After quite the lull across 2025, following the official qualifying for the Gran Turismo World Series itself, the Exhibition Seasons return this month — beginning with a Nations Cup event starting October 15.
It’s a surprisingly busy calendar, cramming six races in between mid-October and the start of November. This makes it the longest Exhibition Season this year, with all four other instances being four races each. In fact it’s as many races as the actual qualifiers…
The calendar will take us right up to the third round of the GTWS in Los Angeles on November 8. That in turn should leave enough time for a corresponding Manufacturers Cup Exhibition between then and the World Final at the end of December.
GT World Series 2025 Exhibition Season 3 – Nations Cup
- Round 1 – October 15 – Red Bull Ring/X2019 – 30 laps
- Round 2 – October 18 – Suzuka/Specified Cars – 12 laps
- Round 3 – October 22 – Monza NC/Porsche 962 – 12 laps
- Round 4 – October 25 – Grand Valley Highway-1 R/X2019 – 30 laps
- Round 5 – October 29 – Lago Maggiore W/Gr.3 Selection – 20 laps
- Round 6 – November 1 – 24h du Mans/Gr.1 Selection – 7 laps
Two rounds with the X2019s is perhaps a little unexpected – given that the game does have other similar cars (F3500A, anyone?) – but they do both call back to Grand Final races in the World Series this season. The third round is another nod to that, taking the form of Berlin’s qualifying race.
Other than that there’s some unusual combinations. Suzuka stages a GT500-esque race similar to the ones created for Weekly Challenges earlier this year (new Menu Book when?) with a pre-tuned, pre-liveried range of classic JGTC cars and some modified road cars.
We have an unusual set of mid-engined Gr.3 cars in the fifth round, and the last generation of LMP1s will star in the final round. That’s an interesting set of cars too, with the recently realigned Nissan GT-R — mechanically remodelled to match the original specifications rather than the heavily nerfed version that raced — in the selection and now able to seriously compete.
As far as we can tell, there’s no difference between the GT1 League and the GT2/3 League races, with all requirements and regulations matching — even down to the sole Grid Start/False Start race in Round 5. There’s light damage across the board, which we expect will make GT1 races more combative.
The Wednesday/Saturday format remains, and it looks like timings for the various slots remain the same. GT2/GT3 racers get ten chances to race spread across the day, beginning every hour from morning to evening (with a five-hour break in the middle of the day), but in GT1 there’s only three slots all towards the end of the day. Depending on your region and which part of it you’re in, these can even be the early morning of the following day so check in your game for timings.
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. That will mean extra care is needed to secure the points you want this time round as you’re only allowed missed or dropped round in the ranking, with your best five races counting towards your overall score.
For those unfamiliar with the Gran Turismo World Series, it’s a more formal championship than the Daily Races, featuring longer races and a separate, dedicated points system.
Players slot into 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. You’ll remain in your initial league whether or not your DR changes during the season.
Each race awards GTWS points, and these depend on your finishing position and the average Driver Rating score of the players in that lobby. That means that players in top lobbies where the participants are all close to the 150,000pt Driver Rating cap can score almost 750 points for a win, while players in GT2 will only see just over 100pt for a win, while GT3 lobby winners may only pick up double-digits — possibly even single digits.
Whatever your League, the GTWS is a good opportunity to get a bit of a credit and Driver Rating boost. You can pick up more DR points for a good result in a GTWS event than in Daily Races — but that does also mean you could also risk losing more.
However there’s also bonus credits for taking part, with a bonus of up to 10m credits (5m in GT2/GT3) available depending on your overall League ranking within your primary and secondary geographical areas, nation, and region. Even if you only take part in a couple of races though it’s still probable you’ll get an eight-figure bump at season’s end.
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