Today, Zwift unveiled a simple new challenge, fittingly titled “Zwift Shorts”. The goal? Complete eight very short event-only routes that are typically unavailable for free riding:
These routes are easily accessible during the challenge (which ends September 27, 2026 at 23:59 PDT), making them ideal for quick sessions and easy progression.
Eight Short Routes
Here are the routes included in this challenge:
- Downtown Dolphin (3.1km, 17m)
- Macaron (2.6km, 15m)
- LaGuardia Loop (2.8km, 27m)
- Glasgow Reverse (3.9km, 40m)
- Neokyo Crit Course (3.8km, 20m)
- Twilight Crit (3.8km, 22m)
- The 6 Train Reverse (6.2km, 66m)
- ZG25 Climb Champs (4.7km, 156m)
Note: Route lengths on the in-game challenge screen shown above include event lead-ins, but when you free-ride most of these routes the game puts you at the end of the lead-in, so the actual route length is shorter than shown. Our lengths listed above are accurate, meaning this challenge requires ~31km of riding. Most riders could knock out this challenge in one solid session! Are you up for it?
You’ll get a green completion banner popup when you finish each route. Make sure you keep riding until you see the popup, to ensure you’ve completed the route!
You will get credit for completing a route whether you do it in an actual Zwift event (like a race or a group ride), or just click the “Zwift Shorts” card on the home screen and free-ride it.
Rewards
Up to 1000 bonus XP is rewarded as you progress through the challenge:
- Complete 2 routes: 250 XP
- Complete 4 routes: 250 XP
- Complete 6 routes: 250 XP
- Complete 8 routes: 250 XP
Questions or comments?
Share below!
Short post!
Ouch, tough crowd
Groan-worthy pun lost in translation 😂
A Zwift Challenge is a Zwift Challenge no matter how short – paraphrasing Horton (Hears A Who)
Do we also get xp for the route if not ridden it before? 🤔. As well as the 1000 xp. 👍
I assume so if they have route badges which i know some of them do so even better
Yes, if it has a route badge.
It seems Twilight Crit is the only new badge opportunity of the 8 routes. The others are either no badge or an old route.
Presume we are doing these all in one
sitting?
I know I am! Today!
That should make your Strava fans happy!
Are there any events planned to go along with the challenge?
None from Zwift, but this week’s Tiny Races will probably feature some of the routes above.
And several are used in the relatively new Sunday Turbo Ten series. I was just curious if Zwift was running something of its own.
The routes that are good for events tend to have plenty of events already. For the others this is a chance to get the route badge without having to have an event, which seems to be the point of this challenge
The routes that are loops are commonly featured in events, though often those are races. The routes that are short and point-to-point like Macaron are more rarely used in events since it would be over in less than 5 minutes.
Warning about Downtown Dolphin: it’s a bit bugged and the listed distance is incorrect. While the Downtown Dolphin segment itself is 2km, the total distance to ride to complete the route is 3.4km including lead-in. A bit into the route the map on the top right also stops tracking your route progress, just keep going, after a while the tracking recovers and at a total distance of 3.4km the route will complete correctly.
Also a missed opportunity to add route badges for Downtown Dolphin, LaGuardua Loop, Glasgow Reverse, The 6 Train Reverse, and ZG25 Climb Champs in my opinion.
Thanks for sharing. I should have come here first! Did around 3 and only now noticing it didn’t trigger for me. My own fault for not watching out for the completion banner!
Downtown Dolphin:
Screen shots the second time I did Downtown Dolphin confirms this:
So if we want to complete them all in 1 go…. it will be uploaded as 8 activities?
Yes. If you are worried about this, chiefly about annoying people on Strava, you can check the box to mute the activity in Feed and Clubs. That’s what I do for things like this and The Big Spin. It will still show up on the main profile, but it won’t get forced into everyone’s feeds. I already have several connections who have completed these, so I know what it looks like quite well.
Yeah I muted too. People I think get pussed off enough about seeing Zwift activities but this would have demented some of the people I have on Strava 😂
I would rather see them doing events like this fo drops instead of XP. Or have us choose between them.
Zwift seems to prefer catering to newer users under level 40 that need the XP. Save for the Big Spin Stoneway Sprint loop.
Spotted last night. Used the first two to test out new cleat positioning.
Nice little set of routes to use as warm ups for races and other rides.
first time seeing Crit City and me likey.
Can the challenge be completed by Running rather than Riding?
Nope, this is ride only.
Been there, done that, what’s next.
Have to admit, after giving it a go on the shorter routes, the last bugger really HURT! 😳 😁 😁
I did them from 8 to 1, a much more pleasant experience. Did similar with the Cobbled Climbs Challenge – longest (time-wise) first, then dropping down until last / shortest completed!
Ridden in one session, challenge completed, riding 68:42 in 34.65km / 382m – I’m a bottom end Cat. C rider. Only glitch for me was on Downtown Dolphin where it spawned my avatar after the starting point so I had to do almost 2 full laps to get the credit! Otherwise a fun and enjoyable distraction! Just wish there was a way to do these challenges, it was the same when I did all the Cobbled Climbs Challenge, without having to save and exit, go to Home Screen, and start the next route!
Ironically I have put a lot of effort into tracking down some of these event only stages so that I could complete them. I guess I can go back through and set some Strava PRs tho.
Glad to see this challenge. I have been suggesting an “events only” event for a while now, especially for some of those events that are seldom my used.
Seeing talk about doing this in one go – as in one single ride without going to the main screen to select the next route? If so, can you do that?
I did all the routes back to back from.longest to shortest and got all 8 green ticks to complete the challenge, but the Downtown Dolphin route was only 2.00 km. Anyone else get this discrepancy too?
Just scrolled down to see Glenn’s post about Downtown Dolphin being completed only after 3.4km. Could this be due to running different Zwift versions like the recent Z Racing bug? I’m on the latest release
Can you start a workout and then select one of these routes to use on the workout? Will they be available in “the normal route selection lists”?
Has anyone had trouble with the ZG25 route. I’ve done all the others, but when I start this one it immediately has me do a U-turn and shows that I am at the end of the route profile…. but with a distance of zero. I tried twice, same thing both times, and riding to see if it would work itself out did not help….
Ha, third time, it worked…. not sure what happened but it’s all good…. fun challenge!
According to Zwift Hacks, most of these have route badges (not only Macaron and Twilight Crit which I think is correct, but also Downtown Dolphin, LaGuardia Loop, Glasgow Reverse, 6 Train Rev and ZG25), is that also correct?
Realized I could check this by starting one of them. Turns out they do not have a badge icon next to the route name. So no badge.
I believe what’s happened is Zwift updated one data source (which Zwift Hacks and the Companion app pull from) to say there is a badge… but the game hasn’t been updated yet. I think the plan is to add those badges in the next update, which would be this Tuesday.
Thanks, in that case I will wait a few days before starting this little side quest. A bit unfortunate that they wouldn’t release this update at the same time as the Zwift Shorts objective. I could see some people getting frustrated over this next week.
Unfortunately the update is actually NEXT Tuesday, FYI…
Did anyone else not get the Strava segment for Macaron? I have gotten it several times before but the only segment that showed up was the sprint.