World

Lore & Background

The World career is built on a simple, romantic premise: the road is the story. Rather than handing the player a menu of races, Gran Turismo asks them to sit behind the wheel and travel. In GT7 this is literal—you pilot a car across a hand-painted, slightly exaggerated globe, watching the landscape shift from Japanese mountain passes to European coastal highways to the vast plains of the Americas. Each stop is a small world unto itself, with its own events, its own cars waiting in the local garage, and its own slice of the overarching narrative.

The license system (B, A, S) is the career's spine. It mirrors the real-world progression a driver would follow: first proving you can handle a car safely, then demonstrating consistency under pressure, and finally showing the composure and speed that separate a good driver from a great one. Between each license exam, the career weaves in discipline-specific challenges—drift scoring, rally special stages, precision time trials—that broaden the player's skill set and keep the experience from becoming a single loop of circuit racing.

Fans often describe the World career as the series' love letter to the idea of the journey mattering as much as the destination. The cars you unlock are not just stats on a spreadsheet; they are milestones. The tracks are not just geometry; they are characters with moods. And the narrative, while understated, gives the whole thing a quiet emotional weight that pure arcade racers rarely achieve.

In Their Own Story

The rain had stopped an hour ago, but the asphalt still held the memory of it—dark, slick, reflecting the amber glow of the streetlamps as you crested the final hill and the valley opened up below. Your B-license car, a modest hatchback with a dent on the rear quarter panel from that one too-tight corner in the qualifying run, idled gently in the gravel pull-off. Ahead, the next location marker pulsed on the navigation display: a coastal circuit, a drift course, a rally stage tucked between two cliffs. You could feel the engine's low thrum through the steering wheel, a heartbeat that matched your own. The world was wide, the roads were waiting, and somewhere past the next turn, an S-license exam was going to test everything you'd learned. You shifted into first, eased the clutch, and let the car carry you forward into the mist.

Reader's Guide

The World career in GT7 unfolds as a continuous open-world journey. You begin at the driving school, where a short sequence of exercises introduces basic control and you sit your B-license exam. Passing unlocks the first cluster of locations on the world map.

At each location you will typically find a mix of event types: a circuit race or two, a time-trial challenge, and occasionally a discipline-specific event (drift scoring, rally special stages, or a special multi-stage challenge). Completing events earns World Series points, which feed the overall progression bar. You are free to travel between locations in any order once unlocked, but the license exams gate the harder content.

The A-license exam arrives after a set number of events are cleared. It is noticeably tighter—shorter time allowances, more demanding cornering lines. Passing it opens the mid-tier locations and a wave of new cars and tracks.

The S-license exam is the career's climax. It demands the highest precision and speed, and clearing it unlocks the final stretch of events, the most exclusive cars, and the concluding story beats.

Between GT5 and GT7 the structure shifted: GT5's career was more linear and chapter-based, with 'Circuit' and 'World' event categories side by side. GT7's open-world format gives you the freedom to choose your route, re-visit locations, and chase personal bests at your own pace, while still preserving the license-gate progression that has defined the series since 1997.

Did You Know?

• The license-exam system (B, A, S) has been a pillar of the Gran Turismo career since the very first title in 1997, making it one of the longest-running progression structures in racing games.
• In GT7 the World career is played by actually driving a car across a stylized world map rather than selecting races from a menu, a first for the series.
• The career's open-world design means players can revisit any unlocked location at any time to improve their times or try different cars, encouraging replayability beyond the initial playthrough.
• Drift and rally events are woven directly into the main career path rather than being relegated to a separate arcade mode, reflecting Polyphony Digital's goal of making every discipline part of one continuous story.