With the 2025 Gran Turismo World Series Nations Cup Exhibition Season drawing to an end this weekend, Polyphony Digital has announced a Manufacturers Cup Exhibition Season to follow it up.
It’s another short, four-race calendar, similar to seasons we saw across 2024, but this event retains the format changes introduced in January’s Nations Cup event. This sees changes to timings for the four rounds, which are pretty familiar events from previous years.
The full schedule is as follows:
GT World Series 2025 Exhibition Season 1 – Manufacturers Cup
- Round 1 – February 5 – Suzuka/Gr.3 – 20/15 laps
- Round 2 – February 8 – Daytona Road/Gr.3 – 20/15 laps
- Round 3 – February 12 – Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps/Gr.3 – 30 laps
- Round 4 – February 15 – Interlagos/Gr.3 – 13 laps
There’s a few things of note here. Firstly, no matter what league you’re in, it’s a purely Gr.3 series. This is the best-balanced of the two core esports classes, but it’s been a good long while since the Gr.4s were used in GTWS events at all.
Another consideration is race lengths. While the first two events have different race distances depending on whether you’re in GT1 League or not, the last two are the same for everyone. That third round looks like an absolute beast, and we’d be very surprised if it didn’t have some wet weather involved given the tire selections and lack of pit requirements.
Once again this Exhibition Season is running on the alternating Wednesday/Saturday format from previous years and the 2025 Nations Cup. That’s a change from the Saturdays-only run throughout 2024 and should make for a quick season — even if participation may wane on the weekday rounds.
The timings are the same no matter which day of the week the race takes places, with ten entry slots for GT2/GT3 racers spread across the day and three slots from early afternoon to evening for GT1. GT1 also retains the “heavy damage” standard, requiring a pit stop to repair, with the self-healing “light damage” in place for other levels. Tire wear, fuel use, and mandatory tires are identical across the leagues.
As usual, while you can enter as many slots as you wish for each round, only the last race you enter counts towards your score — even if you disconnect and score zero. Ordinarily your best rounds in half of the total rounds count towards your points total, but this is an unusual situation where it’s your best three from four again.
The Gran Turismo World Series is a more formal championship than the Daily Races, featuring longer races and a dedicated points system.
Whenever you first enter the series you’ll be assigned into a “League” that matches your current Driver Rating (DR) rank. Players with a DR of A or A+ go into GT1 League, those with a DR of B will head into the GT2 League, and drivers at C and lower slot into GT3 League. Your League will not change during the season, regardless of whether your DR rank does.
In each race you’ll be awarded points that depend on your finishing position and the average Driver Rating score of the players in that lobby. The Driver Rating cap has now changed, so we’re likely to see up to 750 points available for a win in the top lobbies, ranging down to GT3 League wins potentially being worth low two-digits and even possible single digits.
Taking part in the GTWS is a good opportunity to get a bit of a credit and Driver Rating boost. These formal events see more DR points on offer following another change — although you could also risk losing more too — and you’ll receive bonus credits according to your overall League ranking within your chosen manufacturer, primary and secondary geographical areas, and region.
For GT1 players that’s again worth up to 9m credits this time round, while GT2/3 players can score a maximum of 4.5m. As the best-three-of-four rounds count, you’ll probably need to enter more events to get the bigger rewards, but even taking part in a couple of GT3 races should be worth around 1.1m.
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