After a year of competition, comprising a short online qualifier season and three preliminary rounds at live events around the world, the 2025 Gran Turismo World Series World Finals are now here — starting with the Manufacturers Cup.
All four events this season have been based at entirely new cities for the GTWS, starting at London back in June, before heading to Berlin in September, Los Angeles in November, and now Fukuoka — one of Polyphony Digital’s two offices in its home nation.
The World Final takes a familiar format, splitting the racing over two days in order to focus each day on one of the two championship events. Each will feature more races and more points, but every point gained in the three previous live events all count towards the championship total.
Having raced as separate entities so far this season, the World Final unites the Manufacturers Cup representatives for the 12 qualified brands — making it the first time this season that all three drivers from any brand have met in person.
Each of the three representatives from the brands will race in one of three regular, sprint-style races over the evening, before the three join forces for an endurance event with mandatory driver changes as they race for the 2025 title as a team.
Gran Turismo World Series 2025 World Final – Manufacturers Cup
The teams can select who drives in each of the three races — each of which determines the grid for the next — but each representative must drive once. In the final they’ll also be required to take a stint behind the wheel each, and again how long and who drives when is up to them.
After a hot-lap qualifying session at the final combo to determine the first grid, Race 1 is a ten-lap throttle-mash affair at the Daytona Tri-Oval course. The second race is more technical and features rain, in a five-lap run at Autopolis with only Inter and Wet tires available. A more routine seven-lap race at Sardegna Road Track A is the third and final event before the Grand Final.
That will see the new Yas Marina circuit make its competitive debut, with the race running over 20 laps and all three of the slick compound tires will be required. This usually sees each of the three drivers running one specific compound, and the shortest stint — on Hard tires — can make or break the race.
Gran Turismo World Series 2025 World Series – Manufacturers Cup Standings
- 1 – Team Subaru (Drumont, Miyazono, Solis) – 12 points
- 2 – Team BMW (Haywood, Labouteley, Suzuki) – 10 points
- 2 – Team Mazda (Cardinal, Kokubun, Urra) – 10 points
- 4 – Team Porsche (Inostroza, Sato, Serrano) – 9 points
- 5 – Team Toyota (Carrazza, de Bruin, Morimoto) – 8 points
- 6 – Team Nissan (Filho, Okumoto, Sedziak) – 6 points
- 7 – Team McLaren (Kamada/Yamamoto, Mosso, Murphy) – 4 points
- 8 – Team AMG (Bonelli, Lanuza, Sasaki) – 3 points
- 9 – Team Lexus (Kawakami, Mangano, Walsen) – 1 point
Going into the finals, Subaru has a slender lead after a torrid time in Los Angeles allowed the pack to catch up. Top qualifier BMW wasn’t able to overhaul the advantage though, having a similarly point-free day in LA. That brought Mazda, Porsche, and Toyota — in that order left-to-right on the podium — right up onto their heels.
But two points means almost nothing now, with 12 points on offer for the winner of each of the three initial races, and double points for the final. That’s 60 points to play for, so really it’s anybody’s championship — even Ferrari, Honda, and Lamborghini, on zero points to date.
There are some seriously strong lineups too, with the Subaru squad already world champions together once in 2022, and two of the three also took an online title for the brand in 2020. Only one other driver on the grid has a Manufacturers title, with Ryota Kokubun a champion for Nissan in 2023, and he’s joined at Mazda by 2023 joint Nations champion and current Nations front-runner Pol Urra. Newcomer Samuel Cardinal stuck it on the podium in LA too.
Porsche and Toyota also field outrageously strong teams, with Inostroza a repeat regional winner and victor in LA last month alongside Nations Cup points leader (and also 2023 champion) Jose Serrano at the German marque. Adriano Carrazza, now at Toyota, is a GTWS veteran and he’s joined by regular qualifier and time trial leaderboard ace Kaj de Bruin who’s overdue some luck.
We’re not going to take our eye off BMW either. The ancient M6 is pretty strong everywhere (even under live event custom BOP), was the top qualifier, and has two very narrow second-place finishes in live events already this season. Dismiss it at your peril.
It’s going to be pretty hard to pull a winner out of that lot, and luck on the day is going to play a major role as we see whether Subaru can make it an unprecedented third title, Mazda claims a first, BMW or Porsche become the first non-Japanese brand to win, or if a dark horse comes from almost nowhere.
You’ll be able to tune into the stream from 0800 UTC on Saturday, December 20 (convert to your time here) and along with the usual additional language streams with commentary in French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish, there’s a return for Chinese commentary that made a debut in London, and live-timing stream returns too.
Gran Turismo World Series 2025 World Final – Alternative Language Streams
- Chinese
- French
- German
- Italian
- Japanese
- Portuguese
- Spanish
- Live Timing (no commentary)
Gran Turismo World Series 2025 World Final – Predict the Winner/Viewer’s Gift
The two regular associated campaigns run alongside the event in Fukuoka. If you can pick who you think will win the championship — any time until the Grand Final race begins — via GT7 you’ll land 1,000,000cr for your in-game wallet. Watching any amount of the stream through your Gran Turismo 7 game’s special tile over the next two weeks you’ll also earn an example of the title-winning car in a special livery, to be delivered after the next GT7 game update.
Gran Turismo World Series 2025 World Final – Competitors
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