Zwift Ideas: Quick Map Expansions with Big Impacts

Since launching, Zwift have added or updated their road networks 32 times. On 11 of these occasions, they added a new world, or 2 worlds as was the case with Paris and France both dropping at the same time. The other 21 updates have been to expand possibilities in existing worlds with either large new networks or a few simple connector roads.

Watopia accounts for 14 of these as Zwift’s largest world. Makuri Islands and London have both had 2 updates, and France, New York, and Richmond just 1 each. That means Paris, Crit City, Bologna, Innsbruck, and Scotland have never been updated and remain today as they were at launch.

Interestingly, Zwift hasn’t launched a new world for 3 years (Scotland was launched at the start of 2023). If you look at the release timelines in this article, you can clearly see a change post-2020. The rate of new km’s has not changed dramatically, but the rate of new releases has definitely slowed, and if you look at the launches of new worlds, this has almost stalled.

If we use Paris + France as the chronological midpoint, we had 8 new worlds before COVID and 2 new worlds after it. Scotland was a small world in terms of map size with around 15km of new roads, but Makuri Islands has been a huge addition with 3 large segments released in stages.

The trend has been to add roads to existing maps. We know Watopia is constantly being extended, but the last 2 updates have been on the rotation worlds of France and New York that many probably thought would never be updated.

That got me thinking: what about the other rotation maps that we’ve previously seen as “finished?” Can they be updated and given a new lease on life, too? What updates be time efficient enough to have a chance of implementation, yet have a big enough improvement to make them worth the effort?

Aside from a world’s total road length, what often makes a big impact is the number of junctions and connecting roads which open new route options for racing and free riding. The Epic KOM bypass was a short addition but created many new routes. Some maps have many junctions and connectors, but others are much simpler and therefore have very few route options. The worst of these “limited” worlds are:

• Bologna – 1 road
• Crit City – 1 loop
• Paris – 1 loop
• Innsbruck – 2 loops
• Richmond – 2 loops
• Yorkshire – 2 loops

As an example, if you ignore Ven-Top, the original France map was also only 2 loops and offered very few route options. In early 2025, Zwift added 2 new roads, amounting to just 3km of tarmac, yet the result was a plethora of new routes and therefore increased value to all the existing roads.

Here are my thoughts on quick-win expansions with increasing difficulty.

Innsbruck

Innsbruck routes all fall into 1 of 2 categories. Those that go up the KOM, and those that don’t. If you avoid the KOM you have 2 options, Legsnapper or Legsnapper Reverse. Ignoring the KOM portion as being a big project to expand, the lower single loop circuit has many interesting features, but everyone usually just saves their legs for the Legsnapper each lap. What if there was a new short 400m long road opposite the pens taking you straight to the bottom of the Legsnapper? Better warm up well for those race starts, although that’s just 1 of many possibilities.

The Red road on my map does just that, but also creates 2 crit-style loops which can be combined or isolated in many ways. Laps of the northern loop gives you little respite from the Legnapper, while the southern loop is rather gentler other than the rise over the railway bridge which may become a valid attack point. Perhaps you fancy 10 Laps of the southern loop with a Legsnapper afterparty or Pretzel routes to break your legs in both directions?

I’ve also added a second Blue road which is also 400m long and opens more options, but I don’t think it adds enough extra value. It could, though, serve as an alternate connection. The best bit is that both these roads exist in real life, and much of the graphics for them appear to already exist in Zwift’s map.

Yorkshire

This is probably the least tarmac for the most possibilities. The red road offers the biggest wins with just 600m of road needed, plus most of the graphics of the environment will already exist. A shortcut between Otley Road and the top of the KOM will create a Pot Bank bypass or pretzel options, although it doesn’t play nicely with the KOM banner position.

There are also 3 similar length connection options shown in Blue. Any one of those would add a different dynamic and again should mean limited effort compared with the reward. The most northerly of the 3 is my preference as a KOM bypass, but all are equally viable. None of them work nicely with the KOM segment, but the most southern works with the sprint just fine. Just 1.5km of new road and how many new route options?  Anyone fancy Yorkshire KOM repeats? As with Innsbruck, these roads also exist in real life, too.

Crit City

This is the only fictional route on the list, and the smallest map in the game with just 2km of roads. Despite being an event-only map, it’s a very popular race map with races here several times every day. There are also plenty of options for alternate routes without straying too far from the pens. Many of the side roads are visible from the current route, and as it’s not modelled on a real location, Zwift do not need to replicate, just create what they want.

Given that crits are very short circuits, adding 2km of extra roads should be possible and offer many new potential routes. Going further though and adding the Blue roads would transform the map. Who knows what lies on those roads as they don’t exist yet, but I’m curious what the Zwift design team’s imagination can do with them. (And yes, the map looks like a running mushroom.)

Bologna

This is an interesting world, as it’s just 8km of road, up and down a hill. Like Crit City, the map is event-only and tends to only be used for occasional time trials. The route starts quite flat for the first 6km before turning quite sharply, both right around a hairpin and up a brutal climb. These factors mean the route is rarely ridden, and I’d bet many casual riders don’t even know it exists.

The climb portion follows the Portici di San Luca (the longest portico in the world) to Santuario Madonna di San Luca, a shrine at the top of the climb where you do a 180-degree turn and return to the start. The route only follows the portico for roughly half of its total length, however, as we deviate from its route at the hairpin. The map design team would have to do more work than adding a mere 400m link road, but any additions here may bring this map out of obscurity and allow regular racing on it.

The portico stretches along the shown red road to the Porta Saragozza, after which there is a maze of narrow roads and further porticos which Zwift can use to create a circuit back to the start pens and finish banner. We would now have an interesting ~10km loop with a reverse option, and an afterparty finish for the daring. As with Innsbruck’s Leg Snapper, the climb in Bologna renders the rest of the route into conservation mode. Offering an alternate section without the climb would create compelling alternative routes for an otherwise little-used map.

Paris

This map came out alongside France during the COVID pandemic to host a virtual version of the 2020 Tour de France. I can’t fault it for being limited in scope, as it was rushed out alongside a bigger map and was intended to replicate the iconic TdF finishing circuit, which it does very nicely. However, as a single loop, it has just 2 route options which are largely the same other than sprint and finish line locations, and is therefore only really used for racing.

Recently, the tour has added an extension to this route which goes north, meandering through Paris to take in some short but tough cobbled climbs around Montmartre. The entirety of this new section can be traced on the Zwift route map already (although it really tested my MSPaint skills), but I highly doubt it’s been rendered in game beyond some low-resolution outlines. This would take a bit of work to achieve, but would make this iconic route even more interesting, varied, and current to the real-life route.

Richmond

I almost didn’t add this map, it’s been updated once already, and I don’t see any easy or valuable additions. The map as it is, bears similarities to my proposal for Innsbruck, with 2 loops, 1 flat and one with punchy climbs. A quirk, though, is that when the map was updated to be rideable in both directions, the junctions circled in red and the road between them don’t quite work as expected. I’m not even sure if you can do a proper U-turn here, as it’s actually 2 roads rather than 1. The sprint is only on 1 of the roads for example.

Another quirk is the 2 roads alongside each other I’ve circled in blue. I’ve seen many Zwifters propose a junction here. It would be very little work as no extra road would be needed, but I’m not sure how much value it adds. I’m more interested in what possible routes lie north, south, east, and west to expand this map, and I have no idea if any gains would be worth the effort.

Other Maps

For me, the other maps are fairly strong and don’t have any low effort and high return options. (Not that I think adding 400m or road is low effort, but relative to adding the long rumoured Mt. Fuji to Makuri Islands, it is a walk in the park.)

London has a lot of route options already, and a lot of variation too. There are certainly options to travel further north and take in the sights of Oxford St, Leicester Square, St Paul’s, and Covent Garden, but that would be a lot of work, and I’m not sure it would add any new dynamics.

France has just had an update, but many would love to see an alternate route up/down Ven Top. I’m just not sure how many riders would go up there vs the time to make it.

We can assume Makuri is not finished, as there is an enticing bridge to nowhere leading east from Mech Island before the canyon.

New York has just had a huge update, but the map is very linear, with essentially 3 additional circuits dotted along a long and flat (apart from escalators) road. I would imagine it is too much to ask for an alternate route from Prospect Park to Central Park on the east side of the Hudson, especially not so soon after this previous update.

Watopia is almost certainly not finished, and there are many ways they could expand it, from simple link roads to large updates. There are also plenty of roads to nowhere teasing us with potential new routes! (The blocked-off mine entrance as you descend towards the jungle, and the barriered road by the southern Tempus Fugit turn around are 2 good examples.) A quick search on the forums will show you many riders’ dreams and ideas for new roads such as linking Jarvis to the base of the Alpe.

Of course, as Zwift’s biggest map, it also has hundreds of possible routes available, as last year’s ZRL route design competition showed. For example, the Southern Crit (below) is one I’d like to see. Try to make your own here: zwiftmap.com/watopia

Wildcard

My final option for minimal effort and maximum reward is Gravel Mountain. It must be in the game, as I managed to ride it last year due to a glitch, and it seems to be basically finished. Ok, I get it, lots of people are gravel averse, including myself, but at the same time lots of people don’t like climbing, or crits, or TT’s, or workouts, or racing, or steering, or RoboPacers, or even cycling. I know some who only use Zwift for running. So why not put a nearly finished map to use and let people ride it?

What About You?

What map expansions would you like to see? Share below!