Polyphony Digital has announced the mystery location that will host the third round of its Gran Turismo World Series live esports events, with Singapore set to make its debut as the series continues to break new ground.
We’ve been expecting a venue in the Asia-Oceania region after the developer posted the full rules for this season’s championship, with that detail and the October 3rd date buried in the schedule and flagged for an April 1st announcement. Although it’s come a little later than that, perhaps avoiding April Fool’s Day for the reveal was wise.
It’s perhaps a surprise that Singapore has been selected to host, with most speculating a return to the southern hemisphere and Australia for the first time since the fateful 2020 season-opener. However the island/city-state is a regular on the F1 calendar with a unique street circuit around Marina Bay, staging the first ever night race in 2008 — and featuring a race-fixing scandal — and appearing every season bar 2020/2021 (for obvious reasons) since.
Nonetheless, it’s the first ever visit of the GT World Series in either guise to Southeast Asia and it comes after years of recognition for the region in terms of a dedicated esports competition granting entry to the official Toyota GR GT Cup which ran as part of the World Finals from 2020-2024. Only one Singaporean racer has qualified for the event though: Ar Muhammed Aleef in 2020.
With the event itself still six months away Polyphony Digital has yet to reveal a venue for the racing action, but we know that the events team tend to favour facilities with both stage space and 800+-seat, theatre-style seating. There shouldn’t be a shortage of possible locations and, with it being scheduled the week before the 2026 Formula One Singapore Grand Prix, we’d imagine plenty of options before prices go up.
Along with announcing the host nation for Round 3, the developer has revealed the replacement for the cancelled first round which had been scheduled for Abu Dhabi two week back. The conflict in the region saw this called off three weeks ahead of the event as it looked unlikely to be safe for attendees and airspace closures would affect travel in any case.
Unusually, PD has elected to host this event itself, at its studio in Tokyo. It’s actually a venue that regularly hosts less formal events, most notably the year-end party that sees as many series champions as possible attend for an exhibition race (and party) but obviously has no public viewing space. That means that, for the first time since the last World Final in Monaco in 2022, there won’t be any tickets sold to the general public.
Even if the original schedule had gone to plan that would have meant no round in the Americas for the first ever time in a full season, and no rounds west of the Prime Meridian. With the replacement round it’s now the first time that three events in the same season have been in the same region, and the first to see one nation (and indeed city) hosting two rounds.
Tickets are already on sale for the outlier round, in Milan on May 23, which will see the qualified players trying to register their first points of 2026 — and the least jet lag for attendees from the Americas…