The F1 2027 Calendar: From Returns to Unsolved Question

Abstract

On 16th September, the World Motor Sport Council gave the green light to Formula 1's 2027 calendar: twenty-four Grands Prix across twenty-two countries, ten Sprint races and the welcome return of two circuits. This article maps out what changes from 2026, highlights what genuinely works in the new structure, and identifies the problems still shaping Formula One's annual planning.

What Changes From 2026

The 2027 Formula 1 calendar keeps twenty-four Grands Prix across twenty-two countries and five continents. The season opens in Bahrain on 12th-14th March, preceded by a single four-day test at Sakhir from 24th to 27th February, a more traditional format than the extended testing programme the new technical regulations forced on 2026. Australia loses its role as season opener and becomes the third round instead, on 4th April. Zandvoort drops out of the calendar as its contract expires at the end of the second cycle that began in 2021, and so does the Spanish Grand Prix at Barcelona, which starts alternating with Spa-Francorchamps and will not return until 2028. Portugal is back, with the Portuguese Grand Prix at Portimão from 18th to 20th June and a deal that runs through 2028 as well. The other welcome return is Turkey, bringing Formula 1 back to Istanbul Park after its absence since 2021, this time on a five-year agreement through 2031.

The number of Sprint races keeps climbing, up from six to ten, the highest total since the format was introduced in 2021. The venues are Bahrain, Australia, Japan, Canada, Monaco, Great Britain, Italy, Brazil, Qatar and Abu Dhabi. Monza will host the Sprint for three consecutive years through 2029, but the real surprise is Monaco. There, across the 4th-6th June weekend, two separate qualifying sessions will run for the first time, one for the Sprint grid and one for the Grand Prix grid.

The opening two rounds of the season remain uncertain. Should tensions in the Middle East prevent Bahrain and Saudi Arabia from going ahead as scheduled, the FIA and Formula One are weighing moving Australia, China or Japan forward instead.

 

What Actually Works

It is worth starting with the things that this new calendar gets right. The return of two circuits offers the opportunity to distinguish between a token reinstatement and a long-term commitment on contractual terms. Portimão has secured a deal that runs until 2028, which enables the Portuguese promoter to plan investment beyond a single season. Even better, Istanbul Park's five-year agreement runs until 2031, breaking with the hit-and-run logic that defined Turkey's previous appearance. That deal was confined to the 2020–21 biennium and was driven more by pandemic-era necessity than by any real intention to stay. A multi-year Hosting Agreement provides a commercial guarantee for the promoter and gives Formula 1 the opportunity to plan technical and logistical development over a stable period.

A second positive lies in the geographical distribution of the rounds. Formula 1 has explicitly stated that the 2027 calendar is designed to minimize inefficient travel by clustering races by region wherever possible[1]. A clear example of this is Turkey being placed in early October, between Baku and Singapore. This triple-header has been specifically designed to contain the Europe-to-Asia leg, rather than moving the paddock back and forth between continents. This is precisely the rationalisation that who is writing had already argued for[2], describing a calendar grouped into continental tours. While this principle has not yet been applied systematically across the whole season, it is starting to be put into practice.

 

Where the Calendar Falls Short

The first sticking point remains numerical, and it was already raised in an analysis dedicated to Formula 1's regulatory future beyond 2026. A calendar of twenty-four races exceeds the twenty-race limit that would ensure exclusivity, event quality, and sustainable working conditions for paddock personnel. Toto Wolff and Max Verstappen have publicly backed this position. Not only does 2027 confirm twenty-four Grands Prix, it also pairs them with the highest Sprint count ever, adding precisely to the workload that the proposed reduction was intended to alleviate.

On the Sprint format itself, the flaws identified when it was introduced in 2021 remain, for the most part, entirely unresolved[3]. Cutting free practice keeps compressing the time teams have to find the right setup, Saturday's Sprint drains tension from Sunday's race instead of building it, and the points on offer, eight for the winner, still amount to little set against the risk of a crash capable of wrecking an entire weekend for a single driver.

Monaco, among the ten venues chosen for 2027, is the case that pushes these limits to their extreme. On a track where overtaking in the race is already a rarity under the traditional format, and where the risk of a crash is already high, running two races in the same weekend adds nothing to the spectacle. It simply doubles a problem that clearly gains nothing from this solution.

The third issue concerns preserving and building on Formula 1's heritage through the circuits that make up the calendar. While Barcelona's exit is not in question, the fact that the Spanish Grand Prix will alternate with Spa-Francorchamps from 2027 onwards is a cause for concern. The real problem is seeing two venues with decades of history excluded together: Barcelona, host of the Spanish Grand Prix since 1991, and, above all, Imola, which stays out despite being exactly the kind of circuit that, for its heritage and identity, would deserve structural protection. The absence weighs even more given that Imola, according to the scenarios circulating for the 2026 finale, could be called on to take over the prestigious closing round from Abu Dhabi. A circuit, in other words, ready enough to patch an emergency and pull together a season finale at short notice, but not important enough to earn a permanent place.

Finally, there is the open technical question over Madrid. Confirmed for its second year on the calendar after its 2026 debut, the Madrid circuit has proven still very much a work in progress and needs significant changes from the version raced in its first season. A new-generation track needs validating not just for spectacle, but above all for safety, before it can be considered properly up to the standard a Formula 1 Grand Prix demands.

 

Conclusion

The 2027 calendar deserves a nuanced verdict. Compared with 2026, Formula 1 has shown it can turn sensible principles into concrete choices, starting with the idea of grouping races geographically, and has also turned two returns into medium-to-long-term contractual commitments rather than one-off operations.

However, there is a limit that cannot be fixed by calendar design alone. The 2027 season opens in Bahrain and closes in Qatar and Abu Dhabi, all of which are located in the same region where, only weeks prior to this analysis, doubts were still being raised over whether the 2026 finale could go ahead as planned. Holding the opening and closing of two consecutive seasons in the same theatre of geopolitical instability without a structural alternative plan being communicated by the governing body beyond emergency fixes leaves the entire industrial planning of the paddock at the mercy of politics. This also affects logistics and the sport's environmental footprint, as there is a risk of having to shift freight and equipment at short notice, which would cause significant problems for the teams and generate an avoidable environmental footprint.

Other issues that remain are the sheer number of races, the number of the Sprint rounds and its format. These issues appear less pressing than the commercial goals pursued by the new calendar, which is committed to them considerably more.

Finally, the 2027 calendar demonstrates that Formula 1 is willing to listen to and learn from criticism, refining and optimising its choices along the way. However, it is equally clear that there is still much to be done and that, for the time being, the sport continues to prioritise short-term commercial solutions over those that would help to preserve and improve it in the long term.

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[1]Motorsport.com, " F1 announces 2027 calendar - with Monaco among 10 sprint races", 16 September 2026, https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/f1-announces-2027-calendar-with-monaco-among-10-sprint-races/10856260/ .

[2]D. Beatrice, "A Formula 1 Manifesto: Beyond the 2026 Regulations", dbmotorsportf1.blogspot.com, 2026, on the point of geographic calendar optimization:

https://dbmotorsportf1.blogspot.com/2026/02/a-formula-1-manifesto-beyond-2026.html .

[3]D. Beatrice, "Sprint Race in F1: innovazione o involuzione?", dbmotorsportf1.blogspot.com, 2021, https://dbmotorsportf1.blogspot.com/2021/05/sprint-race-in-f1-innovazione-o.html .