Zwift is a place where riders (and runners) come together). We see this now more than ever, but it was true back in late 2014 when Zwift first launched! When those first beta users received their invites and began to pedal around Jarvis, it didn’t take long for group rides and races to spring up, grassroots-style.
The “Clubs” feature has been brought up numerous times in interviews with CEO Eric Min over the past year or more. In those interviews, Eric often mentions how the community has been Zwift’s greatest asset – the best content creator they’ve got. And that’s true! Eric has also said Zwift needs to “get out of their own way” and let the community create more content without Zwift being the gatekeeper. That’s one of the big goals of Clubs – to let the community form their own groups, create their own events, and generally build smaller, more intimate communities without ZwiftHQ needing to manage things.
That’s the big Clubs dream. And today, Zwift has announced the initial rollout of the Clubs feature under its FutureWorks label! What does the functionality look like today – and what might it look like down the road? Let’s dig in!
A FutureWorks MVP
The current Clubs functionality represents what Zwift calls an “MVP”, or minimum viable product. The MVP concept is common in lean startups and agile product development lifecycles where it’s very important to get a product in front of customers who can provide testing and feedback for future iterations. And that’s exactly what Zwift is doing with this Clubs release.
Clubs is the second feature ever to be released under Zwift’s “FutureWorks” label. (The first was steering on Repack Ridge.)
As an MVP, the current Clubs functionality is pretty basic. Zwifters, while happy to see something tangible on the Clubs front, will probably be disappointed that there isn’t more to it. But consider this: it’s the initial release of a feature that will change the face of the Zwift community forever. Zwift is right to be careful and seek our feedback as they build it out!
Functionality
Clubs today includes the following features:
- Joining and leaving the club: Zwifters can respond to club invites via Companion. You can also leave a club at any time.
- Basic club content: about info, Facebook and Discord links, club image, tagline, banner message for members. Club admins can manage this content, which shows up on the Club’s homepage in Companion.
- Listing of events linked to the club: while clubs cannot yet create or edit their events, ZwiftHQ can link a club to an event (for example, a weekly group ride organized by a particular team would be linked to that team’s club). If a club is linked to an event, that event shows up on the club’s list of upcoming events.
- Club member list: club homepage shows total member count, which can be tapped to view a list of members.
- Club activity summary (total distance, elevation, time, calories): this shows the totals for all activities linked to the club. You can choose between 7-day, 30-day, and all-time views.
- Member activities list: view all completed activities in chronological order. Very similar to your current activity feed.
- Active Club selector in-game: there is a new dropdown menu on the join screen where you select which club to link your activity with. Zwifters can join multiple clubs, but each activity can only be linked to a single club. That linking is done here, before you begin your Zwift session.
Club invite in Companion 
Click “Join” and you’re in! 
Some of the Club home screen contents 
Club activities list 
Club members list 
Leaving the club 
“Active Club” dropdown on Join screen
When Can We Use It?
The plan is to onboard more Zwifters and clubs progressively as the community tests features and provides feedback. If major bugs or other issues arise, the release to more users may be delayed as those issues are resolved. This is all part of the agile software development lifecycle.
Phase 1: Beta Users Only
The initial Clubs rollout includes just one club, named “Club Jarvis”. (This is a nod to Jarvis Island, where all the early beta users began their Zwift journey.) Zwift will be sending out club invites to all beta users who are still active Zwifters. So if you signed up before Zwift went to a paid service in late October 2015, and you’re still actively using Zwift, you should get an invite.
Those invites won’t be sent all at once, because the invite list is in the tens of thousands. Zwift will be sending the invites in waves.
Phase 2: Established Teams
After beta users are invited, Zwift will allow a handful of teams to create a clubs and begin using the features. The plan is to onboard teams progressively, beginning with the most established teams. (This plan is subject to change.)
Providing Feedback
In Companion, the Clubs tab includes a FutureWorks logo at the top-right. Tapping this provides access to the FutureWorks Clubs Forum, which is where Zwift is asking us to post feedback on the Clubs features.
This feedback is vital to further developing Clubs functionality, so please chime in!
Future Plans
This is the exciting part. What will Clubs allow us to do in the future? Surely event management is a big piece teams are hoping for soon. But there’s much more in store for sure.
Your Thoughts
What do you think of the Clubs MVP? What are you most excited about in terms of future functionality? Comment below!
Nothing really to get excited about as it sounds like it will be years before we can use it!
Seriously though, this is badly needed. Zwift HQ is struggling with events at the moment and the current meetup functionality is very clunky to use.
I promise it won’t be years 🙂
So, normal people will be able to create clubs, like for their real running/cycling/triathlon club even if there is no current zwift club yet?
This ^ and I assumed this is what club functionality was going to be.
And have their own kit? 😀
I would love to be able to design club jerseys based on real life clubs😊
Like the most requested feature?
Hey Wes…any update when we might see this opened up to the public?
Technically still hasn’t been “years”, but im pretty sure we’ll get there 😂
So how long do you thing it will be before my Triathlon team will be able to build a club on Zwift?
Hi All, I’m somewhat disappointed with the current listings of Club functionality. While the basic stuffs are good, it feels rather like a take on Strava instead a genuine new functionality to give better / more tools to organize groups without big social base (big means like DIRT / HERD / Vikings). I’m waiting for a reply from Zwift HQ (on events at zwift) for second week now, and my doubts are growing that the work I put into the Hugnarian community in the past two – three years worth to keep up… I’d like to see (next to the… Read more »
Hi, would de nice to show at the end of the meetups the position of all the participants
I want the ability to load club jerseys.
Definitely want to be able to upload club Names and jerseys to match IRL club. But also a (private) club (group) chat facility during events to swap tactics etc.
Hate to be negative, but they have be negative, but they have been working in this for a year. It sounds like it could be months, if not longer, because I can create a club and start organising events. Actually very disappointing. I assumed they were close to having a full feature set ready to deploy.
Yay. That is really exciting and looking forward to being able to use it, or test it. Can you put in a plug for a Jan 2016 Zwifter that has a sizeable club (600) with small but growing Zwift numbers (70) forward as a potential tester?
Creating your own club jersey would be awesome!
If I join Club Jarvis, I am going to wear the old fashioned beta jersey exclusively and race with a disc wheel.
I like this idea a lot.
I’m glad Zwift is addressing one of the community’s desires.
I would love for my club to be able to schedule rides and all members receive an invite from the club. Then if the club could designate the ride leader, life would be great.
The current system of following the ride leader and they will invite you to the ride is cumbersome.
So long as we can create club events that work in the same way as the current events (i.e. not like meet-ups that is pretty poor, but as per existing events functionality), and the events link to ZwiftPower so we can see the results properly, then it’s a positive. Anything less and it will fall short of expectations. Let’s see how this pans out.
what would be interesting is to be able to organize events without going through zwift HQ and to be able to invite other clubs to participate.
everything else does not bring much. it just has the merit of integrating into zwift what is already being done on FB, Discord, Strava, etc …
What about club kit?
This would be great currently we are trying to put this sort of thing out to our club members , as cycling weekly club of the year Poole wheelers would love to offer zwift rides to our zwifting club members , hopefully I will fall into the beta testing category as I’ve been zwifting a god while now .
I think it’s exciting and I hope that as a beta user I can get an invitation even though I haven’t been registered continuously since then. 😁
Not sure I understand the why behind not starting with active clubs for initial launch but at least this is a step forward. Fingers crossed this functionality is now higher on priority list and will be expanded and opened to more quickly.
Love it. And since I have been on since Jarvis days. I am looking forward to getting my invitation
I’m happy to see that they’re focusing on club features, but the MVP that they’ve put together is essentially giving you the information that Strava already provides to you (club stats, etc). I suppose that is nice, but Strava is just going to be *the* place to get that information, at least for quite some time. I wish the MVP would have focused more on the ride portion of what a club provides instead of the reporting/stats portion. So, creating/organizing events as the essential function/MVP. I suppose they have their reasons for this order of release, but it does feel… Read more »
Thank you for bringing this feature to Zwift. We are a cycling club of 125 members (and growing) in Durbanville and 60 members actively uses zwift.
Maybe in your programming the option that you can select / manage Club branded kit – simulation as outside when a club cycles in their club kit.
Once again thx for this!
When will we be able to not only ride as a Club but use our Club Kit.
Most have to be affiliated to BC for racing and have a registered kit.
Have you a way of introducing these, it would be great😊
Thank you
Club clothing kit is what I think everyone wants. I’m a member of North Tyneside Riders (NTR) we have our own Zwift club Facebook page for members and often pick a race series and ride as a team and it would be great to wear our own kit rather than one of the off the shelf kits.
Actually, I’m (and a good few others from my vicinity in Zwift Hungary) okay without club clothing, but without events to organize for ourselves, it’s a half a**ed functionality, which borrows from Strava mainly (in the current state).
Teams local i’ts posible?
Can people enter their own clubs because there are a bunch of kids that are zwifters that are all friends and call themselves team kids and with the club feature we could set up a event.
I would say this is not a MVP…. MVP would be able to create and join a club, this is welcome for sure, but MVP, not a chance… hey Strava has clubs… but you can’t join or create one, nonsense.
What about racing events? Is it possible that a group host a racing event that everybody can join? Racing lives from the fact that we all can compete against the best riders from other teams/groups, e.g. Sticky 🙂
So I got to try the Zwift Club out today. It is basically the same as a club in Strava. You see other members and can follow them and there is a leaderboard/mileage progress calendar for all the members.
The listing of events the club is entering in is also nice enough. I think the only thing I would have requested was a club nametag that shows in game so you don’t have to manually add your race team to your last name.
That’s a shame; giving us what we already have in Strava is no real step forward. What we’ve asked for now for a few years is the ability to create our own races/events. First we were given meet-ups which is not great, and now a replica of something we have already in Strava and which also includes outside rides (why would we use the Zwift group stats when it’s only part of the story?
Really hope they deliver what the community wants
As you say, the most important part is club event management. Current meetup functionality is not really that great. Maybe meetup & clubs combined could be a start, they don’t have to be full events.
I am still looking forward to have some presence for our IRL club though.
And as others say: having club jerseys would be nice, but I see this as highly unlikely.
I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.
Groucho Marx
At the point of writing there are currently 99 club members. I would have thought a key feature for a club was the ability to chat to one another. Often with the goal of organising adhoc group rides. Looks like there will be Zwift organised club events, one is scheduled for later today. It won’t work in this group but on the back of club chat, I think club members need to be able to organise their own club/group rides. Not just rely on Zwift organised rides. I say this won’t work in this club as lots of people will… Read more »
This look realy interest; a great feature to add. Would love to see more how it works
Anyone know what Zwift ID range covers the beta users? Mines quite low but I really can’t remember if I was a beta user or not!
I’m in the 58,000’s and was near the end of the beta period, if that helps…
Cool, it does thanks. I’m in the 39,000s
Unless this integrates tightly with ZwiftPower, the functionality is a waste of time.
Brilliant. Our club, Brereton Wheelers are organising meet up group rides but this would take it to a new level
Yet another feature that is not even close to the most requested features from the user community.
Not sure why you all stick with Zwift. Cvrcade allows anyone to create events / races. These can be public or private. Rather than clubs it has teams. For example I’m in Team Velocity. We have our own kit in game that we provided the graphics. Plus it’s free. It’s come a long way from its rather rocky start more than a year ago.
I just started zwift a few months ago. I got all excited when I saw this because I thought we would be able to create a club and maybe have our own uniform template. I was thinking how we could get club members from our real life club signed in and we could upload our jersey design. That would be pretty awesome right now with all that is going on in the world, many of our club members zwift. Maybe someday. Looks like you’re headed in a good direction. Thanks for providing zwift! It’s great to be able to ride… Read more »
Great news 🙂
Looking forward to be able to use and work with this feature.
For the price, I am very surprised at the lack of team gaming functionality in Zwift compared to the gaming industry.
In the new zwiftcast, there are a lot of clarifications on the functionality. In summary, it sounds like lots of the things we are asking for are there, but they have stripped them out for the MVP. So now I feel a little more confident, these are some of the things I would like to see: The ability to start a club for as little as 5 people as well as the huge clubs and organnisations The ability to organise competitions – tournaments or leagues Be able to create events with different race formats – elimination, points race etc Club… Read more »
Our club has just recently started club based meet-ups in light of Covid group riding impacts. It’s been fun but the clubs feature should make it cleaner and simpler to get organized. It sounds like a great format for watching the stat tracking of the whole group too. Would be great to integrate club kits if possible!!
One look at the MVP for Clubs, and I’m thinking “oh, is that it?” It’s nothing more than a Strava Club that provides riding stats and a list of club events. So totally worthless at the moment. It’s the next bit that I’m interested in… when will this be available? And a toolkit for creating club kit?
I understand that Zwift shouldn’t hand over control of event creation to the community without some serious thought. I’d expect 5 years to be enough time to have a solution ready to roll though. I have confidence that Zwift won’t miss the obvious.
So if the clubs feature takes off and is a hit, will cost additional money (e.g. dues) or exclude people?
I don’t see why it would cost more. Workouts didn’t exist at the start and when they were released they were made available to all as part of your regular subscription. Similarly when new worlds are released they are included in the standard cost. I also don’t see why they would restrict people from joining a club. One of the problems I see is that every man and their dog will want to create a club and therefore be in charge of it. It might therefore be hard to find a club if you don’t know its name, especially if… Read more »
No, it won’t cost money, and anyone will be able to create a club.
Hi Eric,
Love the website…
Related question… what’s your best recommendation for a Zwifter like me to find a club to join?
Or is best recommendation to do a bunch of rides… then gradually notice the same people at same pace and same time of day and start following each other?
Re: Club Kits. I’ve sent an email to HQ Support. Am I to understand that webcam now make or revise our clubs kits?
Overdue. Especially given current ‘social distancing’. Our club running virtual events. In particular would be good to be able to hold a proper time trial. Bring it on!
I would pay for this to come out faster. Meetups is clunky and it is impossible to organize people with only Favorite or not. Group ride works well enough with meetup, but really need time trials and group workouts.
Como puedo colocar los avatares de mis corredores con el uniforme de nuestro equipo?
It will be possible to create a club which represent a real indoor bike studio? How do you think you’ll facilitate this? I’m about to open a new one with cutting-edge equipment that could enable customer to enjoy the zwift experience 100%.
Is it possible for me to create a club now and invite my local athletes to join. Our local group ride (IRL) typically has 80 to 90 riders show up. With winter here most are now hibernating but a number are showing up in Zwift.
Im already active with The HERD but was thinking of a smaller club for the locals
Not yet, although that’s the plan in the future.