F1 is getting a makeover at more than 200 miles per hour, with next season set to feature new teams, a new race and entirely new cars.
The 2025 Formula 1 season is in the books, but F1 cars will be back on the track in just three months when the 2026 campaign begins in Australia.
American F1 fans will be able to follow next season’s action on Apple TV after the series signed a five-year deal to make the streaming service its United States home following eight seasons broadcasting with ESPN. The new agreement will reportedly pay F1 around $140 million per year on average, up from roughly $85 million.
But that isn’t the only change coming to Formula 1 for 2026. The cars will be different. The calendar will be different. Even the teams will be different.
Here are five key elements to watch for after the restart in March.
A New Challenger
After seven consecutive seasons with ten teams, Formula 1 will swell back to 11 next year with the addition of Cadillac.
The saga began in 2023 when the racing group now known as Andretti Global—which fields entries in motorsports including IndyCar and the all-electric Formula E—made a bid in partnership with General Motors’ Cadillac brand. The proposal was approved by the FIA, the governing body that oversees Formula 1, but the existing teams on the grid fiercely opposed the idea, largely because of concerns that a new competitor would siphon off a share of the central league revenue without materially expanding F1’s business.
After a change in leadership at Andretti, and with GM pledging to start manufacturing engines for F1 competition down the line, Cadillac received final approval from the Formula One Group in March 2025. (That Cadillac agreed to pay a $450 million fee to mitigate the revenue impact on other teams—on top of hundreds of millions in startup costs—also helped pave the way.)
Whether the presence of an American car brand can help Formula 1 make further inroads in the lucrative U.S. market is an open question, and no one expects Cadillac to be competitive on the track from the get-go. But the team’s early hires come with experience. Team principal Graeme Lowdon was sporting director at Manor Marussia before it went into administration in 2014, and drivers Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Pérez have raced for a combined 26 seasons in F1, with each having finished second in the season-long standings (Bottas with Mercedes in 2019 and 2020 and Pérez with Red Bull in 2023).
No matter how Cadillac’s inaugural season goes, don’t expect more new entrants on the grid. While FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem has suggested that Formula 1 could expand again to 12 teams in the future, F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali has repeatedly pushed back on the idea, saying recently that “we’re already at a point with no more room—logistically, we’re at the limit.”
New Names
Cadillac will be the one team starting from scratch next season, but it won’t be the only new name in the paddock. For starters, Toyota Gazoo Racing is replacing Moneygram as Haas’ title sponsor, and McLaren sold its naming rights to Mastercard, its first such sponsorship since 2013. (The deal is reportedly worth roughly $100 million annually, and CEO Zak Brown confirms that it is “the biggest partnership that McLaren has ever put together.”)
More significantly, the team that competed in 2025 as Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber—and was known as Alfa Romeo from 2018 to 2023—will become Audi, with title sponsorship by British-based fintech firm Revolut. The German luxury automaker completed its full acquisition of the team in January 2025 and aims to be competing for a championship by 2030, according to CEO Gernot Döllner—lofty ambitions for a team that finished ninth in the constructors’ standings in 2025.
Flying Colors: As Sauber becomes Audi, the team’s cars will trade out a livery of acid green and black for silver, red and black.
ALEXANDRA BEIER/Getty Images
Drivers Nico Hülkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto and team principal Jonathan Wheatley will carry over from Sauber to Audi, but the car’s livery will be one clear sign of a change in direction, going from a color scheme of acid green and black this season to silver, red and black in 2026.
New Engine Makers
As Sauber transitions to Audi, it will go from using Ferrari-made engines to becoming a full works team in 2026, manufacturing its own power units. It may take some time to smooth out the bumps, however. “We know that 2026 will not be the year in which we’ll be at the top,” Mattia Binotto, head of the Audi F1 project, told Motorsport.com in May, and TheDrive.com reported in mid-November that Audi had already halted development of its engine for next season and shifted its focus to 2027 and 2028.
Several other Formula 1 teams will be changing engine makers as well. Ford, which last participated in the series in 2004, will begin supplying the two teams owned by energy drink brand Red Bull: Red Bull Racing and Racing Bulls. Honda, which had downgraded its F1 program to supporting Red Bull at the end of 2021, is also making a full-scale return to the series as the supplier of Aston Martin, which is giving up its Mercedes engines. Meanwhile, Renault will no longer provide engines for Alpine, which will instead begin buying power units from Mercedes. (Cadillac, the new team on the grid, will buy parts from Ferrari until it becomes a power unit supplier itself in 2029.)
Under new regulations for 2026, engines will still be V6s with more than 1,000 horsepower, but they will run on synthetic, sustainable fuel and feature nearly triple the electrical power, approaching a 50-50 split between combustion and electric power, from roughly 80-20 currently.
New Tech Specs
The FIA tends to overhaul Formula 1’s technical regulations around either engines or chassis in a single season, but 2026 will see upheaval in both categories.
Cars will have a minimum weight of 1,693 pounds—66 lighter than in 2025. They will also be about eight inches shorter (with the wheelbase around 11 feet 2 inches) and about four inches narrower (at around 6 feet 3 inches). Tires will be slightly slimmer as well, and the FIA has said downforce has been reduced by 30% and drag by 55%.
The new specifications are meant to make the cars more agile, creating more opportunities for passing on the track, and cars will also feature active aerodynamics systems that can push up speeds both in corners and on straightaways, depending on how the movable front and rear wings are deployed.
But a smaller chassis comes with one downside for F1 teams: less space to cover with sponsor logos.
Because teams had to devote additional resources toward research and development in the switch to the new regulations, Formula 1 is boosting its cost cap to $215 million for 2026, from around $170 million this year (counting both the $135 million baseline and adjustments made for inflation and the number of races on the calendar). The cap system, which was implemented in 2021 to help level the playing field after top teams’ budgets had soared past $400 million, limits spending in many areas related to car design and construction.
New Races
The first six Grand Prix races of the 2026 season will be identical to 2025’s, but after that, the calendar is getting updates.
Some events are being reshuffled to make freight shipping more efficient. For instance, the Canadian Grand Prix will move up to May, from June, so that it follows the race in Miami, and the summer months will feature nine straight events in Europe.
With the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix in Imola, Italy, discontinued after 2025, the series will gain a race in Madrid to fill out the calendar. The change will give Spain two races, with the other in Barcelona; the U.S.—with Miami, Austin and Las Vegas—is the only other country with more than one Grand Prix on the schedule.
Once again, F1 will run six sprint races. China and Miami are repeat hosts, but in place of Belgium, Austin, Brazil and Qatar, there will be Canada, Britain, the Netherlands and Singapore.
And while Formula 1 hasn’t yet released its 2027 calendar, one impending tweak has already been revealed, with the Dutch Grand Prix set to fall off the schedule after 2026. Portugal, Rwanda, South Africa and South Korea are reportedly among the countries bidding to become hosts, and Argentina, Germany, Nigeria, Thailand and Turkey have all expressed interest for the future as well.
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Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brettknight/2025/12/09/five-big-changes-coming-to-formula-1-in-2026/
