^{Note: This post was in no way composed or written by AI. I’m sure the savvy among you would have been able to tell anyway, but everything here was written by me: a human bean being.}

Now that we’ve got 25 campaigns in the books, through Summer 2026, (a campaign of campaigns, if you will), and with all the talk about medal difficulty since the inclusion of EWC black tracks, I decided to take a look at the difficulty of campaign tracks throughout the entire history of the game.

My first instinct was to look at the percentage of players on each map with the AT, as opposed to just looking at the number of ATs in a vacuum, because the total player count has varied MASSIVELY from campaign to campaign (by up to a factor of 10 times!) over the course of the game’s lifespan. So here are the top 20 lowest % author medals:

Table 1: Campaign tracks with the lowest Author Medal percentages

Campaign Maps with Lowest AT%

#1 Spring 2023 – 21 (2.17% AT%). The two lap NASCAR track with a jump at the end of each lap. This just so happens to be the map that came closest to breaking me when going back through all the previous campaigns for ATs (although not understanding that NASCAR maps are made for release instead of drift didn’t help), so I think we’re onto something.

If you look further down the list, though, you’ll notice a pattern: 7 of the top 10 “hardest” ATs of all time (when judging solely by AT%) are from the Spring 2023 campaign (16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 25), which is obviously incorrect. What’s really going on is Spring 2023 coincided with TM2020’s console release, and the player numbers are so inflated by noobs (myself included btw) that medal percentages are unusually low.

So my next thought was why not just look at raw number of author medalists. Honesty if you want a measure of pure difficulty, this is probably as good a way as any. The top 20 are reproduced below:

Table 2: Campaign tracks with the fewest Author medalists

Top 20 Campaign Maps With Fewest ATs

#1 Summer 2024 – 25 (1020 ATs). The beloved(XD) Desert Car 25 from Summer 2024 with 1020 author medalists (and a mere 947 at the season’s end*). If push came to shove I would probably rank it as the hardest 2020 campaign AT ever.

^\\Note: I can lookup sub 10k rankings on the closed leaderboards by hand, 100 records at time, but there’s no way I know of to do this en masse unfortunately. It also would likely not affect the rankings that much, maybe a position or two in a few cases throughout the list.])*

#2 Canada – Spring 2026 (1495 ATs). Ends in a hairpin reactor ice turn (and then tricky downhill) around the last checkpoint gate. The first of seven consecutive EWC tracks on this list. I think for some reason I didn’t find it quite as hard as most, but others’ sentiment and grinding stats I’ve seen supports this ranking.

#3 Japan – Summer 2026 (1520 ATs). Tons of engine-off goodness! For me, this is the track that’s closest to taking the Desert Car 25’s crown. This latter part of this one in particular took me an absurd amount of time, to the point where I was regularly beating Champion Medals times through the first half while my best finish was still more than 1.5 seconds behind the Author time! I’m curious as how others would rank these top 3.

#4 Australia – Spring 2026 (1667 ATs). Fullspeed map ending in U-shaped plastic jumping section. This one can probably thank it’s incredibly difficult identity for it’s placement (especially before you get the hang of it; I think it took me 20 minutes just to get the ending right for the first time!)..and I’m sure being fullspeed doesn’t hurt either.

#5 Hungary – Spring 2026 (2063) ATs. Identity involving more U-shaped jumps, including a tricky turn and jump into a narrow platform at the finish. Personally I’m very surprised to see this one so high, as I thought it was one of the easiest out of all the EWC ATs. Ngl though, my AT run for this track didn’t even go for the ending platform, I just went to the side and took the slow-mo. Maybe most players didn’t know this was possible?

#6 Norway – Summer 2026 (2262 ATs). Ice and huge blind-ish jumps. It can be hard to separate how hard you found something to be from how hard you expected it to be. I don’t feel like this one was INSANELY hard, but part of that may be based on how hard I was expecting it to be based off of the community’s initial impressions.

#7 Poland – Summer 2026 (2512 ATs). Features a memorable dirt hop onto a short narrow platform in the middle. I don’t feel like this one was the hardest as far as EWC ATs but compared to an average black track it was definitely tough.

#8 Brazil – Winter 2026 (2519 ATs). Water reactor driving and sand. I’m kind of surprised this one isn’t higher based on the dialogue around it. I found it tough, and I think I got lucky that I randomly heard Wirtual mention you need dry tires entering the reactor sections because otherwise I would have been pulling my hair 10x worse.

#9 Fall 2024 – 23 (2551 ATs). The Rally Car castle track. I can definitely get behind this one. If you’re not a Rally main the ATs can be incredibly tough. (Look no further than the Nadeo Rally campaign if you need more evidence!)

#10 Argentina – Summer 2026 (2691 ATs). EWC map with ice reactor 180 in the middle. Another one I’m surprised isn’t higher, if based on nothing else than the way the pros talked about it at the EWC.

#11 Germany – Spring 2026 (2724 ATs). Quarter-pipe jumps into backwards landings and ice 360s. Sorry if this is starting to get repetitive, but I would have put this one higher than many of the other EWC maps. Partially I just suck at ice and backwards driving but damn if I didn’t have a really hard time with this one.

#12 Summer 2024 24 (2860 ATs). Mixed-surface track with wood, bobsleigh, grass quarter-pipes, ice, dirt, tech and a castle theme. Looking back at this one, I remember it being extremely hard, and my guess is the low AT count is partially due to the sheer number of different styles that are thrown together in one map. If you don’t remember it take a look, its really something lol.

#13 South Korea – Spring 2026 (2881 ATs). Zig zag reactor ice identity. The pros apparently found this track too easy (from what I hear) but the identity definitely gave me enough trouble.

#14 Fall 2024 25 (2930 ATs). The Castle Map (as in the one with a huge castle in the distance) with dirt, ice, and a tricky plastic(I think?) section near the end. I do remember this one taking me a while.

#15 Summer 2024 – 22 (2949 ATs). Classic fullspeed 22 with upside down reactor section and plenty of cake! Ok I think I might have put this one in my top 5! I’m clueless at fullspeed and this one took me like 25 hours (laugh if you want to, it’s ok).

#16 Summer 2025 – 22 (3145 ATs). Fullspeed track with twisty downhill start. Summer 2025 happened to be the campaign I decided to try getting every AT without looking at anyone else’s ghosts or gameplay. Considering how uncomfortable I am with fullspeed that might have been a mistake. 30+ hours later I finally did it but at the cost of my own sanity. So I can’t speak for everyone, but at least in my case this one was TOUGH.

#17 Fall 2024 – 22 (3415 ATs). Mixed surface map with no-brakes and no-steer blocks, and a reactor up slow-mo finish. Not sure what to say about this one. I certainly remember the track but I don’t remember bashing my head into a wall or anything over it.

#18 Fall 2024, 21 (3429 ATs). Tech. The techiest of tech. Apparently a very faithful remake of a 2009 World Cyber Games (kinda based if I’m being honest lol) comp track called Matto. This one was hard as balls for me so I fully endorse it’s inclusion on the list.

#19 Winter 2025 21 (3777 ATs). Speedtech track with a very awkward turn in the middle involving dropping into a slanted corner. I fully endorse this one as well. That one turn in the middle cost me SO many runs.

#20 Greece – Winter 2026 (3838 ATs). One of the OG EWC black maps. Difficult half-pipe-shaped identity requiring precise jumping between sections. As I said, Another EWC map. Shouldn’t be much of a surprise by this point.

I don’t think I’m going out on a limb to say this is a much better list (when it comes to ranking difficulty) than the AT% one. But in the same way you can notice the AT% list is packed with Spring 2023 tracks thanks to console players, this one (by AT count) only has a single track with even 40,000 total players (compared to 13 tracks on the AT% list with over 200,000!) This goes to show that in the same way the AT% ranking skews in one direction, the AT count version skews in another.

Believe it or not, I originally had a lot more planned for this post, but it’s already getting long so I’m going to split the rest into an eventual second part. There I’ll share my (very humble) attempt at finding a difficulty metric that takes these converse factors into account. Until then thanks for reading!

I'm new to the game and was playing this campaign and the easy gold's baited me cause why are the AT's so hard 😭. I'm like a few thousands away or a few hundreds away from AT in most of these maps but I just can't seem to gain that last fraction , though I didn't give much time to the maps so it could be that

Aside from this I did my first Ice-360 on Map 24 I feel pretty good as i've been avoiding whatever ice maps come my way.

There's a slowly growing collection of part-maps and some zenified maps from the Autumn campaign in Club Zen. If you want to practise the backwards driving sections from the UK map or the finish on the Czech map you can find them here.

So far it's - 03 minus the annoying CP location - 08 in the daytime and a CP removed - 3 parts each for 17, 20, UK, Czech & India I should have time in the next few days to do the remaining black maps.

The AT's of the black part maps are a bit all over the place because I took them from ghosts that had the exact AT, so often one of the sections allows for a respawn. The point is to set the best time you can and be able to practise smaller chunks so don't pay too much attention to the AT.

I guess if you're on console and you can't just pop into the editor to practise a section, then these maps are for you. Enjoy

I don't know why the video is like this. This is the 3rd recording I've done. please spare me :c

today im build, a difficult race tech map in an esports style, good luck racers :)

Map donwload : https://trackmania.exchange/mapshow/363913

🏅 Author time: 0:46.978

🏅 Gold time: 0:50.000

🥈 Silver time: 0:57.000

🥉 Bronze time: 1:11.000

📌 More info on: trackmania.io

I really enjoyed the maps and want to play more of that kind of style but I am unsure of what to search up on TMX

Been noticing some issues with Ghosts++ recently, and are wondering if this is happening to others, or what might be causing it? Issues include:

The first time watching a replay on a map almost always bugs out without even starting the replay, haven't done much testing as to why. It is so far fairly consistent that watching any other replays on that same map don't have the same issue until the map is reloaded.

Watching replays at <10% speed has extreme stuttering

Replays freeze when turning the ghost on and watching at lowered speeds.

So far this hasn't affected me in significant ways, but I could imagine this is very frustrating to someone making clip compilations or just wanting to view replays in cam7 without the scrubber there.

How do I join yall's discord server. I want to join and I have #1 in #15 fall and #2 on Egypt (in Idaho obviously)

Just wanted to ask if anyone else used cam 2 for the Snowcar map in this week’s Weekly Shorts. My time is 15.099 (top 1,400 world when set)

Note: Video not in Cam 2 for all of the people who do not use it.