Mario Kart World: How to unlock every character

With 24 racers in every race, Mario Kart World needs a sizable roster of characters, which is why it has pulled in many of the random enemies from Mario’s history as drivers, but you don’t get them all straight away. While a decent chunk of the roster is available as soon as you boot up the game, several major characters and many enemy racers have to be unlocked by playing the game.

We’ll go through the whole roster of playable characters and explain how you unlock all of them. This game has more secrets to find, though. Check out how to unlock Rainbow Road and how to unlock Mirror Mode to learn more about what there is to find.

How to unlock every character in MKW

Here is a full list of every locked character and how to get them

How completing cups works

You might think that for a cup to count as “complete” you’ll have to win it, but that’s not the case. In fact, a Grand Prix Cup counts as complete even if you finish 24th at 50cc. It does not matter what mode you play on or where you place in the overall standings, as long as you’ve played it from start to finish, then it counts as complete, and you’ll unlock the associated character.

How the Kamek Item works

The many “NPC racers” as the game calls them, can only be unlocked by being transformed into them when hit with the Kamek item that you can occasionally get during races. However, as getting hit with the item is dependent on other racers, it’s hard to guarantee you’ll get hit with it.

The item works by hitting all the players in front of the player who triggered it, so being high in the rankings is a good way to do it. Also, some tracks have better odds of giving you specific transformations, so if you’re looking for a specific character, use our handy list below to see which character is associated with which track: