Although there’s a little less than six weeks to go until the start of the official 2025 Gran Turismo World Series, Polyphony Digital has announced a new Nations Cup Exhibition Season to begin later this month.
As we’ve seen from multiple recent seasons, it’s another short, four-race calendar — although the official qualification season is only barely longer — which should allow for a similarly brisk second Manufacturers Cup Exhibition season to follow before the main event.
If you’ve been racing in recent seasons you’ll largely know what to expect for the race timings, though the full schedule is as follows:
GT World Series 2025 Exhibition Season 2 – Nations Cup
- Round 1 – February 26 – Trial Mountain/Road Car Selection – 10 laps
- Round 2 – March 1 – Watkins Glen/Gr.3 – 20/15 laps
- Round 3 – March 5 – Eiger Nordwand/Racing Kart – 12 laps
- Round 4 – March 8 – Suzuka/Super Formula SF23 – 20/15 laps
There’s a few interesting combinations here, aside from the Manufacturer-lite second round. Karts at Eiger should be quite the stramash, given the quick steering, steep hairpins, and curb aversion, while the pre-tuned road cars make a return at Trial Mountain in a similar form to a live event race.
Beyond the races themselves there’s other things to note. Firstly, aside from the first round, all races have grid starts this time — seemingly continuing an experiment run in some recent weeks of the Daily Races — with False Start Check enabled in all GT1 races but just the kart round in GT2/3.
Speaking of differences between the leagues, they’ve narrowed slightly with a retrograde step in terms of damage. All races will now feature the self-healing “light damage” — which takes a few corners to revert any damage sustained in collisions — re-aligning GT1 League which previously had “heavy damage” that required a pit stop to fix.
Two of the rounds feature mandatory tire swaps, and they’re also the races which have fewer laps for drivers outside the top division: rounds two and four.
We’re also seeing the Wednesday/Saturday format which will persist through to the official season beginning in April, and timings for the slots remain the same. There’s ten entry slots for GT2/GT3 racers spread across the day, beginning every hour (with a one-hour break mid-round) and three slots from early afternoon to evening for GT1.
You can enter as many of those slots as you wish for each round, but only the last race you enter counts towards your score — even if you disconnect and score zero. Once again, your best three rounds are included in your points total, allowing for only one missed or dropped round.
If you’re not familiar with the Gran Turismo World Series, it’s a more formal championship than the Daily Races, featuring longer races and a dedicated points system.
Players are assigned to a “League” appropriate to their Driver Rating (DR) rank at the point they enter the event. Those with a DR of A or A+ go into GT1 League, while players at DR of B slot into the GT2 League, and the remainder — at C and lower — are placed into GT3 League. Whether or not your DR changes during the season, you’ll remain in this League throughout.
Each race awards points depending on your finishing position and the average Driver Rating score of the players in that lobby. That means that those in the top lobbies where the players are all close to the Driver Rating cap at 150,000pt can score almost 750 points for a win, while players in GT3 lobbies where the average DR is much lower may only pick up double-digits — possibly even single digits — for winning a race.
The GTWS is a good opportunity to get a bit of a credit and Driver Rating boost. A change to how DR is calculated means you can pick up more for a good result in a GTWS event than in Daily Races, but you could also risk losing more. A bonus of up to 6m credits (3m in GT2/GT3) is also available, awarded according to your overall League ranking within your primary and secondary geographical areas, nation, and region.
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