February 20, 2025

LAST UPDATED February 21, 2025

The second edition of Zwift Games, a massively popular 5-stage race series for community and elite racers, has just been announced for March 2025. Last year’s inaugural Games broke all the records for previous Zwift race events, and this year could be even bigger! Below, you’ll find everything you need to know about indoor cycling’s premier race festival.

Table of Contents

New This Year

Zwift’s learnings from last year’s Games have been applied to this year’s events, leading to a swath of improvements including:

Zwift Racing Score Categorization: community races are categorized into Racing Score bands for a fresh level of competition.
Web-Based Leaderboards: a new interface is launching at zwift.com to browse community race results and filter leaderboards based on various criteria (see below for details).
In-Pen Powerups, 1 Powerup Per Race: racers will receive just one powerup per race, and it will be given at the very start of the event. Use it wherever you’d like! (See below for details on which powerups are given for each race.)
New Unlocks: unlock new sunnies, shoes, a helmet, and the ZG 25 kit as you finish each stage (see images below).
Fresh Routes: five new routes have been added to the game to host the 5 Games stages (see below for details).
Route Chaser Challenge: earn an extra 1000XP by completing the new Route Chaser: Zwift Games mini-challenge featuring the new routes. Do it as part of the games, or do it beforehand as race recon!
No Split Events: everyone at every level will take on the same courses, unlike like year where A/B racers were on longer routes than C/D for some stages.
Modified Elite Race Structure: a revamped prize and overall race structure incentivizes hard racing throughout for all elite riders (see below for details).
Elite Races Broadcast by GCN: this is the big time! GCN has 3.6 million followers on YouTube. Smile for the camera!

Community Races

Stage Details

This year, Zwift Games is an escalating challenge! Stages get progressively more difficult, with each route longer and more climby than the one before:

Stage 1, March 3-6: Sprint

Makuri Madness (16.1km, 88m elevation)
Aero Boost powerup at start

Stage 2, March 7-9: Sprint

Scotland Smash (18.1km, 167m elevation)
Draft Boost powerup at start

Stage 3, March 10-13: Climb

Downtown Eruption (19.9km, 275m elevation)
Aero Boost powerup at start

Stage 4, March 14-16: Climb

London Uprising (20.9km, 357m elevation)
Aero Boost powerup at start

Stage 5, March 17-23: Epic

ZG25 Queen (44.8km, 894m elevation)
Feather powerup at start

Make-Up Races: March 24-30

(Coming soon) See all upcoming races at zwift.com/events/tag/zg2025

Standard Race Schedule

The largest Zwift Games fields will be found in the standard (mixed) Community races which will be held hourly, 24x daily, at 10 minutes past the hour. Like recent ZRacing events, these races will alternate each hour between two different Racing Score ranges:

Range 1: 0-159 | 160-269 | 270-389 | 390-509 | 510-649
Range 2: 0-209 | 210-329 | 330-449 | 450-569 | 570-699

The two range options give racers a choice between a stronger category that may help them get a faster course time (great for the GC competition) or a slightly weaker category that gives them a better shot at a race win. They also effectively give racers 10 category ranges compared to last year’s 4, which should make for much more competitive racing.

Advanced Race Schedule

Racers with a racing score of 650+ may want to jump into the Advanced Races held 7x daily (to increase field sizes) at 15 minutes past the hour. (These races are open to riders with lower racing scores as well, but be ready to go hard!)

Advanced Race Times

12:15am UTC/7:15pm ET/4:15pm PT/11:15am AEDT
2:15am UTC/9:15pm ET/6:15pm PT/1:15pm AEDT
8:15am UTC/3:15am ET/12:15pm PT/7:15am AEDT
10:15am UTC/5:15am ET/2:15am PT/9:15am AEDT
12:15pm UTC/7:15am ET/3:15am PT/11:15am AEDT
5:15pm UTC/12:15pm EST/7:15am PST/4:15pm AEDT
6:15pm UTC/1:15pm EST/8:15am PST/5:15pm AEDT
7:15pm UTC/2:15pm EST/9:15am PST/6:15pm AEDT

Women-Only Race Schedule

Women-only community races will be held 5x daily to increase field sizes. These races will use their own Racing Score-based bands: 0-199 | 200-299 | 300-399 | 400-499 | 500+.

If you’re a woman who hasn’t raced yet on Zwift, see our Women’s Racing homepage for a bit of inspiration >

Women-Only Race Times

10am UTC/5am ET/2am PT/9pm AEDT
12pm UTC/7am ET/4am PT/11pm AEDT
5pm UTC/12pm ET/9am PT/4am AEDT
6pm UTC/1pm ET/10am PT/5am AEDT
12am UTC/7pm EST/4pm PST/11am AEDT

(Coming soon) See all upcoming women’s races at zwift.com/events/tag/zg2025wmn

Notable Rules

There are two noteworthy rules which apply to community and elite racers:

Neutralized Equipment: like last year’s Games, Zwift has set up all the Zwift Games events so frame and wheel performance is neutralized, just like the Elite races. This means you can ride any road bike frame or wheels from your garage (even the Buffalo or Safety Bike!) and it will perform the same as everyone else’s frames and wheels.
Steering and Braking Disabled: all riders will be steered automatically, including riders with steering devices such as Zwift Play connected.

New GC Leaderboards

For the first time ever, Zwift Games race results will be delivered via a new section of Zwift’s website! Final results will live here, and not on ZwiftPower.

This new interface will include:

Global leaderboards for 4 classifications:
- Overall
- Sprint (Stages 1 and 2)
- Climb (Stages 3 and 4)
- Epic (Stage 5)
Results broken down by stage
See your filtered ranking by Gender, Racing Score band (buckets of 100), and Country. These filters can be used in combination.

(Coming soon) See Community Leaderboards at zwift.com/zwift-games/races

Community Unlocks

A total of four in-game unlocks are available to all Zwifters:

Any one stage: Oakley Velo Kato Glasses
Any two stages: Nimble Shoes
Any three stages: Oakley Velo Mach Helmet
All five stages: Zwift Games 25 Kit (and if you sign up for the Route Chaser: Zwift Games mini-challenge you’ll also receive a 1000XP bonus for completing all 5 stages)

How to Register

No special registration is required – simply join any Zwift Games event to participate. Registration is live on February 24th, at which time events will be available for signup and we’ll have more info on features like the new web leaderboards.

(Coming soon) See all upcoming races at zwift.com/events/tag/zg2025

(Coming soon) See all upcoming women’s races at zwift.com/events/tag/zg2025wmn

Elite Championships

Schedule

The world’s best racers have to meet strict criteria to qualify for the Zwift Games Elite Championships. (Final qualifiers are being held on February 22nd, and we will publish the final start lists here once they are shared.)

The Elite Championships will take place on three consecutive Saturdays at 5pm UTC:

Sprint Championships, March 8
- Stage 1: Makuri Madness (16.1km, 88m elevation)
- Stage 2: Scotland Smash (18.1km, 167m elevation)
- Sprint Showdown: Glasgow Crit Circuit (3.3km, 34m) for the top 5 riders from stages 1+2
Climb Championships, March 15
- Stage 3: Downtown Eruption (19.9km, 275m elevation)
- Stage 4: London Uprising (20.9km, 357m elevation)
- Climb Showdown: ZG Climb Champs (5km, 156m) for the top 5 riders from stages 3+4
Epic Championships, March 22
- Stage 5: ZG25 Queen (44.8km, 894m elevation)

Prizes

Elite men and women will be awarded equal prize purses, making for a total prize purse of $112,700. That’s Zwift’s biggest prize pot ever! Prizes will be awarded thus:

Per Championship: prize money for the top 3 in the Sprint, Climb, and Epic Championships, plus each championship winner will also receive a Gold Concept Z1 (Tron) bike in game.
Overall Individual: prize money down to 30th place, and winner receives Gold Concept Z1 (Tron) bike in game.

The overall men’s and women’s first-place winners will be determined by points earned based on finishing positions in each of the 5 stages. Each race awards 70 points to 1st, 69 points for 2nd, down to 1 point for 70th.