Cobbles in the Capital: Zwift’s Paris Map Finally Gets Its Montmartre Climb
Zwift has switched on the long-promised Paris expansion, but is one cobbled climb up to the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre enough?
For years, the Paris map has been one of Zwift’s prettiest postcards and one of its most underused. You’d roll out onto the flat Champs-Élysées circuit, tick the badge, and probably never go back (or at least not for a while). As of today, that changes. And if you watched the back end of last year’s Tour de France (or the 2024 Olympics), you’ll know exactly why this map matters.
What’s actually new
The expansion bolts the Montmartre climb onto the existing Paris circuit, recreating the finishing loop that the real Tour borrowed from the Paris Olympic road races. It became an instant fan favourite in the real world, the kind of finale that turned a processional final stage into actual racing, and now we get to suffer up it ourselves. BANG!
Don’t let the word “climb” fool you into thinking this is an Alpe du Zwift situation. The Montmartre ascent is short and sharp: roughly 0.6km at an average gradient of around 4.7%. On paper that’s nothing. In practice, a punchy cobbled kicker dropped into the middle of an otherwise pan-flat parcours is exactly the sort of thing that blows a bunch to pieces. It’s a sprinter’s nightmare and a puncheur’s playground, and it gives the Paris map something it has never really had: a selective point where races are won and lost.
Zwift has also hinted that the new roads will be carved into a stack of fresh route combinations rather than a single out-and-back, so the value here goes beyond one climb. After more than three years without a brand-new world, and with Paris untouched since it first launched, this is the most meaningful refresh the map has ever had.
Why now?
The timing isn’t an accident. Zwift remains the official software platform for the Tour de France and the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, and the company is clearly lining this up to ride the hype as the real race kicks off.
And that’s where the Tour Fever Challenge comes in. Running from 2 July to 16 August, it’s a six-week celebration of the racing season built around five stages of rides and races across the updated Paris map, with five new badges to chase. If you’re the type who likes a reason to log on beyond “I probably should,” this is a tidy little campaign to structure your July and August around — and a neat excuse to learn the new roads before everyone else does.
What it’ll feel like for the rest of us
Here’s the honest take from someone who is not a 5 w/kg whippet. A 0.6km cobbled ramp is the great equaliser. It’s short enough that you can absolutely send it, but steep enough that going too deep too early will leave you cross-eyed and dangling off the back over the top. If you’ve ever raced a crit with a little drag to the line, you know what I mean.
For newer Zwifters, this is one of those features that makes the platform feel connected to real cycling. You’re riding a climb that pros contested in front of millions, in a city symbolic to the sport. That’s a different feeling to grinding out laps in Watopia, and it’s the kind of thing that hooks people.
For the competitive riders amongst us, expect the Paris races to get a lot more interesting overnight. Any course with a repeated punchy climb rewards positioning, timing, and the discipline to not detonate on the first time up.. so get your powerup game sorted.
The bigger picture
Zwift has spent this whole season talking about meeting riders where they are: outdoor integration, planning tools, and recommendations nudging you to actually go ride your bike outside. Dropping a faithful recreation of a current, iconic real-world climb helps to balance the two worlds, and gives Paris some fresh cultural weight rather than just words of encouragement.
Whether Zwift keeps the momentum going and expands Paris further from here and if so, “when” is the open question. For now, though, the capital is finally worth a revisit.
The map is live today. Go find out how your legs feel on cobbles and I’ll see you at the top of the climb, or probably getting dropped on it.
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