Everything you need to know about the 2026 24 Hours of Le Mans motorcycle race

If you MotoGP While the French Superbike Championship is forced to put its season on hold due to the postponement of the Qatar Grand Prix, April is not without motorcycle racing in France. From April 15th to 19th, the 24 Hours of Le Mans 2026 will take place on the Bugatti circuit at Le Mans. This provides an opportunity to take a look at another discipline before the championship resumes.

The forty-ninth edition of the Sarthe double-round-the-clock race for two-wheelers has a full grid, bringing together 60 teams for the first time since 2019. These teams will all represent one of the five manufacturers that make up the grid – Yamaha, Suzuki, Honda, Kawasaki and BMW – on machines derived from production models.

As for 24h of Le MansThe festivities will begin before the weekend with a parade of drivers in the city center. The weekend will then proceed according to the usual schedule, from Free Practice sessions to Qualifying, culminating in the race start, scheduled for Saturday at 15 p.m.

The 2026 season marks a major turning point for the championship, which has welcomed new promoters. The Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO), Claude Michy's PHA company (which also organizes the French MotoGP Grand Prix), and Editions Larivière have joined forces to organize the four events on the season's calendar.

"Year after year, this race embodies what makes endurance so great," confided Pierre Fillon, president of the ACO, during the presentation of the event. Demanding standards, strategic thinking, collective performance, and the ability to push the limits, day and night. For 24 hours, the mechanics and the drivers become one, united in a single challenge where every stint, every decision, and every detail can change the outcome.

The issues and forces at play

On the track, this edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans promises to be fiercely contested. After the 2025 championship was decided in the final minutes of the Bol d'Or, all the factory teams have a real shot at victory. The YART-Yamaha #1, the defending champion and winner in Le Mans last year, will try to defend its title against Yoshimura SERT Motul (Suzuki #12), which is looking to redeem itself after a 2025 edition marred by six crashes and a 6th place finish, well below its ambitions.

The BMW Motorrad riders, on the #37, are also dreaming of a major upset. The German manufacturer could become the first European-made team to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans motorcycle race, historically dominated by Japanese manufacturers. The #5 FCC TSR Honda, three-time winner at Le Mans, and the #11 Kawasaki Trickstar, which led last year before a fatal crash at the very end of the race, will also be contenders.

Karel Hanika, Marvin Fritz and Leandre Mercado, drivers of the n°1 in the pre-Le Mans tests © FIM EWC

All the teams presented are competing among the 19 machines entered in the top category, Formula EWC. A class whose motorcycles are recognizable thanks to their black background plate, and in which teams can enter one machine from among those homologated for the World Superbike, namely; the BMW M 1000 RR, the Suzuki GSX-R 1000, the Yamaha YZF-R1, the Honda CBR1000RR-R Fireblade and the Kawasaki ZX-10RR.

Four different categories, however, bring the show to life on the track at the 24 Hours of Le Mans motorcycles. The Superstock category (red background plate), very close to the production model, the Production category (blue background plate) which is the most accessible class in the championship and the Experimental category (green background plate), which presents machines for their technical and innovative interest, such as electric motorcycles.

How to watch the 24 Hours of Le Mans motorcycle race in 2026?