WRC 2027 calendar returns to the USA and UK, but drops Portugal
Rallying's longest season since 2008 adds America and Scotland, and Portugal pays for it
The FIA publishes a 15-round World Rally Championship calendar for 2027, the first season with that many events since 2008. Its World Motor Sport Council approved the schedule on 8 October. Rally US, Rally Scotland and a Rome-based Rally d'Italia join, Portugal and Sardinia leave, and the year still opens at Monte-Carlo on 21 January and closes in Saudi Arabia on 28 November.
Rally US and Rally Scotland end absences of 39 and seven years
Rally US, a gravel event based around Knoxville in Tennessee with stages across the border in Kentucky from 26 to 29 August, is the first WRC round in the United States since the Olympus Rally of 1988. It follows a candidate event in June 2026. Rally Scotland, based in Aberdeen and running from 30 September to 3 October on a three-year deal, closes a gap that opened after Wales Rally GB in 2019. Britain had held a WRC round in every season from 1973 until then, and it gets one back a year after Welshman Elfyn Evans won the world title.
Portugal loses its 2027 WRC date despite a contract to 2028
Rally de Portugal, the third round of the first World Rally Championship in 1973, is off the 2027 calendar. Its organisers signed a three-year agreement with WRC Promoter in May 2025 that was meant to run to 2028, and had planned a 13 to 16 May date until the Automóvel Club de Portugal announced the exclusion on 29 September. Talks about a 2028 return have started. Italy keeps its round but swaps Sardinia's gravel for asphalt around Rome and Lazio from 8 to 11 July, as Rally di Roma Capitale steps up from the European Rally Championship, where it has run since 2017.
Nine of the 15 WRC rounds stay in Europe, as in 2026
Europe keeps nine events in 2027, exactly as many as on the 14-round 2026 calendar, so the extra date is the American one. That 2026 season shrank to 13 rounds when the FIA cancelled Rally Saudi Arabia in September, and Saudi Arabia returns as the 2027 finale from 25 to 28 November. Safari Rally Kenya also keeps its slot, on 18 to 21 March, after weeks of doubt over who would pay for it once its government-funded contract ended. FIA road sport director Emilia Abel calls the rescue a common effort and gives no financial details.
Rally Estonia and Rally Finland run back to back, seven days apart
Rally Estonia (22 to 25 July) and Rally Finland (29 July to 1 August) become the first back-to-back WRC rounds since Corsica and Spain in 2007, so teams run both on the same cars with one week to turn them around. They also open a closing run of seven gravel rallies, from Estonia to Saudi Arabia, for the second season in a row. Drivers have complained that the championship leader starts first and sweeps loose gravel for everyone behind on the opening day of each one. Julien Vial, chief operating officer of WRC Promoter, says a late asphalt event could not be fitted in for 2027.
WRC27 cars capped at €345,000 make a 15-round season affordable
Vial links the expansion directly to the WRC27 rules, which cap a ready-to-run top-class car at €345,000 in asphalt specification and cut the cost of a season for every team. The American date matters to Ford, which returns with a factory team in 2028: FIA deputy president for sport Malcolm Wilson, who founded M-Sport, calls the US event probably one of the influences on that decision. The new promoter, in charge since 31 July, also wants about a quarter of 2027 events to try its revised Sunday format.
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Rallying grows by one round in 2027 without losing a single European event, and the round it adds sits in the one market Ford needs before its works team arrives in 2028. That makes this the strongest WRC calendar in years, with two weaknesses left in plain view: a seven-rally gravel finish that keeps punishing whoever leads the points, and a Portuguese contract that proved worth less than its signature.
When the FIA publishes the 2028 calendar next autumn, Rally US and Rally Scotland will both still be on it and Portugal will be back in a spring slot, with the season held at 15 rounds rather than stretched to a 16th. Teams can absorb one extra event on a €345,000 car; a sixteenth would test those budgets in the same years Ford is building its own.
