What we're hearing about Formula One's 2026 calendar

New York Times

2 days ago

Formula One may only be one-third of the way through its current season, but 2026 is already firmly in mind for many people in the championship.
Next year marks the start of a new F1 car-design era, and with engine rules being overhauled too, the teams are scrambling to finalize their plans. Plus, several seats for 2026 are unconfirmed – the driver transfer market's 'silly season' is only rumbling along quietly right now.
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But one major detail for next year that has been falling into place over recent weeks is the F1 race schedule, which is again set to feature 24 grands prix and run from March to December.
The exact details of the schedule are still to be locked in as it hinges on final approval from the FIA's World Motor Sport Council, so teams are yet to receive a definitive run for how next year will look. But The Athletic, speaking to sources on condition of anonymity, has managed to glean many details about the 2026 calendar ahead of it all being formally announced in the near future.
One of the least surprising, yet most welcome, details of Formula One's 2026 calendar is that the Australian Grand Prix is poised to be the opening round once again.
The season has also started in Bahrain in recent years, while Saudi Arabia has also shown interest in hosting the first race. But F1 kicked off the current season in Australia for the first time since 2019 due to the timing of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. This meant the stops in Bahrain and Saudi were shifted to April.
Melbourne was the regular host of the year's opening grand prix between 1996 and 2019 – only twice losing that slot, to Bahrain in 2006 and 2010 – and was a popular first-race venue within the paddock.
Despite it having an earlier start and finish next year, Ramadan is expected to begin on February 17 or February 18. This has left Australia in line to host the season's opening race again rather than one of F1's venues in the Middle East, with sources indicating this is indeed on the cards.
When a new contract was agreed for the Australian Grand Prix to remain on F1's calendar through to 2037, part of the agreement guaranteed the race to be round one on five occasions over that stretch. This would make 2026 the second of those five.
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Australia having round one points to next year's calendar starting in a similar fashion to the current one, where F1 got three of its furthest flyaway events — Australia, China and Japan — out of the way in the opening three races before then heading to the Middle East well past the end of Ramadan.
The slightly later running of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia this year did not prove problematic despite those races taking place in hotter conditions as a result, unlike the timing of the Qatar Grand Prix in October 2023. Ramadan's earlier timing in 2027 indicates a return to the Middle East to start that season.
The biggest change for the 2026 F1 calendar is the swap in position of the Monaco and Canada races. This is the latest logistics move to help freight and paddock travel more efficiently by grouping events together geographically.
Montreal was previously eager to keep its traditional mid-June date, chiefly due to weather concerns related to running in May. But F1 finally brokered a deal for the race to move last November, saying in the announcement the Canadian Grand Prix is 'set to be scheduled on the third or fourth weekend of May' each year. Monaco also agreed to move later, to early June.
This allows the European leg of the season to now run uninterrupted. In recent years, F1 has gone from Miami to Europe, then back to Canada for a standalone race, and then gone back across the Atlantic for the rest of the European mid-season run. Now, the first two North American races can come as a pair.
The slate of races between Miami and the start of the summer break will have slightly more breathing room than in 2026, with Imola dropping off the schedule. Its replacement — we'll get to that shortly — will take a later slot in the schedule.
But the risk that F1 now runs by moving Canada is setting up a direct clash with the Indianapolis 500. When F1 announced Monaco's date-change plan, it stated 'the event will be contested on the first full weekend in June each year'. So in 2026, that means June 6-7.
Running Montreal just a week before Monaco is naturally a no-go, given the travel from Europe involved for all that kit and all those people. And presuming the Montreal organizers are eager to go later in May to try to minimize poor-weather and low-temperature concerns, that would make May 23-24 — the start of Memorial Day weekend in the U.S. — a potential slot for their race. Except that's when the Indy 500 is set to take place.
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And if both races stick to their regular start times, they would be running directly against each other. The Indy 500 traditionally goes green at 12:45 p.m. CT (1:45 p.m. ET); F1's Canadian GP usually starts at 2 p.m. ET.
F1's decision to move Monaco was always about calendar rationalization, not keeping the Indy 500 in mind. It would therefore be no surprise to see a clash, as frustrating as that may be for some auto-racing fans already mourning the end of 'Motorsports Christmas.'
The only new race on the calendar for 2026 will be in Madrid, which becomes the home of the Spanish Grand Prix as part of a new long-term deal. As Barcelona still has a contract to host an F1 event next year, Spain will get two of them. That creates a need to space them out on the calendar.
Madrid is understood to be taking up a slot in the final run of European races, after the summer break. It will follow the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort — the last of those before the event drops off the calendar for 2027 — and the Italian Grand Prix at Monza.
Plans for the new circuit in Spain's capital, called the Madring, are progressing. It is set to stage its first show-run with an F1 car this week when Spaniard Carlos Sainz drives a Williams on part of the track at the IFEMA convention centre complex.
Post-Madrid, the 2026 calendar is expected to remain largely unchanged from this year – including two visits to the United States, with Austin in October and Las Vegas again at November's end. Vegas is yet to have a new contract announced beyond 2025, but officials have expressed confidence in agreeing a renewal soon. F1 also promotes this event itself.
The all-new F1 cars for 2026 are such a huge diversion from the recent regulations that teams, unsurprisingly, are going to need more time on track in preseason.
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The FIA confirmed last July that there will be nine days of preseason testing, up from just three days in each of the past three years, split across three different tests. It's very normal for testing to be upped for the start of a new regulation cycle, allowing teams a chance to bed-in their new cars and understand how they are really working.
As a result, testing needs to come forward to the end of January from the usual late-February or early March slot, and will start at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in Spain. Barcelona hasn't hosted a preseason test since 2022, which was the start of the current car-design-rules cycle.
But the first test of 2026 won't actually be a formal one, but a 'shakedown' event for the teams to try out their cars behind closed doors (as happened three years ago). This is scheduled to be a five-day shakedown in Barcelona, but teams will only be able to test on three of those days, thus fulfilling the FIA's plan of three three-day 'tests'. The details of how teams will be able to choose their days, and if there will be any flexibility should running be impacted by weather or other outside factors, are still to be nailed down.
The second and third tests are then expected to take place in Bahrain in early February. According to the sporting regulations for 2026, two tests of three days can take place between February 7 and seven days before the season's first race, meaning there is time to squeeze in both of these tests in Bahrain ahead of Ramadan.
The early start to testing is also set to bring forward the teams unveiling their new cars into January, less than two months after closing the 2025 season in Abu Dhabi on December 7.
This will make for an unusually short off-season for teams ahead of the sport's largest car-design regulation change in a generation.