NASCAR News: NASCAR releases 2026 schedules

NASCAR released the 2026 schedule for all three national series Wednesday, bringing back a Chicago-area staple, shifting up the All-Star Race rotation and renewing the In-Season Challenge for a second edition.

NASCAR officials had previously announced two key components to the 2026 slate, introducing a street-course event in San Diego’s Naval Base Coronado and moving the championship weekend for all three national circuits to Homestead-Miami Speedway. Joining those headliners are new NASCAR Cup Series points races at Chicagoland Speedway (July 5), which last hosted racing events in 2019, and North Wilkesboro Speedway (July 19), which will have its first points-paying event since 1996 after playing host to the All-Star Race the last three years.

The North Wilkesboro shift opens the door for a new All-Star Race host, and Dover Motor Speedway will be the site of the invitational exhibition for the first time on May 17. That race will be the season finale for FOX Sports’ portion of the 2026 schedule, with five-race slates to follow from Prime Video and TNT Sports before NBC Sports concludes the year with the final 14 events.

“Obviously, a lot of collaboration, a lot of time, a lot of energy that went into it, and it’s just a good blend like we’ve had over the past few years of innovation and tradition, of being able to celebrate our history and our roots and where we come from, but then also having these bold new moves that we’re introducing to the schedule,” said Ben Kennedy, NASCAR executive vice president and chief venue & racing innovation officer. “For events like a street race in San Diego at the Naval Base Coronado or taking the championship race back to Homestead-Miami Speedway or even a beloved track that our fans have been asking for the past several years in bringing a points race back to Chicagoland, or bringing a points race to North Wilkesboro for the first time in 30 years. So a lot of milestone moments that will be created next year, certainly a lot of anticipated moments, I think, that our fans are going to have. Certainly proud of the work that everyone’s done to help put this together.”

The newly branded NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, which will shift from the Xfinity Series name next year, released its 33-race schedule alongside a 25-race slate for the Craftsman Truck Series. Both circuits will return to Rockingham Speedway for Easter weekend April 3-4, and the Truck Series will make its first venture into street-course racing with two events — adding a St. Petersburg, Florida, date on Feb. 28 in partnership with the NTT IndyCar Series before joining the two other national tours in San Diego on June 19-21.

The new San Diego event on an active military base was announced July 23 to much fanfare, with details about the course layout, logistics and ticket sales to come. Though that 10-month runway may seem plentiful before race weekend arrives, Kennedy said the planning stages are already in full swing.

RELATED: Chicagoland returns to 2026 schedule

“Before you announce anything, you can only realistically get so much done, and then after you announce it, then the floodgates are really open after that,” Kennedy says. “We’ve been really focused in on finalizing the course design, building the manifest and getting ready for going on sale in the next couple of months, and then really understanding everything that’s going to happen on track and then off track throughout the event weekend. For the fans that are ready to come there, they’re going to expect a ton of on-track content, but then also some unique activations that we’ve never had at NASCAR race tracks before. …

“We have a lot of work to do. I think the good news is we already have a little bit of a playbook from Chicago over the past few years. And you know, I think it’s going to be an incredible event for that part of the season.”

This year’s Chicago playbook marks a transition from the downtown event of the last three seasons to a traditional 1.5-mile oval in Joliet, Illinois, that hosted the Cup Series from 2001-2019. The event will keep the Chicago Street Race’s Independence Day weekend dates on July 4-5, helping NASCAR maintain a foothold in the Midwest market with the potential for the metropolitan event to return to Grant Park in the future.

Chicagoland will also be included in the new-look In-Season Challenge, the bracket-style tournament that will return for Year 2 on TNT Sports. The midseason five-race stretch will begin with Sonoma on June 28, with Chicagoland, EchoPark Speedway near Atlanta and North Wilkesboro to follow before a winner is crowned in the challenge finale July 26 on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval.

The tournament will be followed by the second of two idle weekends for the Cup Series next season, an increase from the single off-weekend this year.

“We received a lot of helpful insight from teams and drivers after we took the two weeks off a couple of years ago for the Olympic break,” Kennedy said, “and I think for us, we would like to have some consistency in where off-weeks are. So I think Easter weekend for the Cup Series, obviously we’ll have the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series and the Craftsman Truck Series at Rockingham that weekend, but then also having all three series off between the TNT and NBC Sports portion of the season was really important for us and for the industry to take a little bit of a pause before we hit the ground running again for the last four (races) of the regular season, and then to take us through the playoffs. From February to November, we have a ton of content, and I think it’s really good for the industry to just take a step back, hit the reset button and come back with a ton of energy for these final 14 races.”

Among the other noteworthy pieces of the 2026 schedule release:

• With Homestead-Miami claiming Championship Weekend host duties for 2026 as part of the new rotating model for season-ending events, Phoenix Raceway will move to another prominent spot in the Cup Series Playoffs, opening the Round of 8 on Oct. 18. Talladega (Oct. 25) and Martinsville (Nov. 1) will complete that three-race span, which will determine the Championship 4 field that will battle for the Cup title in Homestead.

The addition of Homestead to the 10-race postseason slate will move New Hampshire Motor Speedway out of the playoffs. The 1.058-mile New England track will slot in on Aug. 23 as the next-to-last race of the regular season.

Kansas Speedway and Las Vegas Motor Speedway will move to earlier spots on the playoff schedule. Kansas will be the new Round of 12 opener Sept. 27, followed by Vegas on Oct. 4. The last five weekends of the season will be tripleheaders with all three national series in action.

• Dover’s move to host the 42nd NASCAR All-Star Race includes a shift to May 17, nearly two months earlier than its current summer slot on the schedule. All-Star Weekend will expand to include all three national series.
• Watkins Glen International will move to the earliest spot on the NASCAR schedule in track history, with all three national circuits visiting the New York road course on May 8-10.
• As previously announced, Bowman Gray Stadium will return as the site of the season-opening Clash exhibition on Feb. 1. The historic quarter-mile oval in Winston-Salem hosted its first Cup Series event of any kind since 1971 this year.
• The schedule release will not have an international race next season, one year after the Cup Series made its debut in Mexico City. Kennedy acknowledged the difficulty with scheduling around the World Cup soccer tournament this summer, plus the other events that the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez hosts throughout the year, but that he was bullish on continuing the sport’s relationship with race promoter OCESA while exploring other international opportunities.

“It’s a great partnership and was an incredible feat for our industry to be able to pull that off in terms of the logistics and planning that went into it, but then also to bring so many new fans out to a race track that have never had the chance to experience our sport before and have a really good time,” Kennedy said. “The majority of fans want to see the Cup Series return there again in the future, so hopefully back in Mexico, but we’ve also had conversations north of the border as well with a handful of different potential promoters and opportunities. Obviously, nothing to report on 2026 but something that we’re considering for ’27 and beyond is more opportunities outside the United States.”

• Lime Rock Park, a new venue for the Craftsman Truck Series this year, will return July 11 as one of four “stand-alone” events separate of the Cup Series schedule next season.

NASCAR CUP SERIES

*Denotes playoff race

NASCAR O’REILLY AUTO PARTS SERIES

*Denotes playoff race

NASCAR CRAFTSMAN TRUCK SERIES