Last year saw some great, dramatic, cinematic game soundtracks: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33‘s, by Lorien Testard, won almost every award going, while Woodkid and Ludvig Forssell’s Death Stranding 2 and Toma Otowa’s Ghost of Yōtei both drew plenty of plaudits. But my favorite soundtrack of 2025 isn’t anything like those, and didn’t get any nominations. It was Mario Kart World.
Mario Kart World‘s soundtrack, led by Atsuko Asahi, follows the same diamond formula established by Mario Kart 8: What if you got some of the sickest session players and best jazz-fusion musicians in Japan to absolutely shred in live, genre-hopping, big-band arrangements of classic, high-energy video game music? You get soundtrack gold, that’s what.
On Tuesday, Nintendo finally released the Mario Kart World soundtrack on Nintendo Music, the music streaming service that’s included in Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscriptions. The release arrives just in time for the first anniversary of the Switch 2 — and therefore of the launch game Mario Kart World — later this week on June 5. It arrives alongside some updates for the Nintendo Music app (which now works with iPads, Siri, Apple CarPlay, and Android Audio), and the very welcome launch of a Nintendo Music web app for those work listening sessions.
In terms of production scale and sheer number of tracks, the Mario Kart World soundtrack is an absolute beast — and Nintendo, as ever, is fully aware of the value of what it’s sitting on. It hasn’t released the whole soundtrack at once; it’s saving some of the Free Roam tracks, many of which frame classic Nintendo tunes in unexpected musical idioms, for later content drops. Nevertheless, we still get four playlists and (not including the extended-playback collection) over two and a half hours of music.
Man, it’s such a treat. Listening to the Top Tracks playlist, what stands out — aside from the flawless musicianship and the sheer size of the sound, backed by orchestra, brass, and hard-charging drumming — is the amazing range of instrumentation and the fluid switching of musical styles. There’s the howling harmonica of the title theme, the unbearably funky vocoder of “Crown City,” the bluegrass banjo and whirling tin whistle of “Whistlestop Summit.” “Starview Peak” melds frantic breakbeat with lilting fiddle, “Choco Mountain” reinterprets “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain” as skate punk, and “Boo Cinema” is a delightful tour through silent movie soundtracks, jugband jazz, and Hammer horror harpsichord.
Throughout it all, you get to listen to these amazing musicians rip incredible riffs, fills, breaks, and solos. The bass playing on “Sky-High Sundae” is faster than I would have thought humanly possible. Members of the Japanese jazz fusion bands Dezolve and T-Sqaure contributed to the score.
I haven’t even got to the best part yet. The first Free Roam playlist, “Free Roam with Super Mario Kart,” collects tunes that reinterpret the classic Soyo Oka chiptunes of the 1992 game in a variety of jazz, funk, and Latin styles. This is where the musicians really let their hair down, solo like crazy, and explore some more chilled moods, like the irresistible, shuffling Bossa Nova version of “Choco Island,” replete with perfect elevator saxophone. The playing is just outstanding. I can’t wait for more Free Roam tracks to drop.
Mario Kart World doesn’t fit our usual understanding of what makes a great video game score, which is often something sweeping and orchestral. For pure listening pleasure, though, it can’t be beat.
I have discovered the best game soundtrack of 2026 so far and it is Super Woden: Rally Edge
Nobody’s going to a symphonic concert of this
