It’s the first weekend of 2026, and Zwift is a busy place with a variety of compelling events on tap. I’ve picked my favorite 5 below, and it’s a nice mix ranging from crazy hard efforts to beginner-friendly group rides. Ride on!
🤝 Starting 2026 with a Bang 💥! … Achieving your Personal Best Century Ride!
✅ Popular ✅ PR Time ✅ Unique Event
Team 3R and GoG have set up a cool event to kick off the year: a Personal Best Century Challenge! Choose from the A pen for a 100-mile effort, or the B pen for a 100-km effort. All pens will be on the fastest setup in game (Cadex Tri frame with DT Swiss 85/Disc), with drafting enabled.
Aren’t up for 100km? Join the B pen anyway, and push to a target like 50km. You do you, but whatever you do, start the year off with a bang!
During the 2025 event, a group of riders successfully broke the 100km record, clocking a time of 1:55:34, shaving 3 seconds off the previous mark. While there is no known official Zwift record time, the ride was verified against the fastest recorded on ZwiftPower.
This 2026 edition has been expanded to include an attempt to break the 100-mile record. The current benchmark to beat is 3 hours 11min 42 seconds, as recorded on ZwiftPower.
Sunday, January 4 @ 2:30pm UTC/9:30am ET/6:30am PT
Sign up at zwift.com/events/view/5235464
🥇Tour de Spartacus
✅ Endurance Challenge ✅ Unique Event ✅ Crazy TT
This 3-day stage race starts today (Friday) and includes stages on Saturday and Sunday, with lots of riders already signed up! Saturday is actually three separate mini-races, so be sure to join all three.
Read all about Tour de Spartacus >
Saturday and Sunday @ 7pm UTC/2pm ET/11am PT
Sign up at zwift.com/events/tag/spartacus
🤝 (Rubber-Banded) Ride with James’ Friends!
✅ Beginner-Friendly ✅ Banded
Join Zwift’s James Bailey and friends for this beginner-friendly rubberbanded ride on London’s Greatest London Loop Reverse. You’ll ride for 60 minutes, which should be enough to finish this 25.8km route with 319m of elevation gain.
Remember, this is a banded ride, so you can ride at any pace you’d like. As long as you keep pedaling, you’ll stay with the group!
Saturday, January 3 @ 1:30pm UTC/8:30am ET/5:30am PT
Sign up at zwift.com/events/view/5312113
🤝January Resolution
✅ Strava Challenge ✅ Popular
Take on the January Resolution Challenge with the folks at Pas Normal Studios! To complete the challenge, ride a total of 1000 km during the month of January. Mix and match outdoor with indoor rides, make them long or short… all that matters is the total distance ridden.
Sign up for the Strava challenge >
This particular ride is led by ambassador Amos Fun. It’s 75 minutes long and open-paced on Watopia’s Tempus Fugit route.
Sunday, January 4 @ 4pm UTC/11am ET/8am PT
Sign up at zwift.com/events/view/5290355
🥇Tiny Races: Time to Train
✅ VO2 max ✅ Popular
Does your New Year training goals include more intensity in your sessions? Perhaps some VO2 max work? The Tiny Races are here for you! The short race format features four races packed into one hour for a splendid VO2 max workout.
Read all about Zwift Insider’s Tiny Races >
We’re revisiting our National Train Day routes this weekend, with four courses all featuring trains. Choo chooooo!
Three timeslots on Saturday, January 3
Sign up at zwift.com/events/tag/tinyraces
How We Make Our Picks
We choose each weekend’s Notable Events based on a variety of factors including:
- Is the event unique/innovative in some way?
- Are celebrities (pro riders, etc) attending/leading?
- Are signup counts already high, meaning the event is extra-popular?
- Does the ride include desirable unlocks or prizes?
- Does the event appeal to ladies on Zwift? (We like to support this under-represented group!)
- Is it for a good cause?
- Is it just plain crazy (extra long races, world record attempts, etc)?
- Is it a long-running, popular weekly event with a dedicated leader who deserves a shout out?
In the end, we want to call attention to events that are extra-special and therefore extra-appealing to Zwifters. If you think your event qualifies, comment below with a link/details and we may just include it in an upcoming post!
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