WRC 2026

On 21 January 1911, twenty-three cars set off from eleven different European cities towards a single destination: Monte Carlo. Henri Rougier won in a twenty-five horsepower Turcat-Méry. The rally that opens the year today is sixty-two years older than the championship it belongs to — the World Championship did not begin until 1973, and it began, of course, in Monte Carlo on 19 January.

The era everyone remembers lasted four years and ended badly. Group B, in force from 1982, allowed four-wheel-drive cars with almost no limits and put them on roads with barely any protection. It finished in 1986: Henri Toivonen and his co-driver Sergio Cresto died going over a cliff on the Tour de Corse, and in Portugal a Ford RS200 left the road and killed three spectators. The FISA froze development of those cars and banned them for 1987.

Then came the dominance. Sébastien Loeb strung together nine titles between 2004 and 2012, an absurdity in a sport where the previous consecutive record was Tommi Mäkinen's four. Nobody had matched him until last November.

Sébastien Ogier finished 2025 on 293 points and Elfyn Evans on 289. Four points after fourteen rallies across four continents, settled at the last event of the year in Saudi Arabia, where third place was enough for Ogier. He took six wins over the season and his co-driver, Vincent Landais, won his first title. Kalle Rovanperä was third on 256.

Among the manufacturers there was no contest: Toyota retained its title 224 points clear of Hyundai.

That season also rewrote the rulebook on three fronts at once. The hybrid system Rally1 cars had carried since 2022 disappeared — repairing it cost too much — Hankook replaced Pirelli as sole tyre supplier, and a new points structure arrived, with 25 for the winner on a scale down to tenth, plus the Sunday and Power Stage extras. The calendar grew to fourteen rallies with two debutants, the Canaries and Saudi Arabia, and the return of Estonia.

The winter has taken two champions. Kalle Rovanperä, twice world champion and third last year, leaves rallying to try single-seaters. Ott Tänak, champion in 2019, takes an indefinite break. In a championship of three teams, losing two names like that at once rearranges the entire grid.

Toyota answers by stretching: Elfyn Evans and Oliver Solberg full-time — a first full season for the Swede — Sami Pajari in the second team, and Sébastien Ogier splitting his year across ten rallies. Hyundai fields Thierry Neuville and Adrien Fourmaux as regulars, with Esapekka Lappi and Dani Sordo sharing events and Hayden Paddon back at the top level for the first time since Rally Australia in 2018. M-Sport Ford bets on two young drivers, Josh McErlean and Jon Armstrong, the latter promoted from the European championship, with Mārtiņš Sesks in part of the calendar.

And two rule tweaks that look minor and are not: itineraries must now include a minimum of ten rest hours, and an engine may be changed after a rally has started in exchange for a sixty-minute penalty.

Fourteen rallies and four continents, from 22 January in Monte Carlo to the November close in Saudi Arabia. No other motorsport championship changes the ground under its wheels this much: packed snow in Sweden, red earth and giraffes on the Safari in Kenya, broken tarmac in Croatia, very fast gravel in Estonia and Finland, sand in the Saudi desert.

Three or four tend to decide it. Monte Carlo, because ice appears and vanishes every two kilometres and the tyre choice made the night before matters more than the driving. The Safari, because it is not about going fast but about arriving. Finland, the quickest of the year, where the jumps demand trusting a pace note written on Tuesday. And the last one, in November, which in 2025 handed over the title by four points.

The 2026 calendar arrives with adjustments. Croatia returns after a year away, with new headquarters in Rijeka, taking the slot left by the Central European Rally; Italy and Japan swap dates; and the Acropolis moves its base from Lamia to Loutraki. Sardinia, meanwhile, says goodbye: from 2027 the Italian round will be the Rally di Roma Capitale.

A Rally1 car is a racing car built inside a cage. Under the bodywork there is no reinforced road car but a spaceframe designed from scratch, with a 1.6-litre turbo engine and four-wheel drive, conceived so a driver can walk away from hitting a pine tree at a hundred and fifty. Since 2025 they carry no hybrid system: it was removed because every impact against a rock cost a fortune to repair. They all run the same tyre, Hankook.

There are three manufacturers on the grid — Toyota, Hyundai and M-Sport Ford — and that number is precisely the problem the championship has spent years trying to solve.

Which is why 2026 is the last year of this formula. The WRC27 rulebook arrives in 2027: a spaceframe again, but with engine and transmission inherited from Rally2 cars, around three hundred horsepower and a cost cap of 345,000 euros per car, more than fifty per cent below what a current Rally1 costs. It is a declared bet: less power in exchange for more cars and more brands on the start line.