Today Zwift announced their “This Season on Zwift” plans: an exciting list of new features they intend to roll out by the end of 2022.
There is a lot to talk about here, so we’re going to begin by simply publishing Zwift’s full press release. Some of the content in the PR has already been covered in detailed posts here on Zwift Insider, including:
- ZRacing Series
- UCI Esports Worlds and how to qualify
- New TTT race functionality
- Category enforcement (which Zwift calls auto-categorization below)
- Zwift Academy Road 2022
There are other new features mentioned below (and in fact, some new features not mentioned below!) that we haven’t yet covered due to Zwift’s September 1st embargo. Our plan is to release more in-depth posts focused on these topics in the coming hours and days, digging into the details you won’t find in a press release. Watch this space.
Without further ado: here’s Zwift’s full “This Season on Zwift” press release.
Long Beach, California – Zwift, the global online fitness platform for cyclists, is constantly evolving to deliver on its mission to make more people, more active, more often. Today, the platform announces a leap forward with a number of additions to Zwift that will make the platform more engaging and fun for both existing and new users.
To celebrate the start of Zwift season, Zwift’s product design team shared its product roadmap leading up to the end of 2022. Improvements to in-game content discovery, new training features, more routes, improved event capabilities, and increased on-demand services are some of the highlights that will help cyclists Zwift their own way this indoor cycling season.
“Making Zwift more simple is one of the biggest opportunities for our expanding audience. We’re continually looking at new ways to make Zwift more accessible, easier to use, and more fun – whether you’re new to the platform or have been here for years,” said Zwift Vice President of Content, Mark Cote. “With so many different ways to Zwift, this year we’ve focused on building out the tools that empower our community to create their own Zwift experience. We have improved in-game discovery, enhanced the toolsets of Zwift Clubs and also adding to our library of 24-7 on-demand content. We believe our experiences this season will help make Zwift a more engaging and personalized experience for members around the world.”
Training has been a particular area of focus this season. Improvements to the homescreen UI will make it easier to discover and learn more about Zwift’s extensive library of workouts and training plans. Zwifters will be able to search by workout duration and perceived effort, and will be able to learn more about each individual workout through improved graphic detail.
One of Zwift’s most successful recent additions, PacePartners is set to graduate from the FutureWorks test program. PacePartners are prominently featured on the home screen, and give Zwifters the ability to join a group ride for a social workout at a variety of paces. Now evolving from the success of PacePartners are Zwift’s all-new Holographic Replay. This feature will launch under the FutureWorks test program and will allow Zwifters to compete against a ghost of their previous personal records, providing a personalized competitive element to their training. FutureWorks Holographic Replays will precisely replicate your previous personal meaning Zwifters will also gain a better understanding of correct pacing for any given segment in the game.
Another exciting innovation is Route Based Workouts. Route Based Workouts provide an alternative to FTP-based training, providing a more accessible pathway into structured training on the platform. Living up to their name, Route Based Workouts use Zwift’s terrain and marked segments to create a structured workout plan, allowing for a mix of different efforts. This new feature will appear in the Zwift Academy Road program this year before expanding with more workout plans later this season. Zwifters taking advantage of Route Based Workouts will not need to know their FTP but will be able to learn more about their strengths upon creation. By testing various different systems, Route Based Workouts will not only be able to accurately calculate FTP, providing a pathway into ‘traditional’ structured workouts, but will also provide Zwifters with their cycling phenotype, helping them better understand their cycling strengths and weaknesses.
Racing on Zwift has always been a popular way to train, and this year’s calendar, and other details can be found on a new dedicated racing website. On-demand racing is a fun way to scratch that competitive itch, and could even lead to a shot at winning a UCI Esports World Championship. Zwift Racing League is back and open for registrations. Zwift Racing League is Zwift’s biggest competition league with more than 1,800 teams and 15,000 riders taking part last season. Zwift Racing League offers racing for all abilities.
New for this season is ZRacing, a thematic race series for each month of the year. ZRacing delivers always-on, easy-to-access competition. A new stage will run each week, and those taking part will be able to earn a monthly badge. ZRacing is designed to fit with your schedule, allowing you to warm up, race and then cool down in under one hour.
For those with an eye on Elite competition, Zwift will once again be the host platform for the 2023 UCI Cycling Esports World Championships. Maintaining the same accessible pathway as in 2022, Zwift will open a qualification pathway to the 2023 UCI Cycling Esports World Championships. Qualification events, followed by Continental Championships will provide an opportunity for any Zwifter to represent their country, and follow the pathway of 2022 UCI Cycling Esports World Champion, Loes Adegeest who qualified via this open pathway.
For those who regularly take part in Zwift racing, there have been a number of developments, making Zwift Racing more fun and also fairer. One of the most popular event series is the WTRL Team Time Trial League, a race format also run in the Zwift Racing League. New TTT race functionality helps improve the most social form of competition on the platform.
In addition, Zwift has also been rolling out auto-categorization to make Zwift racing fairer. Auto categorization ensures Zwifters are matched against riders of similar abilities, based on their most recent ride data captured in the platform.
And finally, the thing that all Zwifters love – more new roads! Zwift’s roads are ever-expanding and Makuri Islands will expand in November with roads, gravel, and dirt surfaces winding through the lush Urukazi (woo-roo-kah-zi) map. “Urukazi” is the combination of two Okinawan words — “uru” means “shore,” and “kazi” means “breeze.” The combination of the two words is meant to evoke the serene, untouched character of the Southern Japanese archipelago. On the terrain of Urukazi, you’ll find a Zwifty interpretation of those islands’ scenery, as you ride pavement, gravel, and a new type of surface not yet found anywhere else on Zwift.
Zwift is excited to share the best-ever season on Zwift with you, please look for all the updates in the coming months. Zwifters can learn more here zwift.com/this-season-on-zwift
Can’t wait. Its going to be great.
But……
What about….. RIDE With..
Just asking for everyone else. 😅 😅
Yay new roads 😀
But the personal ghost might be the bigger news, depending on how far they take that feature. In the snippet the ghost “acivated” as the rider was starting the segment, but i do hope that we will eventually have the possibility to select a whole previous ride (and not just a default best performance) as a ghost. I do a lot of work at specific bpm ranges repeatedly on the same courses for comparison and while numbers are fun it would be even more fun to have a ghost ride alongside (or hopefully behind) me.
Yeah that is ideally what I am looking for too. Being able to choose a route and then choose one of your past performances as a ghost to either compete against or to pace you.
More on the Holographic Replays feature: https://zwiftinsider.com/tsoz-holographic-replays/
To me the way Zwift is delivering this feature, with the segment-based model first, makes loads of sense. It makes the feature possible to use as an adjunct to most/all rides, without obscuring the core of the game. The true “race myself up the Alpe” model would be more of a standalone mode off by itself. That’s not saying the one can’t lead to the other, but what we have here is an idea that can be built on starting from the existing core game experience. Seeing how people use this initial model on long KOMs will be instructive, which… Read more »
Yes, the feature request this relates to is for entire rides not just individual segments. I mean some sprints are literally 15 seconds long. There’s literally no point in having a shadow for that, you’re going all out or nothing, the whole point of ghosts is to pace and try and improve on a previous. Hopefully they’ll realise this at some point and apply it to entire routes instead…
I find myself riding the Alpe every Saturday morning for the fact that the timed segments let me ride against my past time. A personal ghost to chase would give me the option to ride, say, Epic KOM two or three times instead of the Alpe once.
No mention of sorting out menu navigation on ATV
It’s coming! There are additional features coming very soon which aren’t mentioned in the press release…
Level 60 here I come!
Level 60 coming too. Hidden in the FAQ section of the link at the end of the article.
Still waiting for mt. fuji
pretty sure this next expansion is the transistion to fuji. it would be weird to have right next to neon city. so it needs transition
Why increase the levels but only go to 60?? All the folks who have been stuck at 50 forever are just going to quickly get stuck at 60. Seems like 100 would have been a better target, or *gasp* remove the limit entirely.
I’d imagine it will take a long time to level up each one, buying them a couple of years
James, some of us have been stuck at level 50 since 2019. The last time Zwift increased the levels it only took a few months to advance to level 50 from 25.
I would have liked to see 100 as well, Jonathan. But hey… 60 is better than 50.
It seems Zwift should also give riders that are below Level 50 some form of a double-XP incentive to continue pursuing Level 60. As per the FAQ only riders who reached Level 50, “will start accumulating XP at twice the normal rate until [their] banked XP reaches zero.” I imagine some novice and recreational Zwift users who were doing their best to reach Level 50 will be frustrated the levels were raised and they’ll throw in the towel and cancel their subscriptions— it’s a phenomenon that is well established in gaming apps. Perhaps Zwift should introduce Level 60 during the Tour… Read more »
I don’t think they are getting an XP bonus, I think it’s a weirdly worded way of saying that the XP they have already accumulated above level 50 will be applied at the same time as the new XP they are accumulating in the present.
You need 500,000 XP to get to level 50. The latter levels (upto 50) all needed 20,000 XP. 20,000 XP is roughly 1,000km (excluding any other XP you get crossing the various lines). At 40km/h an hour this is 25 hours per level. I suspect the new levels will all require more XP than the current ones so it would take more than 250 (25 x 10) hours to navigate though. Yes, people like me who have well over 1,000,000 XP will probably be able to fast track all the way to level 60 and earn double XP, this though… Read more »
The levels don’t do anything anyway, so why does it matter?
It’s fun to have something to work towards? You know the whole reason you are using a simulated game environment and not just endlessly pedalling your trainer while staring at a blank concrete wall?
Personal ghost and new roads are two very welcome additions.
Really hoping for some good climbs and challenging routes to urukazi to give the map what it needs.
The short video clip of Urukazi gives off Pandora vibes. Hope you don’t have to ride a dragon to get around or only ride off-road.
I’m not a big fan of gravel or dirt on Zwift. I keep holding my breath through the virtual dust clouds. In the real world I like gravel, I’m never sucking down someone else’s dust, and there are no cars – which is also what I like about road riding in Zwift.
Apart from just slowing you down and making it hard to see, gravel and dirt road sections just seem pointless to me, its like riding through molasses. There’s none of the visceral thrill from riding dirt outdoors, it just doesn’t translate well to Zwift at all. Really wish we’d gotten more decent tarmac roads instead, like people asked for
Biggest news in my opinion is autobraking in corners. It says on tight descents with sharp turns, but I hope it will be for all turns based on a combination of severity and entry speed?
This could be a gamechanger for racing, where there will actually be a reason to attack on a climb without the fear of being instantly absorbed by the descending pack.
…or from my point of view: A potential chance to catch the people who dropped me on the climb if I work harder on the descent while they coast…OK, maybe not, but I can dream 😂
Just an observation..Eric Minh stated that the development of new roads would be much quicker from about 2019! The last few new roads have been pretty small maps. Do you think this pace will increase?
My guess would be “probably not” for the simple reason that they are likely deliberately keeping the road growth to the minimum they can to ensure that they don’t end up with too many virtually empty rides/races due to the larger number of routes and roads available compared to the number of riders around…but that’s just a guess
It DOES seem like new tarmac is sort of the one thing Zwift isn’t talking about much. Lots of new features on the horizon, but there seems to be a bottleneck when it comes to new roads. Perhaps construction crews are protesting? 🙂
The truth is that it costs a lot of time and money to develop and Zwift is downsizing.
Although their marketing spend seems to have grown by quite a bit.
Marketing spend brings them new users and additional recurring revenue, which they can spend on engineers. New roads do not. New users don’t care about new roads because the existing roads are all new to them. At best, new roads encourage existing users to stay on the platform, but I’m guessing that they don’t lose a lot of customers due to lack of new roads. Their business is probably better off spending on acquiring users and adding features that attract new users than adding roads.
12 miles of new roads, which is only available 7 or 8 days a month. Still waiting for France, New York, Watopia, London etc to get any updates.
So much for the accelerated and focused development now that the hardware folly has been put to bed.
I really like what they did with the last Watopia road update…just a few connecting roads. Palisades became my favorite route
Ghost Riders in the Cloud…. I look forward to this feature. It will certainly add interest to re-riding routes ridden before. Those dopamine dealers at International Zwift HQ strike again.
RGT has some completion in their of one selling points. New map extension favors the gravel bike. A good workout add for CX season with mixed surface rides resistance factors. How fast to Level 60 depends on the amount of XP for level steps for people to ride through. Guessing based on current max XP level steps progression, level 51 is 25,000 XP up to 50,000XP for level 60 steps. So it should keep people busy for 300k to 500k XP.
Another nail in the Zwift Run coffin ⚰️
Pitty they don’t include the 2023 WC roads from Australia…
*2022*
I’m glad they didn’t create a new tiny world and instead expanded one of the existing worlds. The tiny worlds are not very appealing. If they undertook a big project to flesh out an Australia world that would be great, but if it only included the UCI Worlds routes that would just dilute the guest world calendar further.
What I’ve been waiting for is new roads.
Neokyo was the last significant addition and that was 18 November 2021 (Neokyo looked pretty, but was underwhelming as a ride experience). Is Zwift now only introducing new roads once a year?
The rest of the additions are nice, but not nice enough to get me to re-subscribe. Guess I’ll see in November if there’s a reason to go back and ride Zwift again.
Let’s talk about watopia , the “main” world. Titan’s groove was the last real expansion (i can’t consider last year shortcuts as a real expansion !!)
They really don’t understand how frustrating the lack of new roads is for regulars and how boring it is to ride the same roads over and over. It’s frustrating that their user base keeps asking this but they seem to think they know better and deliver other things instead. Odd business model…
I still don’t have the new “unimproved” Home Screen. I don’t hold up hope if any improvements coming anytime soon.
Route Based Workouts aren’t getting much love down here in the comments, but they’re so clearly an improvement both in terms of gamification and simulation of the real thing… Running a workout up the Alpe and spending 2 minutes at low wattage while on the steepest grade is just such a silly, silly experience. No real training experience would look like that.
Intrigued about the possibility for using these as race route recon. Will it give hints for when is the best time to push on certain courses so a team could practice different strategies together?
“…pavement, gravel, and a new type of surface not yet found anywhere else on Zwift.”
Giant pancake surfaces, which Paul Bunyan will slather with butter to challenge traction.
Riding through water?
Gravel and dirt are literally the least popular parts of Watopia as it is. People are crying out for more roads and this is really disappointing. I was hoping for a new world or a decent extension, not more gravel that no-one wants or asks for. You only have to look at the Zwift forums and the most upvoted requests for roads are (a) more flat tarmac for fast bunch riding and (b) more long climbs (someone suggested Mt Fuji). TO simply ignore what the community wants and push surfaces that no-one enjoys riding instead is almost wilfully dismissive of… Read more »
All the requests for a constant Coco Cadence ride on Tempus Fugit while all the other pace partners could rotate or whatever were just ignored as well.
I hope you can find time to fix the way overdue fix of London world elevation issues.
Would any of that new map include entry from the Neokyo Harbor Bridge?
Hey any idea when everyone will have access to the new UI??
Let’s keep our fingers crossed for more roads during the winter! Maukuri needs a big climb if it’s going to compete with Watopia as something worth investing in. And only 12 miles? Does not really sound like it’s going to make up enough roads to do long, exiting new route-badges like Watopia offers!
It sounds a little bit like: “we have nothing yet, but please start paying your monthly fees…”
All summer no new roads, and now only 18km of new roads announced “zoon”.
Nice to see some new features, although none of them really interest me 🤣 But new roads do interest me, so I am a bit underwhelmed by 12 miles of road where at least some is dirt. The last new roads that really got me hyped were France. Still my favourite world…
Update ATV interface so that you can actually select something?
I switched to Rouvy as I got fed up with NY and Makuri boring roads.
I was really hoping the next major update got rid of the cycling world maps. It’s about time they simply let people ride the map they want, especially with the new map getting bigger. I know there’s a workaround but it shouldn’t be needed anymore.
Is there any more information about auto-braking and when it will come into effect? Could be a bit of a game changer in terms of racing (e.g. if you now need to accelerate out of corners etc)
Is it just me…?
Wattbike Atom with Zwift running on a laptop. Since the most recent update the hill resistance seems to have increased. Don’t seem to take any momentum into even small (3/4%) inclines & finding wattage going up 50% for the same cadence/trying to maintain speed.
Very obviously different to before – but could be a fault rather than related to the update.
Will you consider joint membership for those of us who are married or in a partnership, would be a great incentive for us to rejoin!..😜