Here’s the list of KOMs according to Zwift Insider.
Petit KOM is probably closest, but like most of them it is not an even gradient.
We can have all the climbs we want as long as they are flat. 
(I borrowed and adapted that comment from someone else, changing “you” to “we”).
We just have to live with the reality that hills are unpopular so I doubt we will see anything like what you are suggesting, as much as I’d like to see that.
I think the only hope we could have for that is when they do an coastal loop around the Alpe and than make an extra road up there.
I’m with you on this one. I’d love to see Zwift add an additional climb up ADZ (or anywhere), but we all know the numbers would still be low for the daily number of climbers. I usually do one big climb a week and there are usually fewer than 10 riders making up the segment leaderboard. It doesn’t really matter what Zwift adds to Watopia, most Zwifters are just going to farm distance like a hamster on a wheel, back and forth over and over on Tempus Fugit. Even if the new routes from Jarvis are really good, they’ll find a way to avoid them and complain if there is anything more than 100ft of climbing per 10 miles.
I think you could probably get people to do anything provided it gave them XP bonuses (to reach level 200 fastest) or lots of drops (to afford the latest bikes). Most bikes need distance for upgrades so that’s another thing deterring against hills.
The trick is preventing bots or grown adult males changing themselves to 50kg for any climbs. Nobody seems to do 35kg anymore interestingly.
Most ideal for distance would be opening up the start pens at top of Alpe to free rides then people ride down over and over and over endlessly. If it was possible, you can bet people would do that.
I do about 10-12 big climbs per week and you are right, the numbers are small and it’s just the same group of people most of the time each day.
Seriously, I reckon that the dev team is. Is one dudette/dude and a free plan Claude.
That is certainly not true. I think you’re confusing their development process with a disagreement about what is best for the game. They apparently do not agree with your product ideas, and it’s completely OK that you think they are wrong but that’s the reason.
Paul - I think the problem here is that we’re confusing ‘updates’ with ‘development’.
Zwift certainly hasn’t stopped updating things. There are new badges, bikes, routes, levels, UI changes and various tweaks. But rearranging the furniture isn’t quite the same thing as building another room.
Look at what Zwift used to do.
Innsbruck for the 2018 World Championships was recreated metre-for-metre. Yorkshire followed in 2019, with Zwift importing the GPX data and saying they’d replicated the actual road ‘from top to bottom’. We got Bologna from the Giro, then France and Paris for the Virtual Tour de France.
That was ambitious. The real cycling world did something interesting and Zwift effectively said, ‘Right, let’s build it.’
Compare that with recent years.
For the Glasgow Worlds we didn’t get Glasgow. We got Scotland, a fictional Zwift world inspired by Scotland and designed largely around esports racing. Zwift themselves actually pointed out that this was different from their earlier exact recreations of World Championship courses.
Now in 2026 we’re getting Montmartre. Great. But it’s an extension of the Paris world they built in 2020. Zwift advertises 10 new routes, but 10 routes through a road network aren’t 10 new roads. I can drive from Derby to Birmingham twelve different ways, but National Highways hasn’t therefore built twelve motorways.
None of this would particularly bother me were it not for one slightly awkward number.
£12.99 became £17.99.
That’s a 38.5% increase.
So I don’t think the interesting question is ‘Does Zwift still develop the product?’
Of course it does.
The interesting question is: where did the old ambition go?
The Zwift which recreated Innsbruck, Yorkshire and Bologna and then built France and Paris felt as though it was trying to reinvent indoor cycling.
Today’s Zwift increasingly feels as though it’s trying to find another interesting way of cycling around bits of Zwift we’ve already paid to cycle around.
And at £17.99 a month, while ROUVY keeps adding real-world riding and MyWhoosh costs precisely £0, I think it’s entirely reasonable to ask whether Zwift’s development ambition has risen anything like as quickly as its subscription.
I don’t think it has.
Ride on, at cost.
These are product decisions that are intended to acquire and retain customers. To me it’s pretty clear that the hardware offerings are a big part of how they intend to do both of those things. They are focused on getting new people into the game, and deterring them from switching to a competitor. There is a lot of effort going into hardware, and making the ecosystem more closed so that leaving is more difficult than staying. Although the people aren’t fungible, the investment certainly is, so if you consider the cost of developing and operating the hardware side of the business, and what you would get in terms of software development and game art for that same investment, then I think you get closer to the answer as to why there is money going in but not a lot of new roads coming out.
But people love the jungle - whenever someone says “pave the jungle”, they’ll be shouted down by the defenders of the Jungle realm.
I would love to skip the jungle, but I’m stuck with it every day to get to where I want to go. It’s 6-10min I’d prefer to spend not doing the “wArMuP” as people call it.
Saving 10 minutes of that means I can get the entire ride I planned (2 complete laps) done in 2 hours, and not have to cut it short (meaning 1 lap). That’s my training plan this year and it has worked very well for my outside riding.
We haven’t yet had any roundabout-pretzel routes in Watopia yet, but they could do one, start at the roundabout near “The Grade”, 50 laps of that, go up the grade, go back down, another 50 laps of the roundabout, up The Grade again and then finish on the Radio Tower climb. No thanks!
I might not agree with everything they do, but that’s a bit unfair.
This they did, to a degree. I’ve ridden in Innsbruck on most of the real world course (by chance in 2017) and there are large parts that I rode on which Zwift did not create.
I hope they will expand it sometime later on in the future and build the missing parts of the real course because there is some fantastic riding there. Some really brutal short, steep sections, but with other sections that aren’t so fearsome. Something that isn’t just endless laps of the same thing. If they wanted more after that, then Haute Route Dolomites 2017 stages 1 and 2. Stage 1 was a Innsbruck to Innsbruck loop (very cold and wet) and Stage 2 was Innsbruck to Sterzing. That would be something no other cycling application has. Ambitious yes, but would be great.
For me.
I would like to see events where double drops could be earned. I am not a prolific Zwifter, 3 times a week, try to average 100k per week. I have upgraded 3 Specialized bikes but despite being on Zwift for nearly 5 years I cannot afford a concept bike, currently 8 millions drops. I don’t buy stuff from the garage so it’s frustrating.
Climb Portal tracker would be nice. I have zero incentive unless Zwift drop a challenge to use them.
You are describing the Big Spin event series. Given its popularity I imagine it will return in the spring.
Yes, The Big Spin is good, although I was ill for most of it this year. But this is a once a year event only. Double XP events happen a few times throughout the year.
This isn’t correct.
Innsbruck, Yorkshire and Bologna are only sections of the actual world championship courses. Scotland is similarly a section of the actual course used in Glasgow.
According to the Zwift Insider article on Tour of Watopia -
Tour of Watopia is Zwift’s only series featuring double XP
There may be individual events with double XP, but ToW is the only series with double XP.
They also had the XP Express events this year
And almost weekly events which give 500 or more xp a ride.
Small hills that at 10-15% grind my quads to a dust hopefully! A nice 4-5-6-7% would be a dandy. Like one of my favorite climbs in Rwanda Actually. P.S. It’s beautifully paved and not dirt when I was in there. Dirt Climb | Strava Ride Segment in Gashaki, Rwanda
