The Nations Cup traces its origins to the launch of competitive online play within Gran Turismo Sport, which debuted in 2017 and introduced the first FIA-certified esports championship in sim racing. Polyphony Digital had announced a partnership with the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile in June 2014, and by 2016 the two organizations had formally established the FIA-Certified Gran Turismo Championships (FIA GTC). The Nations Cup operated as one of two concurrent disciplines under that umbrella — the other being the Manufacturers Series — with the FIA sanctioning the event from 2018 through 2021. Champions during that era were recognized at the FIA Prize Giving Ceremony alongside real-world motorsport title holders.
Players qualify for the Nations Cup by competing in the Online Series portion of the Gran Turismo World Series, which runs across multiple stages over several months using the Sport mode of Gran Turismo 7. Participants are separated into three leagues based on their in-game driver rating: GT1 League (rating A and above), GT2 League (rating B), and GT3 League (rating C and below). Only GT1 League drivers are eligible to advance to the World Series live events and World Finals. As of 2025, 66 countries across five regions — EMEA, North America, Central and South America, Asia, and Oceania — are eligible to field competitors.
Top-scoring qualifiers are invited to LAN midseason tournaments called World Tours, where regional finals decide who advances to the annual World Finals. The format has evolved over time: in 2023 the Nations Cup switched to a team-based structure in which the three highest-finishing players from each eligible country combined to form a national team, a format used briefly in 2018 at the Hangar-7 World Tour before being reintroduced at scale.
The inaugural Nations Cup season ran in 2018 within Gran Turismo Sport. Giorgio Mangano of Italy claimed the first Nations Cup event win at the Nürburgring World Tour, while Brazilian driver Igor Fraga became the series' first overall champion. The early seasons established a tradition of Brazilian and Japanese competitor dominance, with Fraga going on to win multiple titles and later transitioning to a professional career in real-world motorsport, competing in Super Formula and Super GT.
When the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the 2020 and 2021 seasons, Polyphony Digital shifted the Nations Cup to a fully online format. Italian competitor Valerio Gallo won the 2021 World Finals, which served as the final championship contested in Gran Turismo Sport before the series transferred to Gran Turismo 7 for 2022.
The transition to Gran Turismo 7 coincided with the lapse of the FIA partnership; Polyphony Digital rebranded the event as the Gran Turismo World Series without FIA branding. The 2022 World Finals concluded in controversy when eventual Nations Cup champion Coque Lopez of Spain won after a collision with fellow contender Angel Inostroza that was ruled a racing incident. Lopez went on to win a second title in 2023 under the team format, becoming the first repeat Nations Cup champion. Takuma Miyazono of Japan also claimed two Nations Cup titles among a total of five individual GTWS championships, making him the series' most decorated competitor overall.
Igor Fraga of Brazil was the first Nations Cup champion in 2018 and ultimately claimed four individual GTWS titles across both disciplines, bridging esports and professional motorsport more visibly than any other series alumni. Takuma Miyazono won the Nations Cup in 2020 and 2022, also capturing two Manufacturers Cup titles and one Toyota GR GT Cup, and later raced in the 2026 24 Hours of Nürburgring. Coque Lopez, Mikail Hizal, and Jose Serrano are among the other multi-time champions whose Nations Cup wins helped elevate the competition's profile in global esports.
The Nations Cup helped establish sim racing as a legitimate international esports discipline, providing a pathway into real-world motorsport for a number of its champions. The FIA's involvement between 2018 and 2021 conferred institutional credibility, and the series demonstrated that console-based sim racing — rather than exclusively PC platforms — could sustain a world-class competitive ecosystem. The Nations Cup trophy is a laser-scanned reproduction of Italian futurist sculptor Umberto Boccioni's 1913 bronze work Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, selected by Polyphony Digital to embody the intersection of speed, technology, and human striving that the Gran Turismo series represents.