We’re still a couple of weeks away from the final live preliminary round in the 2025 Gran Turismo World Series rapidly coming up on us, but already Polyphony Digital has announced the special bonuses available to players for various event-associated activities.
It’s the third season now that we’ve seen these special tie-in campaigns, so regular players — or rather viewers — should be well aware of what to expect. Should you be new to the whole thing you can, in essence, score free content and credits for a few in-game button presses and a bit of luck.
Along with these more passive campaigns, which can land you two free cars and up to 2,000,000cr, there’s also a pair of special events in Sport Mode (one requiring a PS Plus subscription, the other not) that will run alongside and across the GTWS weekend.
Predict the Winners
Of the two, Predict the Winners is the harder to get the rewards — and indeed they’re not guaranteed. As the name suggests, you’ll need to predict who’s going to win each of the two Grand Final races in Los Angeles.
To do this, head to the special in-game portal in the top-right of the World Map hub. There’s a separate page for each of the two events, with the competitors listed for each event — comprising the 12 Nations Cup finalists who don’t change across the season, and the 12 Americas representatives (except for France’s Noah Lanuza for AMG) of the qualified brands in Manufacturers Cup.
Using your particular GT World Series knowledge, you’ll need to pick one racer from each who you think will win the grand final race of each series in LA — with the Manufacturers Cup racing at Road Atlanta, and the Nations at the Daytona Road Course. You’ll have up until the final race starts in each event to make your pick, so feel free to watch any qualifying action on the day first.
Alternatively you could just select the current championship leaders — Jose Serrano and Subaru, each with two wins from two rounds — on the basis of their current domination of events. Nonetheless, for each one you get right you’ll land a 1,000,000cr ticket, adding up to a potential 2,000,000cr total winnings.
These will be delivered automatically on Monday November 10, and though no specific time has been mentioned it usually coincides with around noon UTC.
Viewers Gift
It’s a lot easier to score the Viewers Gift campaign prizes, once again consisting of two free cars, as all you need to do is watch the event — and technically not even that.
The catch is that it has to be done in-game, and only between the start of the stream and the closing period a couple of weeks later. To do this you’ll need to head to the other tile in the top-right of the World Map, click “Watch Programme”, and then click on the relevant “Watch Stream” buttons.
In fact you only need to click on the button to register; it isn’t necessary to actually watch any of the stream this way, and you can use whatever is your preferred method instead. Once the button changes from the red/blue “Watch Stream (Entry Available)” to the gray “Entry Submitted”, you’re locked in.
There’s a wide entry window, from the start of the relevant broadcasts — due to the late Pacific time zone, that’s 0000 UTC on November 9 for Manufacturers Cup, and 0300 UTC for Nations Cup — to the close of the entry period at 0859 UTC on Tuesday November 25.
Each of the two streams offers a different reward, and they’re a little unusual this time round. You’ll land pristine examples of the Toyota Supra RZ ’97 and Mazda RX-7 (FC) GT-X ’90, for Manufacturers Cup and Nations Cup respectively, and they’ll be distributed on Wednesday November 26.
Sport Mode Tie-Ins
Two special events will run in sport mode across the GTWS period, comprising a Time Trial and a Daily Race, each offering a boost in rewards to mark their special status.
The Time Trial will come first, on October 30, and this is the one that doesn’t require a PS Plus subscription as you are not racing head-to-head in a live multiplayer environment. Instead it’s you against the clock and the times of players around the world in a hot lap of the Watkins Glen Long Course in the Chaparral 2J, which will form the basis of the Nations Cup qualifying race in Los Angeles.
Your reward will depend on how close you are to the best time in the world when the event ends two weeks later on November 13. Getting within 3% of that time lands you 2,000,000cr, with 1,000,000cr for being 5% away — as with regular time trials. However the “bronze” prize has been doubled to 500,000cr and the time gap made more generous at 20% off.
After that you’ll have a special Daily Race B in which to race from 0700 UTC Monday November 3 through to 0700 UTC on Monday November 10 (well, technically the first race will be at 0710, and the last at 0650). This also references the LA event, with the race at Road Atlanta in select Gr.3 cars being the Manufacturers Cup final. There’s also a 10x bump in prize credits for this race.
For those who’d like to attend in person, given the range of attractions at what’s termed the first Gran Turismo Fan Fest, tickets are on sale for the Gran Turismo World Series Round 3 live event in Los Angeles, and GTPlanet members can take advantage of a 30% discount.
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