Only 8 Routes for a Year? Mario Kart World Adds 2 More

When Mario Kart World launched alongside the Switch 2 on June 5, 2025, Knockout Tour was the standout. A 24-player elimination race across six interconnected courses, whittling the field down at checkpoints until only the best survived. It was the freshest idea the series had introduced in decades. And then Nintendo shipped it with eight routes and left it there for over a year.

Version 1.7, which went live today according to a press release from Nintendo, adds two new Knockout Tour rallies: Drill Rally and Boomerang Rally. That brings the total to 10. Nintendo also confirmed that additional routes are planned for future updates, though no timeline was given.

I'm glad the routes are here, but two new options after thirteen months is a painfully slow drip for a mode that was clearly begging for more content from day one. If you've been playing Knockout Tour online, where you can't even pick which rally you race, you've been cycling through the same eight combinations since launch. That gets stale fast, and it's the kind of problem that should have been addressed months ago.

What the New Routes Cover

Drill Rally starts at Wario Shipyard on the eastern edge of the map and cuts north-west through DK Pass, Dandelion Depths, Mario Circuit, Dry Bones Burnout, and finishes at Bowser's Castle on the opposite corner. It essentially spans the full length of the world map, which should give it a different feel from the tighter loops.

Boomerang Rally, as the name suggests, traces a boomerang shape across the map. It begins at Salty Salty Speedway, passes through Cheep Cheep Falls, Moo Moo Meadows, Choco Mountain, Mario Bros Circuit, and ends at Whistlestop Summit. Both routes unlock once you've cleared at least one existing rally.

Beyond the new routes, the 1.7 patch includes a surprisingly long list of balance changes and bug fixes. Nintendo raised the acceleration performance of characters and vehicles that previously had low acceleration, and boosted gliding speed for high-speed characters. Those two changes alone could shift the meta away from the all-speed builds that have dominated online play. Being able to hop immediately after getting hit by Kamek's magic or a Bullet Bill is a quality-of-life fix that should reduce some frustration, too.

The bug fix list is extensive. Nintendo patched wall clipping in Bowser's Castle, a course-fall exploit on the shortcut heading from Koopa Troopa Beach to Dino Dino Jungle, and an issue where Dry Bones would literally fall through the ground near his own course. There's also a fix for Time Trial times displaying incorrectly, with Nintendo warning that some ghost data affected by the bug may be removed from rankings without notice.

On the lighter side, the update lets you use collected stickers in Photo Mode, supporting both touch controls and Joy-Con 2 mouse input. With 1,056 stickers in the game, there's plenty to work with if that's your thing. A ramp has also been added to the race heading from Airship Fortress to Bowser's Castle, and Thai language support is now included.

Mario Kart World currently sits at an 87 average on OpenCritic with a 97% recommendation rate, and the open-world structure was widely praised at launch. But the consensus around Knockout Tour has always been the same: brilliant concept, not enough content. Eight routes for a mode built around replayability was never going to hold up over a full year, especially when online matchmaking removes player choice from the equation.

Nintendo saying more routes are coming is reassuring, but the pace needs to pick up. Two routes per year isn't going to keep Knockout Tour feeling fresh, and this is the mode that separates Mario Kart World from every kart racer before it. The Switch 2 install base is still growing, which means new players are discovering Knockout Tour every day. Giving them a roster of 10 routes instead of eight is better; giving them 20 by the end of the year would actually match the ambition of the mode itself.