Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – DLC Courses, Characters, and Datamines

Nearly five years after release, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is suddenly getting a massive drop of DLC with an additional 48 courses. This doubles the current race track total to a whopping 96 courses! Absolutely wild.

The Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass, as it’s officially called, will feature a total of 48 tracks that will release in six different waves through the end of 2023. The first wave contains two cups for a total of eight courses and drops on March 18, 2022. All courses will be remastered tracks from throughout the series, including the most recent Mario Kart Tour. As of Wave 4, new playable characters are also included.

To help sort through the massive catalog of courses from throughout the Mario Kart series, this page will not only showcase every track confirmed for the Mario Kart 8 DLC, but it’ll also go over courses likely to appear based off the very obvious connection to Mario Kart Tour. We’ll also list out the remaining courses to help you get a sense of what can still be added! Use the links below to jump to each section of our page:

• • Confirmed Characters
  • Likely Characters
  • Confirmed Courses
  • Likely Courses
  • Music Datamine
  • Banner Datamine
  • Console Prefix Datamine
  • Datamined Courses From Tour
  • Remaining Courses
  • Courses Already in Mario Kart 8

Latest updates:
Update: Wave 6 tracks announced! Updated Confirmed Courses and Likely Courses sections. Currently deciding what to do with the rest of the page!
Update (9/14): Diddy Kong, Funky Kong, Pauline, Peachette, and Daisy Circuit (Wii) announced for Wave 6!

Confirmed Characters

New playable characters are a thing! As of the most recent Nintendo Direct, a total of eight new playable characters have been announced.

Image	Character	Notes
	Birdo	Part of Wave 4 release. Variations include: Standard (Pink) Blue Light Blue Red Orange Yellow Green White Black
	Petey Piranha	Part of Wave 5 release.
	Wiggler	Part of Wave 5 release.
	Kamek	Part of Wave 5 release.
	Diddy Kong	Part of upcoming Wave 6 release.
	Funky Kong	Part of upcoming Wave 6 release.
	Pauline	Part of upcoming Wave 6 release.
	Peachette	Part of upcoming Wave 6 release.

Likely Characters

So. How many characters are getting in? Thanks to the release of Wave 4, the speculation can finally end. Well, mostly. The addition of Birdo as a playable character extended the character select with an additional column. Five more characters are coming to make a total of six new characters in the Booster Course Pack. Is it possible we’ll get even more characters? Nintendo hasn’t said they wouldn’t, but realistically we’re looking at six total.

Update 2: With the reveal of the final courses of Wave 6, we also got a glimpse as the character select screen. Looks like the two Inklings have been merged into one slot, same with the two Villager characters.

Also, Mii costumes are coming! 17 in total. A jukebox allowing you to listen to a course’s theme is also being added.

Update: The latest Nintendo Direct revealed four new characters despite only two slots remaining on the character select screen. How can this be? Well, a theory from earlier this year may explain it! When Wave 2 was released, a bug was introduced where several characters were no longer considered rival characters. These included Metal Mario, Tanooki Mario, Pink Gold Peach, and Cat Peach. Although the bug was reverted in Wave 3, some thought this was an intentional change. The theory goes that these four characters will get stacked with their respective original characters (Mario and Peach) and become variations in the same way Link and the Inkling characters function.

If this happens and Peachette gets thrown into the Peach group, this will free up four spots on the current character select screen. If true, that would mean we are actually getting seven characters in Wave 6 and three of those characters have yet to be revealed. That is, if Peachette is considered a Peach alt. It’s just speculation, but something has to change with the character select to make it make sense. Thanks to Eza for heads up! Here’s a quick mockup of what this might look like:

It’s very clear that the Booster Pack is an assortment of content pulled from Tour and made to work in Deluxe. Because of that, we’re going to assume the remaining characters will also be pulled primarily from Tour’s roster. That said, the addition of Wiggler tells us characters from previous games also have a chance, but it can also mean they just haven’t been released in Tour yet. Here’s a look at all the characters previously playable in the Mario Kart series:

Quite a few left. Now let’s get a few lists going. Characters that were playable before Deluxe and are also in Tour:

• Donkey Kong Jr.

For Tour characters, we are not counting any outfit variations or costumes. Captain Toad is unique enough to get a consideration, but that’s pushing it. Brand new playable characters only in Tour:

• Dixie Kong
• Chargin’ Chuck
• Hammer Bro.
• Captain Toad
• King Bob-omb
• Monty Mole
• Nabbit
• Poochy

Characters that were playable before Deluxe but have not yet appeared in Tour:

• Paratroopa
• R.O.B.
• Honey Queen

Birdo is got added alongside the Yoshi’s Island track. Poochy already appears in the Yoshi’s Island track so his inclusion is unlikely, especially because Poochy does not appear in the Tour version of Yoshi’s Island.

An interesting shake-up for the final wave. Just a few more months to see how it all plays out!

Confirmed Courses

Only eight tracks remain before all 48 courses are revealed. Use the links to jump to each cup!

Golden Dash Cup

Wave 1, released March 18, 2022.

Paris Promenade (Tour)	Toad Circuit (3DS)
Choco Mountain (N64)	Coconut Mall (Wii)

Lucky Cat Cup

Wave 1, released March 18, 2022.

Tokyo Blur (Tour)	Shroom Ridge (DS)
Sky Garden (GBA)	Ninja Hideaway (Tour)

Turnip Cup

Wave 2, released August 4, 2022.

New York Minute (Tour)	Mario Circuit 3 (SNES)
Kalimari Desert (N64)	Waluigi Pinball (DS)

Propeller Cup

Wave 2, released August 4, 2022.

Sydney Sprint (Tour)	Snow Land (GBA)
Mushroom Gorge (Wii)	Sky-High Sundae (Tour)

Rock Cup

Wave 3, released December 7, 2022.

London Loop (Tour)	Boo Lake (GBA)
Rock Rock Mountain (3DS)	Maple Treeway (Wii)

Moon Cup

Wave 3, released December 7, 2022.

Berlin Byways (Tour)	Peach Gardens (DS)
Merry Mountain (Tour)	Rainbow Road (3DS)

Berry Cup

Wave 4, released March 9, 2023.

Amsterdam Drift (Tour)	Riverside Park (GBA)
DK Summit (Wii)	Yoshi’s Island (Tour)

Boomerang Cup

Wave 4, released March 9, 2023.

Bangkok Rush (Tour)	Mario Circuit (DS)
Waluigi Stadium (GCN)	Singapore Speedway (Tour)

Feather Cup

Wave 5, released July 12, 2023.

Athens Dash (Tour)	Daisy Cruiser (GCN)
Moonview Highway (Wii)	Squeaky Clean Sprint (Tour)

Cherry Cup

Wave 5, released July 12, 2023.

Los Angeles Laps (Tour)	Sunset Wilds (GBA)
Koopa Cape (Wii)	Vancouver Velocity (Tour)

Acorn Cup

Wave 6, releases on November 9, 2023.

Rome Avanti (Tour)	DK Mountain (GCN)
Daisy Circuit (Wii)	Piranha Plant Cove (Tour)

Spiny Cup

Wave 6, release date not yet announced.

Madrid Drive (Tour)	Rosalina’s Ice World (3DS)
Bowser Castle 3 (SNES)	Rainbow Road (Wii)

Likely Courses

Have you noticed anything strange about the Mario Kart 8 DLC tracks? They’re a bit different from the original 48 courses in Deluxe. The art style and attention to detail is… off. In fact, it shares a lot of similarities to the style currently used in Mario Kart Tour. While nothing has been confirmed, it is not a stretch at all to suggest that the DLC courses we’re getting are actually ports from the mobile game. In Wave 1, six of the eight courses look nearly identical to their Tour counterparts.

With that in mind, it’s likely that most, if not all, Mario Kart 8 DLC courses will come straight from Mario Kart Tour. If a track appears in the mobile game, we’re going to assume it has a high chance of appearing in the Booster Course Pack. Below you’ll find a list of all tracks currently in Mario Kart Tour that have not been announced as Mario Kart 8 DLC or don’t currently exist in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

A few notes. Mario Kart Tour features several RMX courses that take some of the more basic tracks and revamp them with new paths and objects. We don’t count those as official tracks and won’t list them here. Many of the SNES tracks as well as a few GBA courses have multiple iterations. We will list all the variations included in Tour but within the same space.

And now for the brand new tracks introduced in Tour. Each of the city based courses feature multiple variations that dramatically alter the course by using routes through different parts of the city. The Mario Kart 8 Deluxe versions combine these variations and some tracks even feature different routes based on the current lap. From the looks of the first and second wave, every starting course in each cup will feature a city based track from Tour.

Mario Kart Tour Courses (Mobile)

Piranha Plant Pipeline

Super Mario Kart Courses (SNES)

Ghost Valley 1 / 2	Choco Island 1 / 2
Vanilla Lake 1 / 2	Koopa Troopa Beach 2

Mario Kart 64 (N64)

Based on the console prefix datamine, no additional N64 tracks will be added to the Booster Course Pass. It’s not official, but it’s likely true!

Luigi Raceway	Koopa Troopa Beach
Frappe Snowland	Mario Raceway

Mario Kart: Super Circuit (GBA)

Based on the console prefix datamine, no additional GBA tracks will be added to the Booster Course Pass. It’s not official, but it’s likely true!

Bowser’s Castle 1 / 2 / 3 / 4	Cheep-Cheep Island
Yoshi Desert	Peach Circuit
Luigi Circuit	Lakeside Park

Mario Kart: Double Dash!! (GCN)

Dino Dino Jungle	Mushroom Bridge

Mario Kart DS (DS)

Based on the console prefix datamine, no additional DS tracks will be added to the Booster Course Pass. It’s not official, but it’s likely true!

Luigi’s Mansion	DK Pass
Airship Fortress

Mario Kart Wii (Wii)

Based on the console prefix datamine, no additional Wii tracks will be added to the Booster Course Pass. It’s not official, but it’s likely true!

Dry Dry Ruins

Mario Kart 7 (3DS)

Based on the console prefix datamine, no additional 3DS tracks will be added to the Booster Course Pass. It’s not official, but it’s likely true!

Daisy Hills	Cheep Cheep Lagoon
Shy Guy Bazaar	Mario Circuit
Wario Shipyard	Bowser’s Castle

Music Datamine

Another update, another datamine. The release of Wave 2 upgraded Mario Kart 8 Deluxe to version 2.1.0 and 15 leftover music files for future tracks were datamined within hours. Although each file is a mere second in length, it’s enough for fans to quickly pinpoint the course associated with each file. See this video to hear them all. The files include:

• Cnsw_31 (Tour London Loop)
• Cnsw_32 (DS Peach Gardens)
• Cnsw_33 (GBA Boo Lake)
• Cnsw_34 (3DS Rock Rock Mountain)
• Cnsw_35 (Tour Berlin Byways)
• Cnsw_36 (GCN Waluigi Stadium or GCN Wario Colosseum)
• Cnsw_37 (Merry Mountain)
• Cnsw_38 (3DS Rainbow Road)
• Cnsw_41 (Tour Amsterdam Drift)
• Cnsw_45 (Tour Singapore Speedway)
• Cnsw_48 (Tour Los Angeles Laps)
• Cnsw_53 (GBA Sunset Wilds)
• Cnsw_55 (Tour Bangkok Rush)
• Cnsw_61 (Tour Vancouver Velocity)
• Cnsw_62 (Wii Maple Treeway)

Take note, two retro courses share themes with more than one course, so we’re not completely sure which course will actually make it in. That said, GCN Waluigi Stadium was spotted in the banner datamine from Wave 1 and Boo Lake is already coming to Tour.

The filenames of each of these music tracks also help indicate their placement of each course in the Booster Pack. Lines up pretty well with the prefix datamine discovered during Wave 1. Update: As of Wave 5, all tracks from the datamine have been confirmed!

Banner Datamine

Not a day was spared after the release of the first wave of Mario Kart 8 DLC before dedicated fans quickly discovered an unused banner image within the update files. This particular banner retains the same design and look as the artwork released with the initial announcement but the small pictures of the numerous tracks are different, including some that feature currently unrevealed courses.

Sadly, these tiny images are quite compressed and it’s hard to get a definitive look at any of them. Some are a bit more clear than others and we’ll list them here. Please take note! It’s unclear what the intention behind this banner is or when it was created during development. There’s a possibility that some tracks were not completely and ultimately scrapped! It’s also worth noting that some of the track images feature their trick variants from Tour (like Choco Mountain) and it’s very unlikely these will appear in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

So! Here are the retro tracks and their corresponding blurry images that most fans generally agree match. We are not including Tour tracks because there is a very good chance all of them are returning based on the first wave! We’ve also removed tracks that have since been confirmed for the Booster Course Pass.

Update: As of Wave 5, all tracks spotted from the banner datamine have been confirmed. For historical purposes, here are all the datamined tracks and their blurry images:

Mario Circuit 1 (SNES)	Sunset Wilds (GBA)
Waluigi Stadium (GCN)	Waluigi Pinball (DS)
DK Summit (Wii)	Koopa Cape (Wii)
Maple Treeway (Wii)	Rainbow Road (3DS)
Sky-High Sundae (Tour)

Plenty of fans are speculating and trying to figure out each course in the banner. You can find a few interesting suggestions here, here, here, and here.

Console Prefix Datamine

You know the console prefixes at the start of each retro course’s title? Well, looks like those prefixes exist for the remaining tracks in the Booster Pass. Of course, all of this is subject to change and they could even be temporary right from the start, but it’s worth mentioning. It’s unclear what it means when a track doesn’t have a prefix, but it’s worth noting the Tour course Ninja Hideaway didn’t have a prefix either.

Update: As of Wave 3, the prefixes are no longer completely accurate and have likely been adjusted. That said, the Wave 2 prefixes for the Turnip Cup and Propeller Cup ended up just as predicted. Of course things can change during development, but it’s likely this is the general breakdown for the rest of the Booster Pass!

Update 2: With the announcement of the Wave 5 tracks, we now have an idea of what to expect for Wave 6. If all of the prefixes remain consistent in terms of general inclusion, we can expect five Tour tracks, two GCN tracks, and one SNES track. Both Wii tracks meant to appear in Wave 6 based on the datamine have been used in other waves, and an SNES track and a GCN track were left unused from previous waves.

Update 3: With Daisy Circuit (Wii) announced for Wave 6, this theory is no longer as accurate as it once was. It’s likely it’s still similar, but no longer exact!

Datamined Courses From Tour

In the past two years since Mario Kart Tour’s release, passionate fans at the Mario Kart Tour Community Discord have dissected the inner workings of the mobile game to catch glimpses of unreleased and upcoming content. Unused object names, many of which have sat in the game’s filesystem for over a year, tend to help identify which courses are likely to make their way over. Some object names very obviously reveal which course they belong to while others may require a bit of guesswork. For more info about the object names, please check out the very detailed Discord!

Because we are very much convinced that a majority of the Mario Kart Tour tracks will find their way into the Booster Course Pack, here are the courses identified in the regularly updated datamine that we think will also likely appear in the Mario Kart 8 DLC. Just like before, we are not including variations of existing courses from the SNES and GBA games.

• Wuhu Loop (3DS)
• Maka Wuhu (3DS)
• Possibly two unannounced Nitro courses (Tour)

Remaining Courses

So! Having gone through all those tracks, it seems the Mario Kart series still has plenty to offer when it comes to available courses. There are already over 50 tracks listed above so it’s unlikely we’ll see these get added, but you never know! Courses will be listed by game and once again, we’re not including additional track variations from the GBA games.

Mario Kart 64

• Moo Moo Farm
• Sherbet Land
• Wario Stadium
• Bowser’s Castle
• D.K.’s Jungle Parkway
• Banshee Boardwalk

Mario Kart: Super Circuit

• Shy Guy Beach
• Broken Pier
• Rainbow Road

Mario Kart: Double Dash!!

• Luigi Circuit
• Peach Beach
• Mario Circuit
• Wario Colosseum
• Bowser’s Castle
• Rainbow Road

Mario Kart DS

• Figure-8 Circuit
• Yoshi Falls
• Desert Hills
• Delfino Square
• Bowser Castle
• Rainbow Road

Mario Kart Wii

• Luigi Circuit
• Toad’s Factory
• Mario Circuit
• Bowser’s Castle

Mario Kart 7

• All courses accounted for!

Courses Already in Mario Kart 8

Before we wrap up, let’s get a quick list of all the tracks currently present in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. For reference!