zwift!

Looking for a complete list of Zwift routes? Check out our newly-published Master List of All Zwift Routes.

Game Updates

By our count, Zwift has released 14 major game updates this year. Here’s the list, if you’re curious what each update contained:

• 1.0.32945 Jan 25
• 1.0.34042 Mar 5
• 1.0.35378 Apr 24
• 1.0.36387 May 14
• 1.0.36881 Jun 1
• 1.0.37294 Jun 25
• 1.0.37506 Jul 5
• 1.0.37722 Jul 16
• 1.0.39204 Aug 27
• 1.0.39812 Sep 8
• 1.0.40555 Oct 3
• 1.0.41095 Oct 12
• 1.0.41943 Nov 1
• 1.0.43645 Dec 6
• 1.0.44368 Dec 30

Major Events

All year long, Zwift’s event organizers kept up a steady stream of major Zwift-organized events to complement the hundreds of community-organized events happening each week.

Here are just some of the major events which happened on Zwift in 2019–click for more details:

• 10,000 Calorie Mission (Jan)
• Tour de Zwift (Jan 3-31) 
• KISS Super League (Jan 23-March 27)
• Zwift National Championships (Feb 24)
• Women’s 5-Stage VoxTour (Feb 4-13)
• KISS Super League Women’s Series (Feb 19-Apr 9)
• ASSOS Speed Club Series (Feb 25-March 2)
• Gore X Chasing Cancellara Series (beginning Feb 26)
• SRAM Women’s Tour (Feb 25th-Mar 7)
• Jaybird “Ride the Worlds” Mission for March 
• Tour of Watopia (Apr 2-May 26)
• Zipp High Desert Speed Challenge (May 4-5)
• Zwift Classics Races (Jul-Sep)
• L’Etape du Tour de France Mission (Jul 6-28)
• 2019 Zwift L’Etape du Tour de France (Jul 20-21)
• Off the MAAP Tour (Jul 15-31) 
• Norseman 2019 Event Series (Jul-Aug)
• Zwift Academy 2019 (Aug 5-Sep 20)
• Yorkshire Power Up Tour (Sep 16-22)
• Yorkshire World Championships Week Races (Sep 23-29)
• Kona Heat It Up Mission (Oct)
• Zwift Academy Tri 2020 (Nov 11-Jan 12)
• Giro de Rigo eFondo (Nov 3)
• Movember 9.9 Mission (Nov)
• Lamb Chop Series (Nov 15-Dec 19)
• Eric Min’s Thanksgiving Day Ride (Nov 28)
• Giro di Castelle (Nov 29-Dec 1)
• Tour of London 2019 (Dec 9-19)
• Team Fearless 3rd Annual Women’s Team Championships (Dec 14)
• December Missions
• Christmas Eve Holiday Run (Dec 24)

Looking for an event? See our post about tools for searching Zwift events.

Big News

There’s been a lot happening in the world of Zwift beyond new routes, game updates, and big events. Here are some of the top Zwift news stories from this year:

• Zwift Breaks All-Time Concurrent Users Record… Again Jan 8
• Guest World is live Jan 24
• Garmin Acquires Tacx Feb 12
• Drop Shop Released Feb 28
• Ramp FTP Test Released Mar 1
• ZADA Returns Mar 31
• Burning Rubber for April Fool’s Apr 1
• Zwift for Android is Out of Beta May 16
• All About Zwift’s New Time Trial Mode Jun 21
• Zwift Releases eRacing Rules and Regulations version 1.0.1 Jun 25
• Elite Announces New Suito Compact Direct-Drive Smart Trainer Jul 15
• Saris Rolls Out 3 New Indoor Products Aug 29
• Zwift to Host 2020 UCI Cycling Esports World Championships Sep 26
• Steering Launched on Zwift’s FutureWorks Oct 1
• Announcing the Zwift Route Hunter Leaderboards Oct 1
• Cam Jeffers Sanctioned, Disqualified from British Cycling Zwift eRacing Championships Oct 4
• Zwift Is Hiring at New “Fitness Tech” Division Nov 13
• 2019 Canyon//SRAM Zwift Academy Winner Announced Dec 12
• 2019 Men’s Zwift Academy Winner Announced Dec 20

What’s Coming in 2020?

Our sources tell us Zwift has even bigger plans in store for 2020, including many game updates to facilitate the first-ever UCI eSport World Championships happening later in the year.

We also know the following updates are happening for sure:

• Club functionality (allowing teams to organize events, etc)
• UI Redesign
• New world launch (Eric Min said, “we are heading east…”)
• Better automatic race rules enforcement

What else does Zwift have in store, and when will it all happen? We’ll have to wait and see. See you out on course!