Rapha’s Festive 500 began in 2010 as a simple challenge: brave the winter elements and ride 500 kilometers between December 24-31. Since then, riders have covered over 400 million Festive kilometers, including many virtual kilometers after Covid lockdowns opened the Festive 500 challenge to virtual rides.
15 years on and it’s become cycling’s favorite year-end ritual. This year, for the first time, your outdoor miles count just like your indoor miles when it comes to finishing the challenge on Zwift. Read on for details…
The Challenge
Your task is to ride 500 kilometers (310.7 miles) in eight days, from December 24-31. Outdoor bike, e-bike, handcycle, and virtual rides all count toward the total.
This is all tracked through Strava – in fact, the Festive 500 is the longest-running Strava challenge in the world! You’ll need to sign up for the Strava Challenge and upload your rides to Strava to be considered an official finisher.
RoboPacer-Led Festive 500 Events
Outdoor rides and all Zwift miles (free rides, workouts, etc) count toward the Festive 500 challenge, but Zwift is spinning up RoboPacer-led events to encourage riders to go the distance. The following RoboPacers will be in each event:
- A: 3.7 W/kg Genie RoboPacer
- B: 2.6 W/kg Coco RoboPacer
- C: 2.2 W/kg Maria RoboPacer
- D: 1.8 W/kg Miguel RoboPacer
- E: 1.5 W/kg Bernie RoboPacer
Events alternate between “long” 50km rides on Triple Flat Loops at the top of each hour and “short” 25km rides on Watopia’s Waistband at the half hour.
See all of Zwift’s Festive 500 Group Rides at zwift.com/events/series/rapha-festive-500-zwift
Regular RoboPacer Schedule
The regular RoboPacers will be rolling as well, and these “always on group rides” are another great place to look if you want to rack up piles of miles. Zwift is changing the Watopia routes daily, to give us a bit of variety if we’re joining these bots regularly.
Here’s the route schedule during Festive 500 (see the full RoboPacer schedule here):
Wednesday, December 24
Thursday, December 25
Friday, December 26
Saturday, December 27
Sunday, December 28
Monday, December 29
Tuesday, December 30
Wednesday, December 31
Special Event: Ride with Eric Min on December 25
Join Zwift CEO Eric Min on Christmas day at 4pm UTC/11am ET/8am PT for a festive 50km group ride on Triple Flat Loops in the limited-edition Ugly Sweater kit.
Sign up at zwift.com/events/view/5283128 >
Special Event: Ride with Rapha’s CEO Fran Millar on December 31
On the last day of the challenge, join Rapha CEO Fran Millar for a Festive 500 ride. It’s another 50km group ride on Triple Flat Loops. Finish strong!
Sign up at zwift.com/events/view/5288682 >
Kit Unlock
Complete the Festive 500 via any combination of indoor and outdoor rides, and you’ll unlock the Rapha Festive 500 2025 kit in Zwift:
Important: you will not unlock the kit until Zwift batch-processes all Zwifters’ efforts after January 2. Internal sources tell me it will probably be January 5-6 when everyone receives their kits.
Prize Drawing
Details of the Strava challenge say those who finish will earn the following:
- Entry into the prize draw to win a US$1,000 Rapha voucher
- A digital roundel for your Strava Trophy Case
- A 20% off code to spend at Rapha
- The chance to win a grand prize package from Rapha’s partners
More Events from the Community
Community teams always create special events (group rides and even races) to help riders hit the Festive 500km goal. In fact, each year at least one crazy group holds a ride covering all 500km in one event!
See all upcoming rides over 100km in ZwiftHacks >
Questions or Comments?
Are you up for the challenge? I know I’m in, just like past years. Share below!
So the kit unlock is the full 500 like it used to be over Covid? I remember the last couple of years being unlocked just by doing one of the 1 hour events?
Yeah, gotta do the full 500. (Zwift only did it the easy way in past years because they couldn’t track your outdoor distance too…)
But all rides count towards the 500km Zwift kit unlock – and not just Zwift “Rapha Festive 500” events, right? There will be many community-led rides to help people achieve their 500km goal. E.G. During the Festive 500, the ZZRC club is adding over a dozen extra Festive rides and making many of its regular rides longer than usual.
Yes, of course all rides count. Including outdoor rides, if you’ve got your Wahoo/Garmin/Hammerhead account connected to Zwift…
@Eric Schlange for Zwift to track the 500km over a variety of ride events for a rider, will there be a Zwift Festive 500 registration? Or simply a background calculation for all active Zwift subscriber activity December 24 through 31 local time?
Hi Rosco! Miss you on the Pizza Burner rides!
I believe registration is automatic.
Miss you Eric and the Pizza krew….damn time changes. Expect my brand of annoyance to return in spring! 🤪
The Zebra is signed up for 20 in a row of the shorter rides this year to complete the 500 in 1 day on Dec 24th. In years past, I would do it in 1 continuous ride…but health matters are making that less an achievable goal. See everyone on Waistband Dec 24th for the 1st ride and the 19 following. Ride On…and On…and On!!! 🦓🚴💪💯💯💯💯💯🎉
You’ll spend nearly as much time waiting for the events to start as you do riding.
It’s a purposely built in rest on my part
If I were to ride 500km straight, as I have in better health, I could at my abilities complete it in 14.5 to 15.5 hours. Unfortunately my extremely rare neurological disorder (Isaacs Syndrome) has advanced and is disallowing me that kind of ride. I tried it a couple months ago for a group’s charity ride series. I almost ended up in the hospital. So I know this effort will take me 20 hours…but I think it with the rests is doable.
I hope to see you on some of the rides Jeff, glad to see you are still going at it strong!!!
Carrie…I’m abandoning the 20 x as my health issue has been aggravated lately. I’m still riding…but sticking completely to Tempus Fugit. On that course I can build a steady maintainable pace with minimal elevation…even compared to Waistband
Seems a bit silly having the long ride as 50km as if you do one of these events a day you won’t hit the 500km target. You can’t even do back to back 50km rides as it will take longer than an hour and the 25km will take over 30 mins so you can’t slip this in without having time to kill between events.
Having a short 25km is even more silly.
I think they picked 50k as a way to ensure the group will not finish within an hour and leave you with dead time if you want to do multiple hours. You will leave the original group and join the next ride on top of the hour.
Many folks can do the 50km ride followed 90min later by the 25km ride. 75km in just over 2hr isn’t a bad pace. Do this for 7 days and you’ll finish your 500.
50km takes about 75 minutes so you would have to wait 15 minutes for the 25km pace partner and be pesterted to join the event while on another event.
Makes no sense.
wait until you find out that you don’t have to do these events, just ride with the normal pace partners or by yourself for as long as you want.
Creativity and inspiration at Zwift seems to be completely gone. If you needed another hint after the very very disappointing and boring NY expansion, this is the next one.
Although Rapha is not in the position to demand anything (close to bankruptcy) they could and shoudgo back to the basics: grinta, stamina: F500 = ride outside.
And let’s be honest, climate change has made it a lot easier to ride outside in the winter…
I live in Toronto, and I can assure you it’s ridiculous to suggest we could ride outside over Xmas.
You can choose to ride wherever and however you wish, and the best of luck if you do choose to ride outside. Have some holiday joy and consider letting other people enjoy their lives without your oversight and negativity.
Ah nice, a $1000 gift card. Just enough for one jersey and bibs!
What? No rubberbanded official Festive 500 sessions? 😂
So this is separate to the Strava challenge. Completing the challenge on Strava doesn’t feed back into Zwift for the kit unlock, to have to link your Garmin etc counts for that?
Correct. Strava doesn’t talk back to Zwift re: challenge completion. (Heck, Strava doesn’t send outdoor activity data back to Zwift, either…)
So there’s no sign up on Zwift itself? Zwift just assumes we did it based on mileage for the 8 days?
Correct. Like many Zwift “campaigns” nowadays, everyone is sort of automatically signed up.
Thank you Sir!
First official event ride seems to be 11am on the 24th in GMT+1 timezone. That is 11 hours into the ride. @Eric Schlange Eric, it would be awesome if you added info about the normal pace partner schedule for the 24th and onwards to the article! My guess is that Coco and Yumi will be popular as ever! Thanks! =)
Done!
Hi @Eric Schlange ,
according to Strava the challenge starts at midnight on the 24th – does Zwift also calculate all rides on the 24th into the 500 kms?
I mean the 1st Zwift Rapha event is at 11 AM – if I ride in the morning earlier with a robopacer does that count?
Shall Zwift also track Rapha progress or only Strava?
Thanks.
good question. Also interested to hear a reply about that topic
Thanks Eric, I think a lot of Zwifters were surprised when the pace partner schedule changed on the 24th, and a few hours before that, several pace partners, including at least Yumi and Miguel restarted on their respective routes. I did scratch it down to planned “features” to help with conversations in the chat during the F500 =)
Yeah, would have loved to give more warning, but Zwift didn’t tell me or change it until the 23rd. 🤷♂️
It was a nice variation during the F500 single ride =)
Honestly? Not a great looking kit
Will Zwift be creating an Rapha icon box to track progress on reaching the goal like they do with the Zwift Camp and Zwift race series?
As a newbie to Zwift. How do I know which Robopacer to choose…
Do you know what kind of watts per kilo you’re comfortable holding for a full rides? Go with that, if so!
At the moment ZWIFT has some different kit for this event:
May be the kit “skin” will be changed? However it says “500” and “2025”.
That’s odd. I’ll check with Zwift and see which one is correct.
It appears Zwift has updated the jersey (just in case: it was plain green with with Rapha stripe on the left sleeve, with big digits “500” in the center of the back and small “FESTIVE 500 2025” on right part of the chest, now it is black with stripes of bright dark pink or smth like this).
Now it looks pretty close to the images above (and Rapha jersey if they’re bringing one this year IRL).
It’s nice to have the issue resolved BEFORE it actually occured, btw.
Thank you, Eric!
@Eric Schlange
If I join the Rapha robopacers, do they have drops multipliers or only the normál Robopacers?
For the kit unlock, do I need to complete the 500 kms on Zwift or also participate ín the dedicated Robopacers rides or both?
Thanks
No, Drops Multipliers are only for the normal RoboPacers, not for special event ones.
For the kit unlock, you just need to ride 500kms or more total in any way. Including outdoors, as long as Zwift is seeing your outdoor rides.
Ok, so it doesn’t make a difference for the kit unlock if I join the Rapha robopacer long rides or just do workouts as long the 500 kms are ticked off until year end, right?
Right.
Is this ride only? Or do my runs count as well? Not that I’m getting anywhere near 500km running, but if I need 63km per day, can I break it up as 50km ride and 13km run?
Ride only.
and 8 days is a long period, riding gets you further, unless you want to continue running training as well.
I am hoping that the RF500 led by Eric Min would also be on Christmas Eve…can’t attend the one on Christmas Day due to celebrating with family.
Are the Pacer Rides limited in km or time? I wanna do the 500 in one take and probably go for a Maria Group Ride on Flat Route. If I join one of these sessions, does it stop at any point or am I able to go unlimited (14/15 hours for the 500k)
The special F500 events are just a particular length, but you could keep going afterwards if you want. But you won’t have the bots at that point.
How does one sign up for this in Zwift? Or is it enough to sign up for the Strava challenge?
Everyone is automatically signed up for it in Zwift. But you will need to sign up for the Strava challenge yourself.
I’m in Australia, can I start on the morning of the 24th (e.g. 6am) or will that not count because it’s still the 23rd GMT?
Is the start time for the Zwift Fesitve 500 based on local time or on US time?
And will Zwift have a tracker in Companion App to keep track of your progress?
It should be based on your local time. I don’t think Zwift will have a tracker purpose built for this, but if you join the Strava challenge, it will track it.
Are you sure it’s through Strava for the kit unlock? Is there any official communication from ZHQ about this? Zwift can see your outdoor rides through not-Strava so it would make sense for it to be Zwift calculated, not Strava. And are you sure it’s local time rather than CC 9am Pacific or whatever the usual start time is?
Zwift is definitely NOT tracking the in-game kit awarding using Strava. Sorry, my comment above was unclear.
Join the Strava challenge to track Festive 500 completion via Strava. That’s one way to track your F500 progress.
Zwift will track it on their own systems as well, for the purpose of awarding the in-game kit. I assume Zwift is tracking based on local time, like Strava is. But I don’t know that for sure.
Is ZHQ going to announce anything on the forum? Not that they typically respond to questions when they’re lacking info. Given the way they usually run event start times it would be good for them to be clear about when the clock actually starts.
Hi Eric,
In the event with Fran Millar on the 31st there is a green shirt.
Looks like a Rapha shirt by the white line on one sleeve. Does that mean it unlocks a different Rapha shirt (than the purple Festive500 shirt) if you participate in that event?
Will the RoboPacers for the RoboPacer-Led Festive 500 Events be using dynamic pacing?
Yes.
Thanks, Eric. For RoboPacer-led Zwift events, like the Festive 500, I sure wish the RoboPacers rode 100% of the time at their advertised Watts/kilogram pace (I’m sure many who like dynamic pacing will disagree). I don’t mind dynamic pacing for the normal 24/7 RoboPacers, since if you get dropped, you can always teleport back on. But for events like the Festive 500, it’s stressful, since if you get dropped, good luck catching back on.
Asking for a friend…
Will the time zone hack work to begin pre-loading miles in the US since it is already December 24 in AUS?
Just did the first group ride… no drop bonus for staying with the bot pacer…results go into your data on zwiftpower. I rode the first 1/3rd with the bot coco. Was too slow and the A pace bot was too fast for me. It was still a good ride.
Sadly…I finished the Challenge on Dec 24th by riding 501.6 km in 15 hours 33 min….but no kit awarded. Nothing automatic in the Zwift garage, or no email from Zwift sent to me to unlock the 2025 Rapha 500 kit. It’s all good I guess. It was the journey to and the experience of achieving 500 km that mattered.
Send an email to Zwift support. I had stuff not unlocking in the past and Zwift support were always quick to manually unlock it for me. Glad you managed your original aim without your condition getting you hospitalised 🙂
Just saw further down. They are batch processing all unlocks after 2nd Jan. If you didn’t get your kit after that it would be time to contact support 🙂
i didnt get my kit
I rode 540 km, 300 km of which were on Zwift and 240 km outdoors with Garmin. Strava says the challenge is complete. So, to get the Zwift badge, I have to ride another 200 km on Zwift?
If your outdoor rides are syncing into Zwift then you’re all good. If you didn’t get the kit… contact Zwift support.
I just finished the 500 today, all on Zwift. No kit as yet, aside from while actually participating in the Festive 500 events. I wonder if Zwift will award it at the end of the 500 window? Not upset really, as sometimes Zwift unlocks can be a little quirky like this.
Yeah, Zwift is rather legendary for their unlocks not working the way they said… I bet the kit shows up soon!
Recent update on the forum. Processing all kit awards after 2nd January. https://forums.zwift.com/t/no-rapha-festive-500-jersey-dec-2025/661952/2?u=ian_attoe
Same here. I’m over 500km with Zwift and Outdoor rides and haven’t gotten a kit unlock yet. The Rapha 500 completion shows on Strava. I’m sure they’ll get this sorted for us.
Edit: Per Shuji at Zwift
We’re batch-processing all the people who’ve ridden 500km after the Challenge is over. Keep an eye in your garage after January 2 2026.
Wow, I’m so glad I busted my hump finishing this as quickly as I could so I could show off the jersey sooner. :-p
My riding partner in NZ is telling me we have until midnight PST time to complete the Rapha 500 but I think she’s wrong, I think it needs to be completed by midnight her time and midnight my time as I live in Australia, can you please confirm?
It’s based on your own local time.
I rode 522 km and earned a Strava badge. why didn’t i get my jersey in zwift?
I did. It as the very last jersey in my list. Zwift sent out emails (if you’re opted in) notifying everyone.
Never mind
Jan 7 , no kit , hehe , just an observation
Hi all and happy new year.
Has anyone received their kit in the garage yet?
I got mine, but my garage wasn’t flagged with the notice of a new item. I went in, scrolled to the very bottom of my kit collection, and there it was at the end. Fits perfectly!
Yeah, Zwift said in their email that the new flag wouldn’t be shown. It’s a really poor way of awarding the kit, I’d say. Especially because people who aren’t opted into emails will have no idea it’s there. But… it is what it is.
Not received mine yet.