Gran Turismo World Series

Polyphony Digital announced its partnership with governing body Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile in June 2014 to provide a more realistic racing experience in virtual motorsport. It permitted the Japanese studio to feature content certified by the FIA and launch an online championship in Gran Turismo 6 for the following year in 2015.[12] It would be the earliest example of an official online championship managed by Polyphony Digital and sanctioned by the FIA. The following year in 2016, Polyphony and the FIA announced the formation of the FIA-Certified Gran Turismo Championships (FIA GTC).[13]

The FIA GTC was established in Gran Turismo Sport shortly after the game's release. Many test seasons ran from 2017 to 2018, and the first official season commenced that year. The first World Tour was also held at Nürburgring, which saw Giorgio Mangano from Italy as the first Nations Cup event winner, and Philippe Nicolay, Matthew Thomas, and Anthony Duval, representing BMW as the first Manufacturer Series event winners.[14][15] Former FIA Formula 3 Championship driver Igor Fraga became the inaugural Nations Cup champion in 2018, and Kanata Kawakami, Vincent Rigaud, and Tyrell Meadows also became the inaugural Manufacturer Series champions that year.[16][17][18] As part of the FIA's involvement as a sanctioning body for the series, the champions were also honoured at the FIA Prize Giving Ceremony.

The format for the series changed in 2021 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.[19] All previously planned live events were dropped, and the season would instead be held online.

The series transferred over to Gran Turismo 7 for the 2022 season. Polyphony's partnership with the FIA was also put on hiatus that year, with FIA's Director of Innovative Sporting Projects, Frederic Bertrand, stating that they would resume the collaboration once Gran Turismo 7 becomes a sufficiently stable platform.[2][20][21] As a result, the FIA name was dropped, and the tournament was renamed to the Gran Turismo World Series (GTWS). Two live events were reintroduced as part of the 2022 season, with the series returning to Hangar-7 in Salzburg, Austria for the Showdown and Monte-Carlo Sporting in Monte Carlo, Monaco for the World Finals.

The tournament has also hosted exhibition races since 2019. One of these exhibition races is known as 'Pro-Am', where competitors of the series would pair with various personalities, spanning from content creators to professional racing drivers, including former Formula One driver Juan Pablo Montoya and seven-time Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton.[22] Exhibition races have also been hosted by Sony's artificial intelligence department, Sony AI, where select series drivers race against their agent known as 'Gran Turismo Sophy',[23] developed in collaboration by Sony AI, Sony Interactive Entertainment, and Polyphony Digital. This race is also used as a testing ground for Sony's AI team to evaluate Sophy's pace and behaviour on the race track.[24][25]

World Series drivers including previous champions Fraga, Mikail Hizal, Takuma Miyazono, Tomoaki Yamanaka, Valerio Gallo, Coque López, and Daniel Solis appear in Gran Turismo 7 as AI opponents and License Test coaches.[34]

The World Series races are usually streamed live from Dock10 studios[35] on YouTube and Twitch under the official Gran Turismo and PlayStation channels, and are available to watch through several languages.

There have been five different Nations Cup champions and eleven different individual Manufacturers Series champions since the series' foundation, in addition to four different winners in the Toyota GR GT Cup.

There are currently no multiple time Nations Cup champions, as each season has had a different champion each time. Igor Fraga from Brazil, along with Tomoaki Yamanaka and Takuma Miyazono from Japan, and Daniel Solis from the United States, hold the most individual Manufacturer Series titles with two each, Fraga and Yamanaka for Toyota, and Miyazono and Solis for Subaru. Fraga and Miyazono hold the most championship titles in total with four, each holding one Toyota GR GT Cup title, one Nations Cup title, and two individual Manufacturer Series titles. Miyazono also scored a treble in 2020 by winning the Toyota GR GT Cup and both GT World Series championships. Fraga is also the only participant to have won a championship in both the Gran Turismo World Series and real-world motorsport.[36]

Igor Fraga, Mikail Hizal, Takuma Miyazono, and Coque López are the only winners who have won both the Nations Cup and Manufacturer Series championships.

Season	Toyota GR GT Cup	Nations Cup	Manufacturers Cup
2018	Not held	Igor Fraga	Kanata Kawakami Tyrell Meadows Vincent Rigaud	Lexus
2019	Mikail Hizal	Mikail Hizal	Rayan Derrouiche Igor Fraga Tomoaki Yamanaka	Toyota
2020	Takuma Miyazono	Takuma Miyazono	Mikail Hizal Takuma Miyazono Daniel Solis	Subaru
2021	Tomoaki Yamanaka	Valerio Gallo	Igor Fraga Coque López Tomoaki Yamanaka	Toyota
2022	Igor Fraga	Coque López	Kylian Drumont Takuma Miyazono Daniel Solis	Subaru

• Bold indicates world championship events.

Season	Game	Event	Venue	Date	Nations Cup		Manufacturers Cup		Ref
2018	Gran Turismo Sport	World Tour 2018 - Nürburgring	Nürburg, Germany	10-13 May	Giorgio Mangano		Anthony Duval Philippe Nicolay Matthew Thomas	BMW	[14][15]
		World Tour 2018 - Red Bull Hangar-7	Salzburg, Austria	22 September	Patrik Blazsán Ádám Tápai Benjámin Báder	Hungary	Mikail Hizal Andrew McCabe	Nissan	[37]
		Nations Cup Asia/Oceania Final 2018	Odaiba, Japan	6-7 October	Ryota Kokubun		Not held		[38]
		Nations Cup European Final 2018	Madrid, Spain	19-20 October	Mikail Hizal				[39]
		Nations Cup Americas Final 2018	Las Vegas, Nevada, USA	31 October	Igor Fraga				[40]
		World Finals 2018	Monte Carlo, Monaco	16-18 November	Igor Fraga		Kanata Kawakami Tyrell Meadows Vincent Rigaud	Lexus	[16][41]
2019		World Tour 2019 - Paris	Paris, France	16-17 March	Nicolas Rubilar		Thomas Compton-McPherson Yoshiharu Imai Christopher Marcell	Aston Martin	[42]
		World Tour 2019 - Nürburgring	Nürburg, Germany	21-22 June	Igor Fraga		Simon Bishop Rick Kevelham Tomoaki Yamanaka	Toyota	[43]
		World Tour 2019 - New York	New York City, New York, USA	24-25 August	Igor Fraga		Anthony Felix Cody Nikola Latkovski Bernal Valverde	Mercedes-AMG	[44]
		World Tour 2019 - Red Bull Hangar-7	Salzburg, Austria	13-14 September	Mikail Hizal		Anthony Felix Tom Lartilleux Cody Nikola Latkovski	Mercedes-AMG	[45]
		World Tour 2019 - Tokyo	Tokyo, Japan	26-27 October	Ryota Kokubun		Tristan Bayless Angel Inostroza Matt Simmons	Porsche	[46]
		World Finals 2019	Monte Carlo, Monaco	22-24 November	Mikail Hizal		Rayan Derrouiche Igor Fraga Tomoaki Yamanaka	Toyota	[47][48]
2020		World Tour 2020 - Sydney	Sydney, Australia	15-16 February	Takuma Miyazono		Randall Haywood Coque López Nicolás Rubilar	BMW	[49]
		World Tour 2020 - Nürburgring	Nürburg, Germany	22-23 May	Cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the postponement of 2020 24 Hours of Nürburgring				[50]
		Nations Cup EMEA Regional Final 2020	Online	22 November	Coque López		Not held		[51]
		Nations Cup Americas Regional Final 2020		29 November	Adriano Carrazza				[52]
		Nations Cup Asia-Oceania Regional Final 2020		6 December	Takuma Miyazono				[53]
		World Finals 2020		19-20 December	Takuma Miyazono		Mikail Hizal Takuma Miyazono Daniel Solis	Subaru	[54][55]
2021		World Series 2021 Round 1		6 June	Valerio Gallo		Angel Inostroza	Porsche	[56]
		World Series 2021 Round 2		11 July	Patrik Blazsán		Takuma Miyazono	Subaru	[57]
		World Series 2021 Showdown		21-22 August	Ryota Kokubun		Igor Fraga Coque López Tomoaki Yamanaka	Toyota	[58][59]
		World Series 2021 Round 3		3 October	Valerio Gallo		José Serrano	Porsche	[60]
		World Series 2021 Round 4		14 November	Valerio Gallo		Igor Fraga	Toyota	[61]
		World Finals 2021		3-5 December	Valerio Gallo		Igor Fraga Coque López Tomoaki Yamanaka	Toyota	[62][63]
2022	Gran Turismo 7	World Series 2022 Round 1		23-24 July	Lucas Bonelli		Takuma Miyazono	Subaru	[64]
		World Series 2022 Showdown	Salzburg, Austria	30-31 July	Kylian Drumont		Kylian Drumont Takuma Miyazono[lower-alpha 1] Daniel Solis	Subaru	[65][66][67]
		World Series 2022 Round 2	Online	25 September 9 October	Angel Inostroza		Igor Fraga	Toyota	[68][69]
		World Series 2022 Round 3		6 November 13 November	José Serrano		Ryota Kokubun	Toyota	[70][71]
		World Finals 2022	Monte Carlo, Monaco	25-27 November	Coque López[lower-alpha 2]		Kylian Drumont Takuma Miyazono Daniel Solis	Subaru[lower-alpha 3]	[72][73][74]
2023		World Series 2023 Showdown	Amsterdam, Netherlands	11-12 August	Pol Urra Coque López José Serrano	Spain	Angel Inostroza[lower-alpha 4] Takuma Sasaki José Serrano	Porsche	[75][76]
		World Finals 2023	Barcelona, Spain	1-3 December					[75]

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