What will happen in MotoGP in 2026? Come closer, and we’ll tell you …
One thing we definitely know about the new campaign set to roar into life in Thailand this weekend is that it’s a season-long swansong for the 1000cc era ahead of the 850cc revolution set for 2027, a season where the rider line-up (thanks to 18 of this year’s 22 riders being out of contract) will likely look markedly different to this one.
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But there’s 22 Grands Prix – and 22 sprints, remember – to negotiate between now and then. How will the season pan out? We’ve dusted off the crystal ball after it hit almost every target in 2025, and given it another spin to predict what’ll happen this year.
Last season, lest anyone forget, we foresaw precisely zero fireworks between Ducati’s crack factory team of Marc Marquez and Francesco Bagnaia, which came to fruition after Bagnaia’s unexpectedly baffling season of occasional pace and plenty of disappointments while Marquez barely saw him as he romped to the title.
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We had Jack Miller – against all odds – getting another shot in 2026, and Honda not being hapless at the back of the pack. We undersold the chance for one first-time winner – yes, we picked Alex Marquez, but didn’t see victories coming for rookie Fermin Aldeguer and the perennially-disappointing Raul Fernandez – but we were right, kind of.
What’s on the cards for 2026? We predict that we’ll never mention any of these predictions again if they don’t come true, and we’ll steer clear of obvious forecasts like Spanish star Pedro Acosta finally winning a Grand Prix, which has felt imminent since the first remarkable races of his 2024 rookie year but has yet to happen.
Less certain but definitely likely is that the out-of-the-blue manager/rider relationship between retired world champion Jorge Lorenzo and his mercurial Spanish compatriot, KTM’s Maverick Vinales, will generate more headlines for what Lorenzo says than anything Vinales does on track, entertaining as that will undoubtedly be.
Our five biggest (and nailed-on, naturally) predictions we’re making for 2026? These.
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THE 2027 RIDER MARKET WILL BE THE DOMINANT STORY OF 2026
Combine a season of relative rule stasis with over 80 per cent of the grid being out of contract at the end of it, and this isn’t the boldest of our 2026 predictions. But the speed at which the rider market merry-go-round is spinning? That’s the big shock, and it’s why this story will linger over the season more than any other.
Consider: of the five MotoGP champions on this year’s grid – Marc Marquez, Joan Mir, Fabio Quartararo, Francesco Bagnaia and Jorge Martin – three of them could have new homes for 2027 announced before 2026 even officially gets going in Thailand for opening practice on Friday.
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Quartararo – the 2021 MotoGP champion – was the first name to be linked with a big move when news of a reported deal with Honda became public in January, while 2024 title-winner Martin – who missed most of last year’s first season with Aprilia after a wretched run of injury and a controversial attempt to extract himself out of a contract to try to move to Honda – looks set to take the Frenchman’s high-priced slot at Yamaha’s factory team.
Bagnaia, meanwhile, did nothing at pre-season testing in Thailand last week to hose down rumours that the 2022 and 2023 world champion is off to Aprilia in Martin’s place for 2027, with Ducati set to swoop on KTM young gun Acosta to partner Marquez in an all-Spanish line-up that spans consecutive generations, given their 12-year difference in age.
When you consider that more than half of the top 10-12 riders in the 2025 standings could be with new teams for 2027 before or just after 2026 begins – and what that means for those riders who have opted to ditch one manufacturer for another 12 months in advance and have to see out their time at their current employers – you can see why this prediction is more sure-fire as any other.
The ramifications of committing to a new employer for a new bike and new regulation set that nobody yet has the slightest read on means the decisions made in the coming weeks will have a ripple effect well beyond 2027, too.
MILLER IS TOO IMPORTANT TO YAMAHA TO BE LET GO
Wait, the same Jack Miller who comes into 2026 off his worst season in a decade, who is out of contract with MotoGP’s slowest manufacturer and who just turned 31 years old?
Yes, that one. And there’s more than one reason why he’ll be kept on for the new era in 2027.
When you’re in the basement like Yamaha is, the only way forward to look up and be bold. That’s what Yamaha has done for 2026 by fast-tracking its V4-engined M1 machine onto the grid for the final season of a regulatory era that’s soon set to end, and it’s why the super-experienced Miller – with V4 knowledge from his time at Honda, Ducati and KTM before Yamaha – is such a valuable asset. Arguably more so this season than ever.
Yamaha’s other current riders, let’s not forget, are the perpetually restless Quartararo – a rapid rider who has never been particularly renowned for his technical feedback – the Frenchman’s teammate Alex Rins, who hasn’t been the same since a horrible broken leg midway through the 2023 season, and Miller’s new Pramac teammate Toprak Razgatlioglu, the multiple-time World Superbikes champion who lacks nothing in talent, but is a 29-year-old MotoGP rookie nonetheless and struggled in pre-season testing.
Given the pre-season scuttlebutt, Quartararo’s commitment to Yamaha could be measured in days. Through no fault of his own, Rins is arguably too far past his best to fit into Yamaha’s long-term planning. Razgatlioglu might be Yamaha’s future, but getting to that point won’t be the work of a moment. As a result, Miller arguably becomes more vital than he was before. Perhaps even more so if – when – Quartararo bites the bullet and leaves.
Judging the success of Miller’s 2026 won’t be about where he ends up in the standings. If he’s back in 2027 – and we’re predicting he will be – Yamaha’s stamp of approval will mean more than points scored and places gained.
BAGNAIA WILL BE MARQUEZ’S BIGGEST ‘CHALLENGER’
We’ve included the necessary inverted commas here, because Marc Marquez – when he’s on song on a machine for MotoGP’s dominant manufacturer in the waning years of this regulation cycle – is close to unbeatable, as he proved by winning last year’s title with five of the 22 rounds still to run.
Marc’s younger brother Alex – riding a Ducati GP24 machine for satellite team Gresini Racing last year – emerged to become championship runner-up in a season of remarkable consistency that was unlike any other of his seven MotoGP campaigns, where he’d never won a race nor finished better than eighth in the standings.
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Impressive as the younger Marquez was, the battered and bruised Martin, a slow-to-start Marco Bezzecchi and a season that made no sense for Bagnaia were contributing factors to that result.
Already in 2026 pre-season testing, Bagnaia looks more like the rider who finished no worse than second in the title chase for four straight years from 2021-24 than the rider who slumped to fifth last year with a baffling sequence of results where he could win races in dominant fashion one week (Japan), and then qualify and race at the back one week later, which the Italian did in Indonesia.
Bagnaia was open about his struggles with Ducati’s GP25 last season and the front-end feeling it didn’t offer to mesh with his precise riding style, which isn’t the grid’s most adaptable but can be devastating when he’s in his narrow sweet spot.
The 2026 Ducati machine has, on early returns, unlocked some of the memories of Bagnaia’s 2022-24 pomp, where he won an average of eight Grands Prix a year and took two titles. He’s unlikely to be fast enough to trouble a fully-fit Marc Marquez on the other side of his own garage, but he’s not alone there among Marquez’s peers.
Alone in second place when the flag falls on 2026? That’s easier to envisage.
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MARQUEZ WILL STICK IT TO ROSSI, TWICE
The Marc Marquez/Valentino Rossi feud that still simmers from the boiling point of Malaysia 2015 has been a narrative given more oxygen by the Rossi side of the equation and his fervent fanbase, but there’s two Rossi benchmarks that Marquez will almost certainly surpass in 2026 – with a third one looming large.
Marquez missed the final four rounds of 2025 after he’d clinched his first world title in six years in Japan the race prior when he fractured his right shoulder after a crash on the opening lap of the Indonesian Grand Prix; back in the saddle for a year where last year’s pecking order seems more likely to continue than not, it would be foolish not to install the 33-year-old as the odds-on favourite to go back-to-back in 2026, a result that would have historic ramifications.
An eighth MotoGP title and 10th world championship in all would see Marquez surpass Rossi’s seven and nine in those two categories, while Marquez enters 2026 with 73 MotoGP wins; Rossi had 76 MotoGP wins from the advent of the category in 2002, and 89 premier-class wins in all when you add his 13 victories from the 500cc class in 2000-01.
While Rossi’s benchmark of 89 victories looks a bridge too far for Marquez this season – his most dominant season was 2014, when he won 13 Grands Prix – the Spaniard did win 11 times in 17 starts before his Mandalika mishap last October, so he could very well be knocking on the door of that number come the start of 2027.
For now, though, a record eighth MotoGP title might have to do … and finding reasons not to pick him is as tough as compiling a list of riders who could deny him, much as the Rossi fanbase is desperate for it to be otherwise.
THE GRID WILL GET YOUNGER
This year’s MotoGP rider line-up averages out at 28 years of age, and that’s even with young guns like Aldeguer (20) and Acosta (21) bringing down the median age. It’s older than the premier class was both 10 and 20 years ago. And it’s not going to last, for a combination of reasons.
Yes, the grid’s greybeard (35-year-old Johann Zarco) is one of just four riders currently contracted through 2027, and reigning champion Marquez is now, somewhat jarringly, the second-oldest rider in the sport at 33. But there’ll be eight riders in their 30s this season, and just one graduate from the Moto2 feeder class – 20-year-old Brazilian rookie Diogo Moreira – to help lower the average.
Change, though, is coming thanks to a combination of contract finality, the 2027 regulation changes, and a host of young riders in the lower classes primed for promotion. The meagre results of Rins as mentioned above make him vulnerable, while Ducati’s Franco Morbidelli is 31, makes headlines more for the robust way he races rather than what he does in them, and likely wouldn’t be employed by any other team besides mentor Rossi’s eponymous VR46 outfit.
Colombian David Alonso – a dominant Moto3 champion in 2024 who won a race in Moto2 last year at age 19 – is the most exciting youngster to rise through the ranks in years. Alonso’s 20-year-old teammate last year, Dani Holgado, won twice. Two other Moto2 rookies last year, Dutchman Collin Veijer (20) and Spaniard Ivan Ortola (21), finished on podiums. It’s a fast-rising group of young hotshots itching for their chance, and a youth movement that could make several MotoGP mainstays nervous.
And where does Australia’s Senna Agius fit into all of this? The Sydney 20-year-old has undoubted quality – you don’t win two Moto2 races including your home Grand Prix in dominant style like Agius did last year without having the requisite talent – and while he has all the hallmarks of being Australia’s next MotoGP rider, 2027 might be a touch early.
Replicate or improve upon his 2025 this year, though, and the discussion of Agius becoming Miller’s successor as Australia’s representative on the MotoGP grid down the track becomes very, very real.
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