New course

A new course  is a course in the Mario Kart series that is new to the series and has never appeared before. New courses appear in the Mushroom Cup, Flower Cup, Star Cup, and Special Cup (and in Mario Kart: Super Circuit, Lightning Cup), with each cup containing four new courses (five in Super Mario Kart). They often take the name of the game they were derived from: in Mario Kart: Super Circuit, the original tracks are called Super Circuit Tracks to distinguish them from the tracks originating from Super Mario Kart, called Extra Tracks. In Mario Kart DS, the new courses are known as Nitro Courses from the project codename for the Nintendo DS, Project Nitro. In Mario Kart Wii the new courses are known as Wii courses. Most of them have reappeared in later Mario Kart games as classic courses. Starting with the DLC cups in Mario Kart 8, new courses can appear in the same cup as classic courses.

In all the console games, at least one Mario Circuit, Bowser's Castle, Rainbow Road, a beach- or water-themed course, and a snow-themed course have appeared as a new course. While Mario Kart Tour does have all of these except a beach- or water-themed course, they have only been in the form of remix courses thus far.

Mario Kart Tour
A subset of Mario Kart Tours new courses are referred to as city courses' and are specifically set in real life cities. These courses typically appear in tours themed after their pertinent city, such as London Loop in the London Tour. There are up to four different layouts of city courses, with the fourth layout typically being a 1-lap circuit that incorporates most of the routes of the three previous layouts.

Since the content of each cup changes periodically in Mario Kart Tour, courses below are simply listed in the order in which they were introduced to the game.

Mario Kart 8
Unlike other games in the series, Mario Kart 8 has no courses unique to Battle Mode. Instead, eight of the game's original 32 race courses (two new, six classic) are modified and used as battle courses.

Platform codes
Since Mario Kart 7, every course in the console Mario Kart games and in Mario Kart Tour features a specific platform code prepended to its internal name, indicating the platform on which the game each course debuted in was released. These are similar to, but distinct from, the prefixes used by classic courses to indicate their origin.

Trivia

 * The four worlds after World Bowser in Super Mario 3D World resemble the new cups (World Mushroom for Mushroom Cup, World Flower for Flower Cup, World Star for Star Cup, and World Crown for Special Cup).