Early this week, Zwift began opening up its FutureWorks Club tools to more users (and there was much rejoicing).
The plan is to roll Clubs out in phases to make sure any early problems get fixed without affecting too many users. If everything goes well, all qualified Zwifters should have access to Clubs within the next few weeks.
First Things First
Before we explain how Clubs are created, let’s make sure you understand the basics of how Clubs function on Zwift.
Clubs Are For Events… For Now
What’s the purpose of Clubs? Much like real-world cycling or running clubs, they let Zwifters organize themselves into groups, then take part in activities together.
In the future Clubs will have a more expanded feature set, but the core function of Clubs today is to let organizers create events. This is something never before seen on Zwift: the ability to create an event and invite others via a simple link.
Further Reading: How to Create Zwift Club Events
It’s sort of like creating Meetup, but it’s next level because the event organizer doesn’t have to manually invite individual followers to their event. The link can be shared and anyone can join, if that’s what you want!
Plus, the events feel more official since they begin in standard start pens, like other Zwift events, instead of along roadside like Meetups.
Who Can Create a Club?
To create a Club once the rollout is complete, you must meet the following requirements:
- Have an active paid Zwift subscription
- Be at least 16 years old
- Be a level 20+ rider or level 10+ runner
Club Limits
Clubs are limited to 100 members at this time. We’ve chatted with ZwiftHQ about this limitation, and they’ve explained it’s because they want Club membership to be something that is special. They don’t see Clubs as having thousands of members, but rather as smaller groups (think: your local cycling club) with a dedicated membership.
You can be a member of up to 3 clubs. That may mean you’ve created one Club, and joined two others. It may mean you simply join three Clubs. But you can only be “attached” to 3 clubs at any given time. Again, ZwiftHQ has chosen this limitation to encourage engagement. This isn’t like Strava clubs, which many people join then forget. Zwift Club membership is meant to mean something.
Creating Your Club
Creating a Club is super simple, and can be done in under a minute via Zwift’s Companion app on iOS or Android. Here are the minimum steps required to create a Club:
- Tap “Clubs”
- Tap “Create Club”
- Enter your Club name
- Tap “Next”
- Click “Preview”
- Click “Create My Club”
That’s it!
Basic club info Styling your Club Club homepage preview All done
Here’s a quick video walking you through the Club creation process:
Best Practices for Starting a Zwift Club
Mind Your Brand
Clubs will be created for a variety of reasons, of course. Some Zwift Clubs will belong to huge multinational corporations, while others will be created as a joke between friends. If your Club is created around an existing organization, or one you’re wanting to start up, mind your branding.
Make sure the name is spelled and capitalized correctly. Select good colors. And use the other best practices outlined below.
Add “About” Info
Once your Club is created, you can edit it to add additional info not available in the initial setup process.
Tap the 3 dots menu at the top-right of your Club’s homepage and click “Edit Club”. You’ll see a Tagline and About fields which you can fill in to add more info to your homepage. Does your Club have a website? Enter it in About (just “yourdomain.com” will do the trick) and members will have a clickable link.
You can also add an Announcement to the top of your homepage. Announcements are temporary messages will expire on a given date.
Adding Tagline and About text Adding an Announcement Updated homepage
Create an Event
As already mentioned, the real power of Clubs is their ability to host events of any size, on any open Zwift route on any Zwift map.
Here’s a post all about creating Club events, including best practices.
Zwift hosts hundreds of public events every day. Make yours special, and participation will follow!
Invite Members
If you’re looking to create or empower a community using the Zwift Clubs tool, then you’ll need people to join your Club. There are not yet any Club “discovery” tools available, so the only way anyone can join your Club is if you invite them to it.
Your Club can have up to 100 members, and only 50 members can be invited at one time. You can only invite members who are following you.
From your Club’s homepage, tap the 3 dots menu, click “Roster”, then the add member icon at the top-right to search for followers to invite. But before you do that, consider this: why would someone want to join your Club?
Here’s what Club membership gets you:
- Access to Club homepage and all Club events
- Access to members-only events
- The ability to be designated as an event’s leader or sweeper
- The opportunity to be upgraded to Club Moderator status, so you can invite, kick, or ban Club members
- The opportunity to be upgraded to Club Owner status, which gives you full control of the Club (including event creation)
Club Members can participate in the Club Chat as well – but that will have limited participation until Zwift updates the chat functionality to include things like notifications and private messaging.
Questions or Comments?
Have you created a Zwift Club yet? Still waiting to get access? Joined a Club? Share any Club-related questions or comments below.
Will these clubs be registered with zwiftpower and wtrl to enable entry to TTT and ZRL, or would that have to be done manually and extra. Or are they meant to be kept very separate given the 100 member limit?
They are totally separate and not integrated into ZwiftPower.
Down the road it’s easy to see how it would make sense for clubmates to be able to somehow work together in races, etc. But that’s a long way off.
I do not have a “clubs tab” on my android phone. But my level is good enough and so I’m able to create a club. Some more with this problem, and so with a solution?
As stated above, the rollout has just begun. Hardly anyone has access as of today!
Clubs tools will be opened up to more and more Zwifters as time goes on, with all qualified users having access by the end of this month if no big snags are hit.
As it seems, it’s not the rollout of the accounts, but the rollout on the app. Somebody else was able on his phone to create clubs (because he had the tab on his phone) with my account. Only on my phone I’m still not.
Thanks for the feedback Eric! Love the work!
Sorry just seen this, my comment can be ignored. 😎
Maybe it’s related to app version. Do we know which versions of the companion app DO have this feature?
As of now I think you need to be a member of a already existing club to have the club tab available.
If you are given access to the Clubs tools, you’ll have a “Clubs” tab. You don’t need to be a member of a club already (unless you’re below level 20+/10+) to get the tab.
Just confirmed with this ZHQ.
How do you get access to Club Tools?
I’m not yet able to create a club but I really look forward to this access being rolled out. This will definitely make our current club ‘meetups’ a lot easier to organise…. Less time organising, more time Zwifting 🚴♂️💨👊
Thanks, Eric, for posting info on “Clubs.” I’ve been waiting for this news. So, I’ve scheduled my first “Club” event beta test for January 17th I am using “Clubs” to replicate setting up a Meetup that doesn’t require I send out individual invites to a bunch of users each week. I don’t see a keep together option, so I’m curious about how the ride will flow. It appears it will be like most events on Zwift, except for the workouts, where everyone stays together regardless if they are putting out 100 or 400 watts. 🙂 Is there a keep together… Read more »
There is not a keep together option for Club events at this time.
That’s just daft, it’s needed big time.
It’s on the to-do list from the beta feedback
The keep together feature would be most needed for club rides. That’s where riding virtually would have an advantage over riding outdoors, for clubs that are aiming to have a diverse membership in ages, gender and ability levels. They keep together feature is what makes a social ride, social.
How did your ride go?
It would be nice if our entire club (fields teams at lots of different levels for ZRL, WTRL TTT etc.) could have one club. We periodically have club-wide championship chase races and stuff that would be nice to organize together. We could put all of the riders in each cat that race in ZRL into a single club for ride-throughs, practices, etc., but it’d be nice to be able to have one club that’s rather larger than the limit for our entire organization. I can imagine that would be nice for you in DIRT as well.
DIRT, and most Zwift teams, has had access to the limited Clubs features for over a year. But membership is capped at 500 members for those clubs!
Yeah, I’d like to see the ability to have larger clubs.
My team only got access a month ago and we’re capped. Hopefully, we can get an upgrade as we’ve got about 600 members, but not all are active.
It says you are limited to 100 members of your club but when you create the event, I assume anyone can join and you can have over 100 riders.
Good question, I was also wondering about that. Our East Coast Zwift Riders Facebook group has over 320 followers, so 100 members doesn’t give access to everyone to join events.
Yeah, see details at https://zwiftinsider.com/club-events/
If you set it so anyone with the link can join the event, then any number of people can join it. Or you can restrict it to Club members only.
Little tip – if you go to the Club configuration on the web, you can upload a custom icon. Here’s ours for Socks4Watts.
LOL. That’s amazing.
Problem is, I’m a member of the DIRT club, AND the Zwift Insider club. On my online interface, all I see are links for DIRT. And trying to hack the URL doesn’t seem to work…
I emailed zwift about this and it turns out the Web functionality is only for the original roll out of clubs
What size file and what program did you use to create your icon? I cant seem to get it to recognize my clubs logo?
Hi Eric, I’ve set up a club but it seems like only I (as the creator) can set up events. Club members, moderators, and owners, don’t seem to have this functionality, is this right?! Thanks
Correct. See https://zwiftinsider.com/club-events/ for more on creating events.
so are you saying the person who creator the club is the sole administrator for that club and any new events or changes would have to go through that one person?
Yeah, basically. Hopefully Zwift will modify it soon so you can appoint members as admins, etc. That’s how the old clubs worked. But for now it’s super-simple functionality.
Will clubs be open to Junior riders?
Just asked ZwiftHQ. They told me you must be 16 years or older to join or own a Club.
Supposedly they are working on it, but it will take awhile because of all of the legal reasons around it. There will be blocks in place to stop kids from joining and creating clubs.
How do we we get access to create clubs? can’t seem to find it on the companion app
It’s a rollout over the next several weeks. See the post for details.
I can’t find a newer version for Android than version 3.31.1, which I have without having the Clubs feature. Looks like it might actually be a user-based roll-out. Or iOS first…
It’s a user-based rollout, to specific subsets of users. Not sure on the criteria they’re using, but I know it’s more than just “pick the oldest users” or “randomly pick 5%”…
If I create a Club and then I cancel my Zwift membership for the summer. When I start my Zwift membership again (in the Fall or Winter), will my Club still be there or will it get deleted when I cancel my membership?
I have tried to get our club involved but haven’t been successful. When is this publicly available?
I’ve been “patiently” waiting for this feature since it was first announced as imminent because it will make my life so much easier…. it finally drops and lo & behold, I’m not one of the fortunate few who gets it🧐
This is so frustrating; half the club will be ‘resting’ their membership in 6 weeks and it becomes redundant until next winter…
Never change Zwift, we’d miss the unique user experience.
Cuando estara disponible?
Probablemente en este mes, creo que una o dos semanas más.
Hi Eric
This is great and thank you! So it’s just a matter of waiting for the app to be updated?
Won’t require an update. Zwift just has to give your account access to Clubs. Then you’ll start seeing the options outlined in this post!
Good morning, I would like to start a club and I am level 20, 72 years old and have a Zwift subscription. Unfortunately the Companion App does not show the “Club” button but still “Goals”. What can I do?
Wait until the staggered rollout has completed.
How can you use a jersey that belongs to a real cyclng club? ZRG, is a real club and their jersey is the same on Zwift as it is in person. I would like to use my club’s jersey and was wondering how to go about that. Thank you.
Eric, ‘back in the day’ wasn’t this a normal function: create event and see who shows up? Pre yellow banner pre meetup pre well, a lot. So at some point I guess that slid away (lead some weekly rides back then) and now this is similar though maybe with restrictions since the old free for all didn’t scale…?
Back in the day there was a Teamup calendar people could add events to. But Zwift has never had the ability for people to create events and invite folks to it.
Cycling clubs in real life may have a few hundred members even though only two dozen may attend any particular event. I think the club membership should be kept at 500, rather than 100 for this reason.
Out of curiosity. I manage a shop and would love to use this feature to organize group rides during the winter season. However, I don’t want to use my personal account and starting a new account for the shop seems like a stretch seeing we would have to ride until we reach level 20! hah! Any suggestions on how to best execute this as a business?
Thanks for answering all of these questions! Clearly this is a very cool update. We are a team with our own jersey and host rides already. How do we convert or create the new club version and get above 100? We have more than 100 regular team members and would need the 500 limit as mentioned above. Events with guest is a totally different question. Thanks for asking HQ. It really helps!
Hello, can Clubs have more than one Owner?
No.
That’s changed in recent days. We have multiple owners for ours.
Are you sure it’s changed, James? It’s possible that the OLD version of Clubs allowed for multiple owners. But as far as I can see, there’s no way to promote a team member to “owner” status. All you can do is make them a moderator.
We’ve got three club owners now for a club we set up 2hrs ago. None of us had clubs before today.
Really?! Huh. How did you make the person an owner? Is that an option on the same menu where you’d make them a moderator?
Also, what version of Companion did you use to make that change? Android or iOS?
Yes, same menu, but the person needs to be a moderator first to be able to be promoted to owner. On the android app.
Whenever I’ve promoted social members first to moderators, then owners, they still can’t create events. Have suggested they clear the app cache but no joy.
Have just noticed this too. Two of our three club owners can create events, but not the third.
Both of the club members that I promoted to owners didn’t originally have the Club option showing, so I’m wondering if this is the blocker here.
Have just tried it with someone who did have the Club’s option showing and it worked fine. They can create events.
Something’s been unlocked overnight – everything works as expected now. All owners can create events, and I can also create a club now (I couldn’t before today).
Zwift confirmed to me yesterday that if a person is promoted to owner, but they haven’t yet been granted Clubs access, they won’t be able to create events.
The good news is, this should resolve itself within the next week, as everyone will have access to Clubs by then.
I have not the option CREATE CLUB. I have the latest update on both IOS and Android. Also Im on level 28 and paying for Zwift. What is wrong?
I am a Jarvis Island member and still waiting for ‘add club’ to become available. I guess I just need to be more patient.
I see you can invite non members with a link but where do I copy the link from?
Looking for this answer as well!
I use Apple iOS:
Create a Club
Create an Event
Select Event
Select vertical . . . at the top right
Select SHARE in popup
Select Mail, Whatsapp, …..
Airdrop, email, SMS,.. with a hyperlink in it appears.
Send it to any person
Does this answer the question?
Still said ‘Goals’ on my iPhone Companion app. Checked my iPad (on same Zwift acccount) and this said ‘Clubs’!? Made a club, rebooted Companion app on iPhone and it magically appeared as well on my iPhone Companion app.
On iPad I can create, edit and delete Clubs and Events but, still using same account, not on my iPhone. So on iPad I’m a owner and on iPhone only a user.
When I deleted all Clubs the app deleted also the Club tab and recreated the Goals tab but I was able to retrieve it.
I’m in on iPad and iPhone since today 🙂
I’ve been invited to a club but I’m unable to create my own so far. Chomping at the bit to create one for my Z friends who regularly ride together! No more commenting on various activities to get a ride organized 🙃
Our club name contains ‘Oakley’ as that is the name of the village where it’s based, but I’m barred from including that word as it ‘does not comply to community standards’. Not every Oakley makes glasses.
Had the same with ‘Giro’ but was able to make ‘Tour de France’!?
The problem is trying to apply logic to Zwift, or Zwift trying to implement an impossible rule: both fail.
Canyon & Felt are both barred, but not Vitus. Wonder how Ribble & Fuji fare.
Solved issue by removing space between ‘Oakley’ & ‘Pedalers’.