As mentioned in our Big Spin 2026 post, Zwift has rolled out a sort of treasure hunt to add a bit of fun to this year’s Big Spin! They’ve placed “Mystery Spinners” at the end of key Watopia segments, and those spinners unlock 26 different prizes from past Big Spin events.
These spinners went live on Friday, February 27, and will be in Watopia until the end of Big Spin 2026.
Where are these spinners located, what are the prizes, and how do they work? Read on for details, including a Rebel Route that takes you to every Mystery Spinner in Watopia!
Mystery Spinner Locations
Eight Mystery Spinners have been placed at the end of particular segments in Watopia, with roadside “?” markers nearby. Here they are on a map:
And are the precise segments linked to each spinner:
- Alpe du Zwift
- Epic KOM
- Radio Tower KOM
- Volcano KOM
- Hilly KOM
- Jarvis KOM
- Volcano Circuit
- Stoneway Sprint Reverse
Mystery Spinner Prizes
Mystery Spinners unlock Big Spin “vault” prizes from The Big Spin 2024 and 2025. The more difficult the segment, the cooler the prizes. Zwift has organized the Mystery Spinners into four tiers based on segment difficulty, and each tier has its own set of prizes.
Tier 1 (Bikes and Wheels)
- Alpe du Zwift (12.2km, 1036m)
- Epic KOM (9.5km, 415m)
(Not pictured: the Lightweight Meilenstein wheels are also in the tier 1 prize spinners.)
Tier 2 (Footwear, Helmets, and Headphones)
- Radio Tower KOM (1.16km, 150m)
- Volcano KOM (3.8km, 128m)
Tier 3 (Stage-Specific Kits)
- Hilly KOM (0.9km, 50m)
- Jarvis KOM (1.8km, 38m)
Tier 4 (Funky Headwear)
- Volcano Circuit (4.1km, 20m)
- Stoneway Sprint Reverse (0.4km, 4m)
Farming Drops
If you land on a prize you already own, you’ll get a healthy Drops bonus instead. The bigger the prize, the bigger the bonus! Examples: the bikes and wheels for tier 1 give you a 25k Drops bonus, while the glasses and hats in tier 4 give you a 10k bonus. Here’s our test bot activating the Volcano Circuit Mystery Spinner and landing on a prize we’ve already got:
Stoneway Sprint is clearly the shortest segment with a spinner. I was able to do a full “rep” in 1 minute, 40 seconds, without a lot of effort. 10k Drops every 100 seconds=360k per hour (and 72 U-turns)!
Triggering a Mystery Spin
To trigger a Mystery Spinner, you have to complete one of the designated segments listed above. This can be done in any sort of ride: free rides, workouts, and events.
If you’re trying to unlock a particular prize, your best bet is to ride repeats of a segment that features said prize. This is easy to do for lower-tier items (repeats of Tier 4’s Volcano Circuit or Stoneway Sprint Reverse don’t take much effort), but much more difficult for higher tiers. Epic KOM or Alpe du Zwift repeats, anyone?
Mystery Spinner Rebel Route
Want to hit every Mystery Spinner in one ride? We’ve put together a Rebel Route which does just that. It’s 76.1km long, with just over 2000 meters of elevation gain. (It ends atop Alpe du Zwift, though, so you get another ~12.5km of “free” downhill once you’ve finished the ride.)
Route details:
Distance: 76.1km (47.3 miles)
Elevation Gain: 2,006m (6,583′)
Strava Segment
See on ZwiftMap.com
We’ll publish a post with turn-by-turn directions soon, but you’ll have to follow along via ZwiftMaps or Strava until then!
Questions or comments?
Share below!
Tier 3 jerseys at Jarvis give 15k drops
Yesterday I did the Jarvis spinner 8 times… I got 6 jerseys… and 2x 15k bonus drops (total of 30k). Today, I didn’t have a lot of time to ride.. but I got 15k every time I got to the spinner. I can make it to the top pretty easily in 4 minutes… Then U turn… I think it’s a pretty easy method to farm drops.
What’s the best route to select to get to Stoneway sprint quickly?
Probably something like Oh Hill No
Climb control
By the looks of the Rebel Route posted above it’s the reverse Stoneway, which probably makes Mayan 8 ( https://zwiftinsider.com/route/mayan-8/ ) the shortest at about 2.6km/ 1.6 miles until the finish of the sprint. If that does indeed start where the ZI article says and not in the Grade pens in which case it would be a bit longer. But I guess once you’re there it’s sprint segment, u-turn, sprint segment the other way, u-turn, etc.
Radio Rendezvous, 2 km to Stoneway arch
I think Coastal Crown Loop starts same place as Radio Randezvous and is the route i chose.
I was asking myself the same question. Seems like Mayan 8 does a good job here. Around 2,3 km for hitting the segment
Oh Mayan 8 might be the best one to hit the stone way sprint spinner, thanks
Coastal Crown Loop. Its around 2km to the start of the segment.
Can you cross the line of the ‘Stoneway Sprint Reverse’ to trigger the spinner, make a U-turn, ride the 400 meters back to the start of the sprint, make another U-turn and do the sprint segment again for another spinner? That way you could have a spinner every 800 meters, with only 5 meter of elevation.
Yes, you can. If you’re lucky someone called “A Spawnpoint” is sitting right in front of the start line. Send them a friend request and you can just teleport back.
This did not work for me for a new follow.
Could see an orange bubble above the person on the minimap, so I was definetly following him, but he wasn’t on the teleport list.
Maybe Zwift has to be restarted before the teleport can be used for new follows.
Yes.
And of course you already mentioned this in the article. Note to self: Eric already answered every question I can think of. RTFA!!!
mayan 8
Mayan Mash route as well. Hey Eric, we really could use a complete list of known spawnpoints in Watopia, and their proximities to each mystery spinner location, sorted by distance, for those of us who are trying to farm spin attempts while the mystery spinners are available!
Spawn points are shown here, and you can easily cross reference them with the routes list on the map (although it’s missing the latest routes…): https://zwiftinsider.com/map/
I like your idea, but I’m traveling until April 1 and unable to take the time to put such a chart together. Staying busy enough just keeping up with typical Zwifty posts!
Mayan 8 only 2.1 km to stoneway
As always Eric, very helpful post! Just a quick one, does this mean you have a chance of unlocking the Lightweight Meilensteins after riding the Epic KOM? And are the chances the same for both Epic KOM & ADZ?
Yes and yes!
Quick Question,
on either Epic or ADZ if you land on Meilensteins and have then already do you get the XP bonus as well as drops ?
i.e. what happens to the normal bonuses at the ADZ arch ?
Just a Drops bonus!
Confirmed the Mielsteins can be won on the Epic. Did yesterday.
Three Sisters gives you 4 spins without having to pay attention to the route – Hilly, epic, radio tower and volcano. Takes about 2h at 2w/kg.
So, do you have to ride the entire ADZ to get the spinner, or is the.? Nearer the top.
You have to do the Alpe du Zwift KOM segment.
Bugger, only did that the other day on TDZ.
And yes I do read Zwift Insider regularly. 👍 👍 👍 😁
Love the mystery spinners Zwift!
What’s the best route for farming drops without having to pay attention to the route? I’m thinking Volcano Circuit, since you can probably get about five or six spins per hour for 50,000–60,000 drops/hour, or more with a bike upgraded with bonus drops. Is there a better one?
I think this is right – alternatively “The Classic” to farm Jarvis KOM reps.
Alternatively, do 2Km+ stints of Hilly Route, which from Downtown will mean cycling less than 0.5Km past the KOM banner.
Not tried it myself yet, but another alternative for 2Km+ stints before saving and re-doing is to do Coastal Crown and pass through the Stoneway Sprint Reverse segment to banner.
The 5% bonus drop is not applied 🙁
It wouldn’t apply to the drops from the wheel, but it would for the drops you’d get from riding around, right? Or am I misunderstanding how the bonus drops work?
Volcano Circuit is around 6 minutes while the Jarvis Island Loop is around 8. That would give 100k drops/hour for the former and 112.5k for the latter. However, you have to factor in that the routes that lead to Jarvis Island have a decent lead-in that will eat into that so they’re probably about even.
One thing to keep in mind is that, if you can keep up with them, Jacques (3.2 w/kg) this week and Yumi (2.9 w/kg) next week are on the Volcano Circuit. That’s going to add a decent amount from the robopacer bonus and riding in a group.
“Volcano Circuit is around 6 minutes while the Jarvis Island Loop is around 8.” FOR YOU. It takes me 8 minutes to do the Volcano Circuit, and much more for the Jarvis Island Loop. Many Zwifters can’t hold 2.0 watts/kg for an hour. Yet, I see many “this route takes about an hour” route descriptions here (assuming 2.0, 2.5, or even higher watts/kilogram over extended time periods). It would be simple to qualify your route or segment estimates with your underlying assumptions about a rider’s strength, or to say that the route or segment takes x minutes/hours “for some,” but you never do it.
And by the way, I do know that that the route descriptions now include the estimates for riders holding 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 watts/kg, but I’m talking about something else: the narrative descriptions of the routes. (Or here, the casual assertion that a segment takes x minutes, as if that assertion applied across-board instead of to just some of the user-base of this site and of Zwift.)
Decadash would do ten laps of Jarvis for t3 drops.
They left the Grade off. Wah. Rode it yesterday.
Will this Rebel Route be getting added to the Veloviewer leader boards as its specific to an event?
The part about the 5% extra drops from an upgraded entry/mid frame is false. It does not apply to the spinner. I did a couple laps with Jacques on Volcano circuit with my maxed out Synapse today and was getting exactly 10k drops from every spin (both looking at the blue number that shows the gain and my drop counter itself). On the other hand, the UI was showing 21 xp every km.
From my understanding, it’s just a +5% that’s added on top of all other multipliers and basically only applies to the base drop rate. So say you ride with a robopacer with a x2.5 multiplier, it becomes x2.55.
Hmmm… bummer! I’ll remove that line, although I’m surprised that’s how it behaves.
I’m glad someone mentioned this because I have been wondering about the Drops bonus on one-time awards in general. For example, I completed the TdZ Ultimate Challenge with my Zwift Aero, and I have a screenshot showing me earning 11,550 XP (550 extra) but just 50,000 Drops (that was probably for leveling up rather than completing the challenge, but the point still stands). Unlike XP gain, the transparency and tracking of Drops bonuses is more difficult.
XP and drops are tracked differently. XP tracks live and stays with your account regardless if you save the ride or not. Drops are not added to your account until you save the ride. Alternatively if you ‘bin’ the ride, the drops get forfeited.
Can different wheels go on a handcycle. If not, why not
They cannot, because Zwift hasn’t created a library of handcyle wheels. Same reason why MTB frames on Zwift only have one wheelset, or the Tron bike only has one wheelset. More reading: https://zwiftinsider.com/handcycle/
Which “official” routes cover the most Mystery Spinners?
Thanks for the article, stoneway Sprint worked pretty well Yesterday. I’m now wondering, which ist the fastest entry to Epic KOM? I’m pretty new to zwift, so Not familiar where to Check routes and positions in a watopia map…
I’m not sure if it’s the fastest but Mountain Route is like 5km to Epic KOM.
Thanks, 5k ist a nice warm up. Haven’t got any decent wheels so far 😁
Take Mountain Route and then do repeats of the Radio Tower until you have everything from that climb. At 7 minutes per loop (with the loop at the top, Radio Tower descent and U-Turn at the junction), you should be able to hoover up one of everything in an hour or less.
Expected number of rolls to get all 8 options from any wheel is about 22 – also, 7 mins is a super-fast cycle time for that route, since it’s 150m vertical.
How did you calculate that? I’m trying to figure out how many times I need to climb the Epic KOM over the next couple of weeks to (likely) get everything there.
It’s 8*(1/1+1/2+1/3+1/4+1/5+1/6+1/7+1/8)
Hey guys, today i’m one lucky bastard🫣! Everything worked pretty fine. Mountain Route is a perfekt start to get into the rythm, so Epic KOM doesn’t feel too hard. I won the Meilensteins with the First attempt🥳. Just before the descent I tried the Radio Tower, and that was brutal. Took me 12 Min., pushing 200W in 1st Gear🤭. Got some Headphones, but that’s unimportant. Best Thing was an Aero Power up. So I switched to the TT Frame, put the Meilensteins on and rocked the descent. With the Power up i got the 100 km/h badge with the first attempt ever 🥳🥳👍. So thanks for the Support everyone!
I also continued on to the Radio Tower thinking it was another bike/ wheel spinner. Nope, it’s tier 2, so I got the 20k consolation prize since I already had the ’24 helmet.
Thankfully, there are only 6 options on the Radio Tower. Took me one hour to get the 5 I didn’t already have.
Will the AdZ segment get you a Mystery Spinner spin and the normal AdZ Prize Wheel spin?
Did Alpe today – only one spinner
Thanks for the response! Much appreciated.
So this farmingoppurtunity will be available until april 19th?
Is there a convenient way to check which prices I have /don’t have?
Ok so the past reward spins are around till the end of the event? Should probably stop doing epic KOM everyday for a bit then.
Potentially stupid question: do the BMX Bandit and the Atomic Cruiser count as “Zwift Bikes” towards the upgrading of three Zwift bikes to allow you to upgrade the Tron? I just noticed when looking at the garage that they’re upgradable bikes, so I thought I would ask if anyone knows.
Yes, they do.
Nice surprise from Zwift. This explains the increase in sightings of the Atomic Cruiser,
This might be an incentive to get the “WARMED UP”, “HOTHEAD” and “ON FIRE!” Volcano Circuit badges.
Got the Mielsteins on the Epic spinner today and the spinner shoes on the Radio Tower.
Mielsteins seems to be outdated now, though.
Mielsteins not outdated. Just only useful for pure climbs, like the climb portal and the Alpe.
No new prizes from the spinners?
If not, that’s extremely disappointing. They’ve had a year to develop new things and makes this iteration a bit pointless for many, nothing to aim at.
Big Spin events have spinners with new prizes. The “mystery spinners” in this post are a separate thing.
570,000 drops farmed on the stoneway sprint in 90 minutes yesterday, 50 km of riding. Also got 2 bucket hats, visor and pair of sun glasses . . . . Ride the sprint, turn once the spinner activates, ride the sprint in reverse, turn at sprint start and repeat. Yes there were also riders teleporting from the end of the sprint back to a rider at the start of the sprint, earning 500,000 drops per hour I am lead to believe.
anyone leading a community ride looking to see some spinners … here are the ones that more than one of the spinners, leaving out anything with Epic or Alpe
Great idea with the rebel route but what are the numbers 1-25?
You can ignore those. Those are waypoints I clicked on ZwiftMap in order to create the route.
Could someone please include the shortest way to the segments? That would be very helpful!
Do I understand correctly that non-climbers are excluded from being able to win the bikes and wheels?!
Seems like an odd way to put it, but yes. You have to climb Watopia’s virtual mountains to reach the best spinners!
Lower trainer difficulty and just accept it will take a while to reach the mountain spinners?
Won the MX bike on Flat Out Fast today with <161 ft of “climb” over 15 miles.
You could do a workout while riding up the mountain, that way the effort is the same as on flat road. the distance it just shorter.
Is there a way to tell which mystery spinners I’ve already ridden through? My first impulse was to make sure I ride through all 25 . . . would that mean anything if I did? And does it matter in which direction I ride past the spinners? Thanks!
Also, I rode through a spinner today and it didn’t spin. Ideas? Thanks again!!
Spinners only pop up in one direction. You’re probably thinking of the indicators on the side of the road, but those just mean a spinner is coming up.
Fondo Series route the weekend of March 27-29 hits one of tiers 1-3, and you could tack on the Radio Tower at the end for a metric century AND another T3 spin. ;-).
there are more efficient routings, but you get a fun Fondo jersey, too. 😉
Do both the Jarvis KoM and the Hilly KoM have all of the old kits or do they have different sets?
The NYC kit is the only one I wasn’t able to get in previous Big Spin events and I’ve done at least a dozen laps of the Jarvis KoM and am only getting bonus drops every time. If it’s just a luck thing, I’ll keep doing it, but, if that kit is only on the Hilly KoM spinner, I’ll go over there and do that one instead (even though I like the Jarvis laps a lot more).
I’m chasing the 2000s kit from last year, the last item I need. It’ll be another week of doing hill reps…
I’ve gone well over 20 laps of the Jarvis loops and still haven’t gotten that dark Navy NYC kit. Not sure if it’s just bad luck or if it really is only on the Hilly KoM spinner. I much prefer Jarvis (in part because it allows me to do a short loop rather than turning around over and over for the repeats or a much longer loop), so I’ll probably keep doing that to see if it works. All for a kit I’ll likely never wear, but the need for completion is strong.
Oddly, I don’t feel that way about going to the radio tower to get the Lightweight wheels. Maybe it’s because I know that I could get them other times just by doing the AdZ more.
Anyone know if they closed the farming loophole? I farmed around 400.000 drops yesterday, and today they are gone. 🙁
must be some kind of glitch. I just checked and they have removed 30.000 more, from my account, than I actually farmed during that ride.
I rode the epic kom / mountain mash , and carried on down the hill for a while , I didn’t see the spinner ??
Mountain Mash climbs the Epic KOM Reverse. That might be the issue.
Again, a lap of the volcano circuit and a PB up the Volcano climb, and ner a spinner in site. 😞
Same here…..😪