With only a few days to go until the start of the official 2025 Gran Turismo World Series online qualifiers, Polyphony Digital has revealed the races that will decide who’ll be heading to the live events and finals in the Manufacturers Cup.
As we already knew, it’ll be a six-race season packed into under three weeks, with your best five results counting towards your overall points total — and that applies to both the Nations Cup and Manufacturers Cup. It’s only now that the car and track combinations have been revealed, and there’s a familiar look:
GT World Series 2025 – Manufacturers Cup
- Round 1 – April 2 – Nurburgring Endurance/Gr.3 – 5 laps
- Round 2 – April 5 – Autodromo de Interlagos/Gr.3 – 12 laps
- Round 3 – April 9 – Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya GP (NC)/Gr.3 – 18 laps
- Round 4 – April 12 – Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps/Gr.3 – 20 laps
- Round 5 – April 16 – Sardegna Road Track A Reverse/Gr.3 – 12 laps
- Round 6 – April 19 – Suzuka Circuit/Gr.3 – 20 laps
Notably it’s an all-Gr.3 series once again, but this does come after a massive change to the category’s BOP which early testing suggests has slowed the cars down by around 2-3%. While the race combinations will be familiar, you might need to reacquaint yourself with them in order to get an idea of the new pace, and fuel and tire consumption — especially for those where tire swaps and pit stops are mandatory.
Also well worth mentioning is the fact that the races are of uniform distance across the board. Previously we’ve seen some longer races truncated for players in the lower-ranked GT2 and GT3 Leagues, but they’re now all the same length.
In fact there’s now precious few differences between GT1 and GT2/GT3, with the only ones being the time slots and tire wear in qualifying being switched on for GT1 and off elsewhere. That does mean that the self-repairing “light” damage is standard in all races at all levels again; a retrograde step, we feel.
With regard to the time slots, they remain hourly outside the top class and spread from 10am to 11pm in the central time zone of each region (CEST in Europe, CT in the Americas), or 1pm to midnight JST in the Asia region. GT1 League players have only three entry slots, and these have been shunted more towards the evening than we’ve seen in the Exhibition Seasons, making them more accessible for players who have day jobs and educational commitments.
While you can enter as many slots as you like, only the points acquired in your final entry count towards your total — even if you disconnect or quit and score zero. It’s crucial then to know when you’ve got a score you’re happy with rather than risking it with the possibility of scoring a blank.
As well as scoring points, you can also pick up some bonus credits for taking part. You can earn up to 10m credits in GT1 and 5m in GT2/3, with rewards assigned according to your ranking within your chosen manufacturer, primary and secondary geographical areas, and region.
If you want to take part in the GT World Series, all you need to do is head into Sport Mode (which unlocks after you complete Menu Book 9, “Championship: Tokyo Highway Parade”, in GT Cafe), and click on the tile under Championships marked “Manufacturers Cup”.
From there you’ll be prompted to select a brand to represent, which will temporarily award you two free cars for use in the series, and you’ll be assigned into a “League” appropriate to your Driver Rating (DR) — where you’ll remain no matter how your DR changes during the season. Only GT1 players can qualify for the finals, and note that a PlayStation Plus subscription is required as these are online multiplayer races.
Best of luck to all who take part, and we’ll see you at the live events later this year!
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