'Mario Kart World' is getting a major free update
Overview & Key Takeaways
'Mario Kart World' is getting a free update with 10 new tracks.
Mario Kart World is getting a big new update, and here's the best part: it's free. The 1.8.0 update will include 10 new race courses, each of which are based on tracks from Super Mario Kart. These maps were apparently already tucked throughout the game's open world, but will now become fully playable in VS Race mode. The tracks include Choco Island 1 and 2, Vanilla Lake, Ghost Valley, and more.
Super Mario Kart was the first game in the Mario Kart series. It was released in Japan on Aug. 27, 1992, for the SNES and became the system's fourth-best-selling game, selling 8.76 million copies worldwide. It was later re-released on the Wii's Virtual Console and the company's Super NES Classic Edition.
Beyond the new tracks from the original game in the series, Mario Kart World will also get two new routes for KO Tour: Propeller Rally and Turnip Rally. For those unfamiliar, KO Tour is one of the new modes introduced in this entry. This mode essentially plays out like a Battle Royale, with a large group of players racing as those in the rear are eliminated.
Image: Nintendo
Image: Nintendo
Image: Nintendo
Image: Nintendo
Image: Nintendo
Image: Nintendo
Image: Nintendo
Image: Nintendo
Image: Nintendo
Image: Nintendo
Image: Nintendo
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Image: Nintendo
Image: Nintendo
Image: Nintendo
Image: Nintendo
Image: Nintendo
Image: Nintendo
Image: Nintendo
Image: Nintendo
Image: Nintendo
Image: Nintendo
Image: Nintendo
When did Mario Kart World come out?
Mario Kart World was released on June 5, 2025, alongside the Nintendo Switch 2. The game has sold an impressive 15.3 million copies, but the fan response has been a bit complicated. While its core racing is as tightly designed and responsive as ever, the game's focus on an open-world design has drawn criticism. Specifically, the game's default online mode forced players to trek through relatively boring stretches of open road before reaching the more tightly designed traditional tracks. Players found a workaround to mostly play traditional tracks online by voting for random stages (pulled from a pool of normal stages instead of the straightaways), but the developers patched it out. Nintendo did eventually address these criticisms by redesigning several of the boring straightaways, and this was relatively well received, even if it didn't fix the problem completely. Despite these issues, it's clear that World has proven to be another hit for Nintendo.
