What Is Knockout Tour in Mario Kart World? Explained

Knockout Tour is Mario Kart World's signature elimination mode: 24 drivers race back-to-back courses with no pit stops, and if you don't place high enough by the time you reach one of five checkpoints, you're out. Since the Nintendo Switch 2 launch title debuted in June 2025, Nintendo has rebuilt the mode piece by piece with free updates, adding friend invites, team battles, spectator tools, and brand-new rally routes as recently as September 2026.

What Is Knockout Tour in Mario Kart World?

Knockout Tour is one of Mario Kart World's three core race types, alongside Grand Prix and VS Race. Nintendo describes it as a mode where you "speed through one course and then drive to the next in a non-stop rally that stretches from one corner of the world to another," with racers "steadily eliminated, checkpoint by checkpoint" as the field thins out. Unlike a Grand Prix, there's no pause between tracks and no fixed lap count going in — you're simply told to keep pace or get cut.

The mode launched alongside Mario Kart World and the Switch 2 hardware on June 5, 2025, as one of the game's headline additions. It supports up to 24 drivers at once, which Nintendo also uses as the cap for Grand Prix and VS Race in this installment, and it's built around the game's connected open-world map, so one rally can weave through several of that map's named regions — places like Acorn Heights, DK Pass, Wario Shipyard, and Bowser's Castle — before it ends. Nintendo has used the same open-world connectivity for Mario Kart World's free-roam exploration, so a single Knockout Tour run can genuinely feel like crossing the whole map rather than cycling through a fixed track list.

It's also worth noting what Knockout Tour isn't: it's not a battle-royale item fight, and it's not a shrinking-arena mode in the "last one standing" sense used elsewhere in gaming. Elimination is based purely on race position at each checkpoint, so good kart control and route knowledge matter more than scavenging items, and a single bad checkpoint can end a run even if you recover afterward — because by then, you're already out of the race.

How the Checkpoint Eliminations Actually Work

Each Knockout Tour rally is split into multiple courses that feed directly into one another — no loading screen, no results tally until it matters. According to Nintendo's own description, the rally includes five checkpoints along the route. If you aren't placed highly enough when the field crosses a checkpoint, you're eliminated on the spot and dropped into spectating. Make it past all five checkpoints and you're racing for position on the final stretch to the finish line.

Nintendo has tuned this elimination logic more than once. The official Mario Kart World update support page lists a Ver. 1.6.0 fix (March 30, 2026) that corrected bugs causing incorrect eliminations at checkpoints, wrong on-screen rankings, and missing final results when spectating online or over local wireless — a sign of just how much behind-the-scenes work goes into keeping a 24-player elimination bracket synced across the internet.

How Knockout Tour Has Changed Since Launch

Knockout Tour hasn't been static. Per Nintendo's official support page, nearly every major Mario Kart World update since release has touched the mode in some way:

In other words, Knockout Tour went from a solo-friendly elimination race at launch to a mode with team scoring, cross-network friend invites, and a steadily growing route list — all without Nintendo charging for any of it.

The Rally Routes Nintendo Has Added So Far

Knockout Tour races take place across named "rallies," each one a chain of courses through a different part of Mario Kart World's map. Beyond the rallies available at launch, Nintendo has confirmed four new ones through free updates:

• Drill Rally — added in Ver. 1.7.0 (June 30, 2026), linking Wario Shipyard and Bowser's Castle
• Boomerang Rally — added in Ver. 1.7.0, connecting Salty Salty Speedway and Whistletop Summit
• Propeller Rally — added in Ver. 1.8.0 (September 9, 2026), a route connecting Acorn Heights and Airship Fortress
• Turnip Rally — added in Ver. 1.8.0, a route connecting DK Pass and Shy Guy Bazaar

Nintendo's own update notes say plainly that "additional Knockout Tour routes are planned to be added through future updates," so this list is very likely to keep growing rather than being the final count. Full details on the two newest additions, including where each route starts and ends, are in Nintendo's own September 9, 2026 update article, which also covers the ten Super Mario Kart-inspired courses Ver. 1.8.0 added to VS Race and Online Play separately from Knockout Tour.

Team Battles: 12v12, 8v8v8, or 6v6v6v6

The biggest structural change to Knockout Tour arrived in Ver. 1.5.0 on January 21, 2026, when Nintendo added the option to race as a team instead of free-for-all, in local wireless or online rooms. Up to four teams can compete at once, with three size splits to choose from: two teams of 12, three teams of 8, or four teams of 6. Any empty slots are filled by CPU drivers, so a team doesn't need a full human roster to start a race.

Scoring is based on finishing placement rather than simply surviving the longest. According to Nintendo's official rundown of the update, 1st place earns a team 50 points, 2nd earns 40, 3rd earns 35, and 4th earns 30; the four drivers eliminated at the very first checkpoint still earn their team 1 point each. The team with the highest combined total when the dust settles wins, and a tally in the corner of the screen tracks which drivers from which team have cleared each checkpoint in real time.

What Happens After You're Eliminated

Getting knocked out at a checkpoint doesn't mean you're locked out of the race. Eliminated drivers can spectate the rest of the field, following a specific racer and posting preset chat comments, as Nintendo detailed in the Ver. 1.5.0 notes. The Ver. 1.8.0 update sharpened this further: while spectating, the Y Button now switches your view to the currently followed player's perspective, and the R Button pulls up real-time rankings — useful in a mode where positions can shuffle violently between checkpoints. That same update also raised the maximum group size for Online and LAN rooms to 26 players, although the number of drivers actually racing stays capped at 24, with the extra slots covering spectators.

Knockout Tour vs. Grand Prix and VS Race

Mario Kart World organizes most of its racing into three buckets, and it's worth knowing where Knockout Tour sits relative to the other two:

• Grand Prix is the traditional cup structure — four set courses, points awarded per race, and a final overall placement, with no mid-race elimination.
• VS Race is a customizable single-race mode where players set the rules (CPU count, item settings, course list) themselves; it's also the mode behind Nintendo's periodic online "Open" events.
• Knockout Tour is the only one of the three built around elimination, stringing multiple courses into one continuous rally and cutting the field at checkpoints instead of scoring laps individually.

All three support up to 24 drivers, a figure Nintendo has leaned on as a selling point for the game's "biggest Mario Kart ever" pitch.

How to Unlock New Rallies

Newly added rallies aren't available from the first time you open Knockout Tour. Per Nintendo's Ver. 1.7.0 and Ver. 1.8.0 notes, a new rally becomes selectable only after you've cleared at least one other Knockout Tour rally first. So after updating the game, the fastest way to reach Drill Rally, Boomerang Rally, Propeller Rally, or Turnip Rally is to finish any existing rally once — win or just survive to the end — and the new routes will then show up in the selection list.

Playing Knockout Tour With Friends and Online

Knockout Tour works across every connection type Mario Kart World supports: local 1-player and up to 4-player split-screen (TV, tabletop, or handheld mode), local wireless, LAN, and online play over a Nintendo Switch Online membership. Friend-joining has expanded steadily — Ver. 1.3.0 let a single local player join a friend's Knockout Tour from the Online Play menu, and Ver. 1.4.0 extended that to 2-player local setups, so a couch co-op pair can drop into a friend's rally together rather than only solo.

While racing, Nintendo's own product page notes that players can "talk with friends using GameChat as you race or roam," and that CameraPlay can show friends' faces next to their vehicles via a compatible camera, whether you're online or sharing a couch. None of that is unique to Knockout Tour, but it applies the same way there as in Grand Prix or VS Race, so a full team-battle room can stay on voice chat the entire rally.

Nintendo has also kept the game's online scene active well past launch. On October 8, 2026, Nintendo announced the Mario Kart World Open, a VS Race qualifying event running October 17–18, 2026, that feeds into a Fall Cup for North American players in December with prizes Nintendo lists at roughly $1,613.76 in total value. It's a VS Race event rather than a Knockout Tour one, but it's a reminder that Nintendo is still actively running the game's online calendar well over a year after launch — the same cadence that has kept Knockout Tour itself getting new routes and features roughly every two to three months.

What's Next for Knockout Tour

Nintendo hasn't published a roadmap with specific dates, but its own update notes have twice stated that more Knockout Tour rallies are planned, and the mode has picked up a meaningful new feature in six of its eight updates since launch. Given that cadence — team battles in January, a bug-fix pass in March, two new rallies in June, and two more plus expanded spectating in September — it's reasonable to expect Nintendo to keep pairing future Mario Kart World updates with additional rallies rather than leaving the route list where it stands today.

For players weighing Mario Kart World against the rest of the Switch 2 library, it's worth remembering Knockout Tour is included in every copy of the game at no extra cost, on top of Grand Prix, VS Race, Balloon Battle, Coin Runners, and Time Trials. Anyone comparing the Switch 2's launch-window lineup more broadly can see how the console's other exclusives and shared features stack up, including how GameShare lets a second Switch join certain games without owning a copy. For Mario Kart World specifically, the single best source for what's changing next remains Nintendo's own Mario Kart World update support page, where every version's patch notes are posted the day they go live.

Written byJonah Reyes

Jonah Reyes leads Pandromeda's gaming coverage: console and handheld hardware, release dates, pricing changes, patch notes and the business moves behind the biggest franchises. He sources every date and price from the platform holders and publishers themselves, and says plainly when something is still only a rumour.

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