It’s now been confirmed that the bumper Gran Turismo 7 Spec III update will be arriving in the first week of December, exactly as we’ve been suspecting for a little while now.
Spec III has been in the works for some time, with the most-recent game update being the 1.63 patch sent out in late September. Shortly thereafter, off the back of the GTWS Berlin event, series creator Kazunori Yamauchi announced the surprise Spec III update.
We’ve known quite a bit about it for a while, with that initial teaser revealing four of the eight — yes, eight — new cars, and two brand-new circuits making their series debut, and some more coming to light since. There’s also been a few features teased to varying degrees, but the one thing we didn’t really know was the date.
That said, we’d inferred a December 4 date for the Spec III update from a couple of additional pieces of information delivered around the GTWS Los Angeles event: the timings of the Polestar 5 Time Trial Challenge and the arrival of the game’s first ever paid DLC, the Power Pack, on that date.
While we still don’t have a precise day for the update, it has now at least been confirmed — again by Yamauchi — that it will arrive during that week, courtesy of a slightly different-looking teaser Tweet:
The GT7 Spec III update is coming next week.
来週、GT7 スペック３ アップデート来ます。#GT7 #SpecIII pic.twitter.com/lXrlhQzsZG
This image, in which the incoming vehicles are draped with car covers rather than the usual disguise of heavy shadow, reconfirms the cars that we knew were coming but also gives some pretty heavy hints of the remaining two that we didn’t. Although we have rather been expecting one of them.
If you’ve not been keeping up, the six vehicles we already knew about are arranged diagonally from the rear-left to the front-right of the image and are:
The two that we didn’t know, or at least one and a half since we had one of them quite firmly penciled-in, are at the front-left and rear-right of the image.
It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that the classic FIAT Panda is in this update, as it’s a car we’ve directly observed on a monitor in Polyphony Digital’s studio. That came during the visit of Giorgetto Giugiaro to the developer, and was shown back in May.
Previously we’ve only seen two other vehicles in this manner, in the shape of the Ruf CTR3 in a Sony Bravia ad and the Jaguar XJ220 during a PD studio presentation. Both arrived four months and one week after they were spotted, and while the Panda didn’t exactly follow this pattern — that would have been the 1.63 update — it’s pretty much what we’ve been anticipating.
The other car is probably not so much of a shock either, as it appears to be the roadgoing sibling of the Ferrari 296 GT3. It’s not possible to tell from the image if it’s the original GTB or the GTS — which features a removable roof panel — but it does follow a tradition of a GT3 version of a car being added after or with the street model.
Of course this teaser, as usual, shows only the expected update window and hints at the vehicle content coming in the update. There is, this time round, far, far more coming when the update lands next week.
For starters, there’s the two — yes, two — new circuits. After an absolute age without a new track, Spec III will bring two entirely new circuit locations to make their series debut: Canada’s Circuit Gilles Villeneuve and Abu Dhabi’s Yas Marina.
Both are famous for being very different F1 venues, with the former a Montreal street circuit dating back almost 50 years and the latter a modern “Tilkedrome” — a purpose-built race venue designed by regular circuit architect Hermann Tilke — coming up on its 16th race.
We’ve already seen the Yas Marina circuit teased in video form, and we were able to get some laps in ourselves during the GTWS Los Angeles event, but there’s only been a couple of images of the Canadian track thus far.
That aside, there’s also new features coming in the Spec III update, many of which remain shrouded in some layers of secrecy with only vague descriptions to date.
The best-described of them is the lap Data Logger feature, which had an explanatory presentation as part of the Nations Cup at the GTWS Los Angeles event. This allows you to analyze a lap for various telemetry features, and even compare it to another lap to see where you’re gaining and losing time to make for a potentially powerful tool for time trial events.
Two features that look to be linked are a change to the Collector Level cap and the arrival of permanent Invitations. We’re not sure how far the cap will be raised — though we have reason to suspect it’ll move from 50 up to 70 — but given that most levels from 1-50 unlock features or award things, it will likely come with additional bonus rewards.
The teaser video hinted that one of the things it could unlock is new Invitations for the relevant brands, but rather than being the month-long affairs they are at present they’ll become permanent. That will alleviate quite a bit of frustration with the current system, which we expect will remain until you reach the appropriate level to acquire the Invitation in perpetuity.
We’re expecting a slew of new events — with Circuit Experience for the new tracks already confirmed, and likely new races keyed to the eight new cars — but one that’s changing is Weekly Challenges. This feature was added in Spec II, in November 2023, and looks to be getting a refresh that brings different event types to the list each week.
One mystery one is a new “Seasonal Menu”. We’re very much unsure what this is going to be, but it’s listed as a new Menu Book, so it’ll likely be part of the GT Cafe structure; the “seasonal” part of the name suggests some kind of rotating, temporary event updated on a long but regular cycle.
Also listed is “improvements to online races”, but this description isn’t accompanied by any detail right now. There’s just too many ways that this could be interpreted — from infrastructure and netcode to a wide-ranging change in how Daily Races operate — so this one’s going to be unclear until day-of, we suspect.
We’d also expect a change in game physics, along with a leaderboard wipe, as Spec III introduces the Dunlop tire partnership. That won’t affect the current GTWS Exhibition Season, which ends today, but will raise many questions about gold/silver/bronze time adjustments in single-player timed events…
We’ve left one of the biggest until last, as it’s not truly part of Spec III but will require the Spec III update: the Power Pack DLC.
This is the first paid DLC for Gran Turismo 7, although the price for it is not yet known. What we do know is that it’ll add 50 new race events spread over a new structure, and offer single-player endurance races (including at least one 24hr real-time duration race) for the first time since Gran Turismo 5.
It’ll also sport a dedicated version of the machine-learning Gran Turismo Sophy AI, called “Sophy 3.0”, although the reasons for this are not yet known. We’ve speculated that it could be that this version of Sophy will support pit strategy decisions — after all, what’s an endurance race without pit strategy — or perhaps even a B-Spec mode (which was demonstrated last December) that allows you to race collaboratively over the longer events.
There’s also some questions over the main image for the pack, which shows two of the game’s existing cars modified in a way that is not currently possible in Gran Turismo 7.
We’re expecting more detail to emerge over the next few days, probably mostly on Wednesday December 3 if — as we’ve estimated — the update is to arrive on Thursday December 4.
See more articles on Gran Turismo 7 Game Update and Gran Turismo 7 Spec III.

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