No Mexico, finale switch & NASCAR doubleheader: Breaking down IndyCar’s 2026 schedule
- Archie O’Reilly
- Sep 18
- 11 min read
IndyCar’s 2026 schedule was finally unveiled earlier this week, for the second year in succession featuring all 17 races and Indianapolis 500 qualifying broadcasted on network FOX.
The calendar features three fresh events in place of three outgoing races, as well as a doubleheader weekend with NASCAR as part of a welcome busy start, a contentious switch of the finale and some possible misses too.
DIVEBOMB breaks down all of the key aspects of next year’s schedule…
A packed start to the season
Only two years ago, IndyCar was forced to plug a six-week gap between its first two points-paying races of the season with an exhibition event at the Thermal Club.
After the season-opening race in St. Petersburg on 10th March in 2024, it was not until Long Beach on 21st April that IndyCar raced for a second of only four times competitively in the lead-up to the Indy 500. And it did not get much less staggered in 2025, with Thermal turning into a points-paying affair but three-week gaps in place between each of the first four races.
It has long been a major gripe that seasons tend to start so slowly. That frustration was only heightened this year amid FOX Sports’ major pre-season promotional efforts - including multiple commercials broadcast during the Super Bowl - but little race-to-race momentum to harness early on.
Over the course of the year, the 2025 season became IndyCar’s most-watched campaign in 17 years. But after a bumper 1.412-million viewers for St. Pete, there was a dip to little over 700,000 for Thermal and, albeit not aided by clashes with The Masters golf and NASCAR, 552,000 for Long Beach. This was undoubtedly partially a product of the stuttered start.
In 2026 though, IndyCar will race four times across five weekends in March, kicking off the season with a triple-header run of St. Pete, the returning Phoenix Raceway and the all-new Grand Prix of Arlington.
After a weekend off, which plays host to IMSA’s popular-with-IndyCar-drivers Sebring 12 Hours, Barber Motorsports Park has been shifted into late March from its oft-500-overshadowed April/May slot.
There is a suboptimal pair of three-week breaks either side of Round 5 on the iconic streets of Long Beach, though possibly helping IndyCar’s biggest non-500 event to further stand out. The Indy 500 open test will likely help to plug some of this gap too.
Things ramp up again in May, reverting back to the 2024 scheduling of the Grand Prix of Indianapolis and then Indy 500 fortnight, followed immediately by two more races - Detroit and World Wide Technology Raceway (better known as Gateway) - before eventually an off-week.
The timing of that free weekend means there is no clash with the 24 Hours of Le Mans unlike this year, which was a big criticism of IndyCar’s 2025 schedule.
Gateway is well-placed shortly after the Indy 500 to jump on the oval-racing momentum, even if it would be preferable to have that as the immediate post-500 event. This stretch once again marks five successive weekends on track in a brutal run for teams and drivers, which this year saw one race either side of the three weekends in Indianapolis rather than two post-Indy.
The spread from thereon is more reasonable, with a pair of races in both June and July - avoiding too many FIFA World Cup clashes but possibly having opportunities for major lead-ins. August matches March’s momentum by hosting four races in the championship homestretch, though across three weekends given the Milwaukee Mile doubleheader.
The NFL-constrained season will last one week longer in 2026, with the finale slated for the first weekend in September rather than the close of August.
NASCAR doubleheader at Phoenix
After a hiatus dating back to April 2018, IndyCar once again features Phoenix Raceway on its schedule in 2026. It will be a 65th visit to the Arizona oval - after first racing on the mile-long oval in 1964 - and the first since track renovations, including the “dogleg” on the backstretch.
An Indy car was last on track at Phoenix in early 2024, when Kyle Larson tested for Arrow McLaren as part of his preparation for an Indy 500 debut. The series’ racing return marks an intriguing FOX-fuelled collaboration with NASCAR during the opening two rounds in 2026.
It was already revealed that the NASCAR Truck Series will race as part of the support bill in St. Pete. And with IndyCar having lost an oval from the schedule in Iowa Speedway, FOX has helped to enable a joint-weekend venture at Phoenix - akin to the IndyCar-NASCAR doubleheader last run in 2023 on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course.
This partnership for the Phoenix weekend can be looked at in a few different ways. Where risk would maybe lie is that, especially if it runs ahead of NASCAR’s second-string championship - currently known as the Xfinity Series - IndyCar is presented as the inferior showcase.
But chiefly, it should be seen as a golden opportunity for FOX to sell IndyCar’s product - particularly that on ovals - to an existing motorsport fanbase, with NASCAR’s audience regularly usurping IndyCar’s viewership base with particular ease.
The scheduling of Phoenix in March also provides a valuable pre-500 oval race which has been missing since Texas Motor Speedway exited the calendar in 2024. There is still a glaring absence of another true superspeedway or 1.5-mile oval but IndyCar - and in this case FOX - should be credited for not leaving Iowa unreplaced.
A wider point of Phoenix being back on the schedule is the hint of mixed messaging; this is a case of going back to the ‘old’ which Penske Entertainment CEO Mark Miles vowed against only one year ago. But there feels little major downside to the track’s return.
Nashville shifted for Laguna finale
One of the most notable aspects of the schedule is Laguna Seca’s return to the season finale slate in a proposed multi-year plan after two years away. Nashville Superspeedway has produced a pair of thrillers but has been shifted to a prime-time slot with the likely major audience lead-in from the World Cup final in July, hosted at New York’s MetLife Stadium.
It is the latest in a bout of finale changes in recent years. After three years in Fontana, Sonoma took over for four seasons from 2015, after which Laguna took the stage. But COVID struck and St. Pete and Long Beach took up finale duties, before Laguna returned for two years until Nashville entered the fray - intended to be downtown before an enforced change.
Even with the championship decided, Nashville produced an epic race to round out the 2025 season last month - as it did in 2024 too. But the enthralling 1.33-mile oval has been replaced by an unquestionably iconic though hit-and-miss 2.238-mile, 11-turn road course.
In some ways, moving the finale from Nashville - or any an oval - to a road course like Laguna feels like the wrong solution to a problem that did not exist. How could you see what Nashville produced and think the finale needs to change to a track that has scarcely produced barnstormers and has grown a knack for hosting dominant, runaway victories?
Adding to that, even with an attendance uptick in 2025, there have been issues with fan uptake at Laguna, which was criticised for lacking the energy befitting of a championship race upon moving from the finale after the 2023 season.
In reverting to another case of their ‘old selves’, IndyCar feels as though it is losing an exhilarating, important-feeling television product befitting of what could be the title decider.
The consolation for 2026, softening what could be construed as a disappointing move to switch Nashville away from the season-closing window, is the race instead being placed in the post-World Cup final slot primed for a possibly huge new audience. It does make sense to move arguably your best race to that window to best showcase your product.
Extended to 400 miles with the prospect of the race finishing under the lights, the product should be further enhanced in IndyCar’s bid to seize a sizable growth opportunity.
Gateway was moved to a prime-time position last year and produced a phenomenal showcase of IndyCar racing under the lights. With Gateway returning to prime time next June, Nashville will mark a second race in FOX’s most favourable television slot next year.
In an ideal world, you could argue there would be an oval race following the World Cup final and an oval in the finale slot given IndyCar’s best races in recent years have been on ovals. What comes as the biggest shame, as much as the switch makes sense for this year alone, is that Nashville appears not to be returning to season finale beyond 2026.
With the race having been planned to run downtown until construction work got in the way, Nashville Superspeedway was never intended to be the Tennessee-based finale. But IndyCar stumbled upon something that appeared quite special in the past two years.
The World Cup final lead-in provides valid reasoning for a one-off move. But after that? It is a curious decision to enact a U-turn and return to Laguna for the foreseeable future. And it is certainly a decision that leads to speculation a future downtown race could be in doubt too.
No deal struck for Mexico race
Last week saw a rare case of an announcement that something that was never announced in the first place would not be going ahead. But it was common knowledge that IndyCar was pushing hard for a race in Mexico City for 2026 - something that will not be happening.
“For more than a year, we have been working diligently to bring IndyCar to Mexico City’s Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez,” Miles said in the release, going as far as name-dropping the track - also used by Formula One - at which IndyCar planned on racing.
“While extensive progress was made alongside the venue’s operating group and our potential promoter, ultimately the significant impact of next year’s World Cup proved too challenging to ensure a successful event given the available summer dates.
“While we absolutely want to race in Mexico, we also want to ensure everyone involved feels the conditions are in place to plan a world-class and highly engaging race weekend. We will keep working to bring our racing to Mexico and hope for an event to be on the schedule as soon as the right opportunity presents itself.”
It is undoubtedly a pity that IndyCar could not get a deal over the line to race in Mexico next year. A prospective race south of the border would have aligned perfectly with FOX and the series’ desire to create more marquee events to elevate the attention on the series.
From hereon in though, IndyCar cannot stop trying to get a deal in place for 2027. It would be a huge miss not to capitalise on Pato O’Ward’s superstardom in his native country and the eyes a Mexican race would bring to the series.
As O’Ward himself said in IndyCar’s release, it “requires the right date and the right year for fans and sponsors to fully get behind our sport” to execute an event in a non-half-baked fashion. With Mexico City a World Cup host city, IndyCar could well have become an afterthought in the country’s sporting landscape.
Ultimately, it does appear IndyCar leadership did what they could to expand their horizons into Mexico for next year - likely hence the delay of the calendar being released. And fears around the impact of the World Cup are justifiable.
But that said, while a return to Mexico has long been on the radar, it did take lamentable convincing to get to the point of appearing to seriously push again for an event, featuring the ‘Pato Who’ saga after Miles’ comments last year about O’Ward’s popularity.
At the end of the day though, whether giving themselves more time to secure a deal for 2026 could have helped or not, the series has to work around the track and promoters too, which related to difficulties or not includes the involvement of F1 owners Liberty Media.
How big a miss could a Mexico-less 2026 prove? Only last month after IndyCar’s Nashville season finale, DHL Express CEO Mike Parra spoke of the importance of racing in Mexico to the long-time IndyCar team sponsor - now with Chip Ganassi Racing and champion Álex Palou.
“I look forward to something happening next year, which I’ve been pitching to Mark Miles and the team for a long time, and that is that we’re going to Mexico,” Parra said. “That is absolutely exciting for someone like myself.
“We have a big group of people there in that marketplace. I look forward to seeing a sea of yellow in Mexico. I’m sure we're going to be competing with Pato there from that perspective.”
So with Mexico not happening despite Parra’s insistence, you do fear possible disgruntlement among partners. For that reason and many more, IndyCar cannot stop pushing to create this additional tentpole event for 2027.
Arlington provides new marquee event
IndyCar’s long-planned inaugural trip to Arlington has become something of a forgotten aspect of the schedule having been announced shortly after the 2024 season. But it is certainly one of the most exciting and long-awaited elements of the 2026 calendar.
It is the perfect exemplification of IndyCar’s bid to create more ‘events’ rather than solely races. Hosting the street event within Texas’ popular entertainment district, placing the series into the eyelines of possible new fans, it will combine the race with fan activations and an “all-star entertainment lineup” as part of what is intended to be a bucket-list race weekend.
Collaborating with two major and highly-influential sporting entities, the Dallas Cowboys and Texas Rangers, and racing around their stadiums, it is a unique, innovative new venture for IndyCar that could prove a significant vehicle for growth if successful.
IndyCar has long needed more tentpole events holding a feeling of ‘importance’ to attract a wider sporting audience and new demographic of fans. Offering something new and more modern to add to IndyCar’s diverse range of races, Arlington looks to be set to fit that bill.
Three in, three out but no Washington
Paving the way for the additions of Phoenix, Arlington and a new Canadian street race in Markham, IndyCar has lost Thermal, Iowa and Toronto. A return of a doubleheader at Milwaukee compensates for the second of the lost Iowa races.
Adding to the two fresh earlier-season races, while significantly less known on a global scale than Toronto, Markham at least allows IndyCar to continue racing in a valuable market in Ontario. Though the World Cup is a factor in the move next year, Penske Corporation president Bud Denker suggested a five-year deal could turn into “decades” in Markham.
Much like Arlington, the track appears to have a good flow and variety of corners, including some high-speed sections. But work will have to be done to elevate the event’s sense of importance having moved away from a globally-recognised city.
Looking at the schedule as a whole, there are fresh markets but there is nothing entirely new. Recent reports suggested a race was being explored in Washington DC, which could have provided something along those lines by filling IndyCar’s east coast void, but the timeframe in which they had to put together an event appeared to be unfeasible.
Coupling that with the Mexico miss, IndyCar is still left with work to do in creating more marquee events. There is a front-loaded cluster of tentpole races in Arlington, Long Beach and the Indy 500 but nothing to match that from Round 8 onwards.
Not managing to get Mexico or Washington over the line also necessitated the need for the Milwaukee weekend to become a two-race affair. These doubleheader weekends, inflicting significant duress on teams, tend to be unpopular in the paddock.
Milwaukee had a booming attendance in 2025 as a single race, but by putting two races as part of the 2026 billing, there is a risk that grandstands could be sparser for each individual race. There is a feeling it devalues each race in some ways too, while also making an already-condensed 17-race calendar feel more condensed at essentially only 16 events.
All in all though, while there are aspects of the calendar that feel like misses, weaker points or contentious choices, there is freshness and promise aplenty scattered throughout.
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