Mario Kart Tour is reaching the end of the road. Nintendo has confirmed that the seven-year-old mobile racer will permanently shut down on 30 September, with no plans for an offline version to keep long-time fans happy.
Unlike Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, which returned as an offline release after its online service ended, Mario Kart Tour will disappear entirely once its servers go offline. As a result, players will no longer be able to access the game after the shutdown.
Nintendo has already started winding things down ahead of the closure. Sales of the game’s premium currency have ended. In addition, new subscriptions and auto-renewals for the Gold Pass have also been switched off.
Current Gold Pass subscribers won’t immediately lose access, however. Nintendo says they’ll continue to receive most membership benefits – excluding continuous-subscription rewards – at no additional cost until the game closes. And, from 5 August, those same Gold Pass perks will also become available to every player for free. This gives the remaining community a final chance to enjoy the extra content.
The announcement doesn’t come as a huge surprise. Mario Kart Tour has effectively been in maintenance mode since late 2023, when Nintendo stopped adding new drivers, karts, gliders, courses and gameplay features. While the game remained playable, regular updates had already come to an end nearly two years ago.
Launched in 2019, Mario Kart Tour brought Nintendo’s long-running kart racer to smartphones with touch controls, seasonal events and a gacha-style system for unlocking characters and vehicles. It became one of the company’s biggest mobile releases, but support gradually slowed as Nintendo shifted its focus elsewhere.
That doesn’t necessarily mean Nintendo is stepping away from mobile gaming altogether. The company recently released Pictonico!, a WarioWare-inspired title that uses photos from your camera roll. Meanwhile, Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heroes continue to receive support years after launch.
For Mario Kart Tour players, though, the finish line is now in sight. With no offline replacement planned, September’s shutdown marks the end of one of Nintendo’s longest-running mobile games. Once the servers go dark, there’ll be no way back onto the track.
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