The Tour of Makuri Islands is currently underway, and for cyclists it’s a tour like we’ve never seen on Zwift: an on-demand tour. That means you can complete the tour on your own schedule if you’d like, by riding the Tour routes as a free ride, workout, Meetup, or Club Event.
New UI, Who Dis?
Zwift rolled out a brand-new tour UI for the Tour of Makuri Islands which makes managing your Tour activities in-game very simple. It’s accessible via the Tour of Makuri Islands block at the top of your homescreen… clicking this brings you to the Tour’s homescreen, which shows your progress and lets you click to begin working on your next Tour activity.
We’ve been getting some questions about how this actually works… so here are specific instructions. (Note: we’ve included specific instructions below, but you can complete the stages by following different sequences of steps than what we’ve outlined. The big idea is that all you have to do is find some way to complete one of the routes for each stage to get credit for completing the stage.)
Free Ride
Easy as 1-2-3!
- Click the Tour of Makuri Islands block at the top of the homescreen.
- Select the stage you want to complete (the currently scheduled stage will already be selected) and click the route you’d like to do
- Click “Start Ride”



Once you finish the route, your stage will be marked as completed.
Pace Partners

There are always several Pace Partners active on Makuri Islands, and most of them are on routes that are also Tour of Makuri Islands stages:
Pace Partner Routes
- Temples and Towers
- Neon Flats
- Castle to Castle
- Railways and Rooftops
- Neokyo All-Nighter
- Suki’s Playground
- Sprinter’s Playground
- Wandering Flats
- Flatland Loop
Tour of Makuri Islands Stages
- Chasing the Sun
- Castle to Castle
- Suki’s Playground
- Countryside Tour
- Temples and Towers
- Wandering Flats
- Neokyo All-Nighter
- Neon Flats
Join a Pace Partner on any of the bolded routes above and you can complete a stage with the Pace Partner group. Here’s the challenge with this method, though: you must ride long enough to both pass both the start and finish line of the route! Depending on where the group is when you join, you could potentially have to ride nearly two laps in order to complete the route just once.
Workout
Like a free ride, but with an extra step and a caveat:
- Click the Tour of Makuri Islands block at the top of the homescreen.
- Select the stage you want to complete (the currently scheduled stage will already be selected) and click the route you’d like to do
- Click “Start Ride”
- Pick your workout (Menu>Workouts or “E” on your keyboard) and click to start the workout




The big caveat here is that you have to finish the route to get credit for the stage. Your workout may end before the route does, and if that happens, keep riding to the finish line!
Meetup
Want to ride a stage with a small group of friends? Organizing a Meetup is the way to go!
- Figure out which route you want to ride (you can see stage routes by clicking the Tour of Makuri block at the top of the homescreen, or see the list here under “Stage Details and Schedule”)
- Create a Meetup on that route (learn how to organize a Meetup here)
- Join the Meetup and ride it!
Warning: you have to finish the entire route to get credit for that stage. If your Meetup was configured for a specific time length or too short of a distance, it’s possible you may finish your Meetup without actually finishing the route. If that happens, keep riding to the finish line!
Club Event
Finishing a stage as a Club event is very similar to finishing it in a Meetup.
- Figure out which route you want to ride (you can see stage routes by clicking the Tour of Makuri block at the top of the homescreen, or see the list here under “Stage Details and Schedule”)
- Create a Club event on that route (learn how to create Club events here)
- Join the event and ride it!
Warning: you have to finish the entire route to get credit for that stage. If your event was configured for a specific time length or too short of a distance, it’s possible you may finish the event without actually finishing the route. If that happens, keep riding to the finish line!

Community Event
In an unexpected twist, many Zwifters have been completing these stages by riding in community-organized events on the stage routes. These may be social rides, races, or group workouts – but as long as you complete the stage route, you’ll get credit for it!
Finding these events can be a bit tricky, because Zwift doesn’t have a built-in way to search for upcoming events on a particular route. That’s where ZwiftHacks and ZwiftPower come in handy: both sites offer ways to search upcoming events by world or route.


Find your event, ride it, and just make sure you complete the route. Presto! You’ve completed the Tour stage.
Official Scheduled Tour Event
So far, this is how most people are completing the stages. And it’s the only way to complete the Tour of you’re a runner.
While you can sign up for stage events via zwift.com/tour-of-makuri-islands or the Companion app, Zwift has made it really easy by scheduling events at the top of the hour, every hour. Access those events by clicking the Tour of Makuri Islands block at the top of the homescreen:
- Click the Tour of Makuri Islands block at the top of the homescreen.
- The currently-underway stage will already be selected. Click the group ride tile on the left.
- Select your desired category, which determines which route you’ll ride, then click “Start Ride”



Once you finish the event your stage will be marked as completed.
Watch Shane’s Video
Prefer to see all this info in one slick vid? GPLama’s got your back:
Questions or comments?
Post below!
Thanks Eric,
Does it say anywhere when group rides will be for each stage, or are we just supposed to wait and keep checking? Looks as though I might have missed group rides for stage 1.
https://www.zwift.com/uk/tour-of-makuri-islands/ride
Stage 1 was 3 to 11 Nov
Stage 2 is 7 to 11 Nov
etc
Sorry, can;t edit.
Stage 1 was 3rd to 6 Nov
I list the dates here: https://zwiftinsider.com/tour-of-makuri-islands/
They’re available elsewhere also…
Eric, can I really ride the route(s) any time I want? I have some travel coming up that will interfere with a scheduled stage, but I can complete that before or after and it’ll still count? If so, that’s pretty cool. Almost like Zwift realizes some of us are employed.
Yes, as long as you finish the route by Nov 30th!
REMEMBER that it is only possible to start a free ride if you have the new version of the homescreen, unfortunately we are quite a few Android users who do not have it. 😫😫
Me too!!! And it’s not android
For runners, it’s an event series. You have to join a scheduled group event. There are no other options as there are for riding.
I jumped on a Pace Partner with Diego round Castle to Castle yesterday and I think I got credit for Stage 1. I say I think as I had already done Chasing the Sun in one of the formal events, but Castle to Castle is now ticked completed as well on my Tour of Makuri UI. I didn’t access the Pace partner through the Tour of Makuri section of the UI, just dropped into as usual
Has anyone obtained the green tick in the tour for Suki’s playground, with one lap? I appreciate the scheduled events run for 2 laps, but on the free ride option it does not specify that you have to complete 2, it just gives the course distance as 18.6km. If you don’t need 2, I’d rather do one lap and then start a new session to wipe off another of the shorter courses; that way it lets me focus on the longer rides during the short windows where there are events. In a congested month
I did a workout on Suki’s playground last night and got credit with 1lap.
Thanks! Looks like I can see off the last Tri workout without then going on another 12k!
I’ve missed stage 1, is there make up days at the end?
You can complete the routes at any point between 3-30 Nov “on demand” to complete the tour.
The organised group rides feature 2 routes in each 4-5 day window, but they’re optional in terms of tour completion
I am glad you are showing us how to create and ride club events for TOMI! Unfortunately, I have been passing along misinformation about creating a club event based on the information Zwift support sent me. Thanks for clearing up this misinformation.
Its intruiging to use Pace Partners for the Tour, but you have to keep in mind that it can take up to the double distance to make it. For example, if you are spawn in the Pace Partners group just seconds after the start of the route.
Or did someone make other experiences?
everytime i enter stage 3 makuri island race .. my computer freezes… three days now…but all other events other than makuri island ok
On the stages 1 to 6 as you pick them you cannot see which you have picked the orange line don’t move across as you pick them
Hi all,
Unfortunately I am stuck with the old Zwift homescreen. This makes it impossible to start a free ride when Makuri Islands is not active in the rotation that day. Do you guys have other tips so I can d a free ride for the event instead of waiting till the next group ride?
Create a Meetup or Club event for that route, then ride it by yourself! (For the Meetup, you’ll need to invite someone to join you…)
I haven’t yet got the new version of zwift :((( so I’m finding it very hard to finish this tour!!!!
After completing 5 of the Makouri Island Tour routes, yesterday, Nov 25, I signed on to do the Island Hopper route which was scheduled for 11.1 miles and 422′ of climb plus 4 sprints as a free ride as I had done on the previous routes. I failed to read the route description so was not sure what to expect other than more than one island was involved. The route I ended up being taken on was 5 laps around Mech Island, never leaving to the second island, with no sprints and 12.59 miles with 640′ of climb. An obvious… Read more »
How do you know what routes you have left in the challenge? I’m at 83% but don’t know what routes I need to finish the challenge.