UPDATE: with the release of Zwift’s “guest map” feature, world hacking still functions and actually can give you a third world choice. See this post for an explanation of how it works. The instructions below still function properly.

Zwifters are placed on the same course each day according to the monthly course schedule set by Zwift HQ. Eventually riders may be able to choose in-game which course they ride on, but until then here’s an easy hack that lets you ride any course at any time.

You have a prefs.xml file in your Zwift user directory (which is in your Documents/Zwift directory on PC/Mac). Open this file in a text editor like Wordpad and simply add one of the following tags to force Zwift to place you in Watopia, Richmond, London, or Innsbruck.

To ride Watopia, add: <WORLD>1</WORLD>
To ride Richmond, add: <WORLD>2</WORLD>
To ride London, add:<WORLD>3</WORLD>
To ride New York, add:<WORLD>4</WORLD>
To ride Innsbruck, add: <WORLD>5</WORLD>

This text should go just after the opening <ZWIFT> tag near the top of the file. (If you place it inside of a section like “<DEVICES>” then it will not work.)

Using Zwift iOS? Here’s how to accomplish this same hack on your iDevice.

Important: Do not insert bogus values into your preferences file! Invalid values will just make Zwift behave unpredictably or even crash. Follow the instructions above carefully and you’ll be safe.

Sample

Here is a sample prefs.xml file which forces Zwift to always place you in Watopia (added text is in red):

<ZWIFT>
  <WORLD>1</WORLD>
  <DEVICES>
     <LASTCADENCEDEVICE>720996</LASTCADENCEDEVICE>
     <LASTPOWERDEVICE>720996</LASTPOWERDEVICE>
  </DEVICES>
  <CONFIG>
     <RICHMOND_BRANCH_PREFERENCE>0</RICHMOND_BRANCH_PREFERENCE>
     <BRANCH_PREFERENCE>4</BRANCH_PREFERENCE>
  </CONFIG>
  <WORKOUTS>
     <USE_ERG>1</USE_ERG>
  </WORKOUTS>
</ZWIFT>

Note: special thanks for this hack go to to David A. Desrosiers who first discovered this option.