Polyphony Digital has announced the outline schedule for the 2025 Gran Turismo World Series live events, with four all-new locations set to host the in-person events including a new setting for the World Finals.
The 2025 event looks remarkably similar to the 2024 iteration, comprising six online qualifier races in each series — although we do not yet know the combinations — ahead of three live events at locations around the world, before a live final towards the end of the year.
Specifics on all of the venues are not yet known, but while all four of the host cities this year are new on the World Series schedule it will be visiting a familiar location for the first of the four: London, on June 7.
While a regular haunt for GT Academy, the United Kingdom hasn’t ever hosted a World Series live event. It did, however, also bring in the dawn of the esports era in Gran Turismo when it staged the first ever Gran Turismo Sport event, and unveiling, at the Copper Box in London’s Olympic Park in 2016.
Surprisingly, the series remains in Europe for the second round which, after a three-month break, will head back to Germany. Another motorsports hub, Germany has hosted Gran Turismo live events on three previous occasions, and all at the Nurburgring which is the joint-most frequent venue for the series. However it’ll be Berlin on this year’s schedule, at an undisclosed location on September 20.
From there it’s a trip over the Atlantic Ocean to the USA, where Los Angeles will host the last of the three prologue events — each of which awards “World Series Points” — on November 8, before the World Final in Fukuoka, Japan, over the weekend of December 20-21.
That final location is also where Polyphony Digital’s second Japanese office calls home, following an expansion and restructuring in 2011. However, as with the Tokyo event in 2024, PD itself won’t be the venue as — once again — all four of the events will be open to members of the public who buy relevant tickets.
2024’s live events all took place in auditorium venues, with somewhere in the region of 600-800 tickets available. As each of 2025’s events take place on a single day (except the Final, again), we’re imagining it’ll be a similar format on that front, with tickets to view either the Nations Cup or the Manufacturers Cup as well as an all-day pass with bonus memorabilia.
The two-day final, at the Fukuoka International Congress Center overlooking Hakata Bay, will probably operate on the same basis as in 2024, with one- or two-day passes and a special two-day “Platinum” tier with additional benefits.
All four events will also be live streamed on the official Gran Turismo channels, and there’ll be rewards for various activities connected to the events too. Previously we’ve seen gifts for tuning in to the streams through the in-game portal as well as bonuses for correctly predicting winners, which we’re expecting to continue in 2025..
There’s a mild change to some of the procedure too, with the Nations Cup now subject to what PD calls a “seeding” system. In short, the top three drivers from 2024 have already qualified for the 2025 events, so we’ll see champion Takuma Miyazono, runner-up Kylian Drumont, and third-placed Jose Serrano at all four events.
With only 12 spots available in total, that means something of a narrowing of opportunities for other drivers to qualify. In fact the very brief, best-five-of-six-round series will generate four qualifiers from the EMEA region, two from the Central & South America region, and just one apiece from North America, Asia, and Oceania.
Manufacturers Cup will remain unchanged, with 12 brands qualifying, but it does look like there’ll be one more spot available from the online portion. That’s because Genesis is missing from the list of series sponsors this time round, making it likely that Mazda and Toyota have guaranteed berths and the other ten spots are up for grabs.
As yet we don’t know what all the various combinations for the online races are, although an image on the official announcement page suggests that the first Nations race will be a Gr.2 event at the Le Mans circuit.
Whether that’s the case or not, all the action kicks off in just two weeks’ time with that first Nations Cup qualifier round on Wednesday April 2. Stay tuned for all the latest!
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