Madrid's Grand Prix Comes Home

Wrapped around the IFEMA exhibition grounds a short ride from the airport, the Madring returned the Spanish Grand Prix to the capital in 2026, its first visit since 1981.

Few Grand Prix venues are easier to reach straight off a plane. The Madring, officially the Circuito de Madring, curls around the IFEMA exhibition center in the Barajas district, with Madrid Barajas Airport and the Real Madrid training complex for neighbors, and Metro Line 8 delivers spectators eight minutes after they leave the terminal. Part public road and part private land, it is a hybrid track in a district once called almost industrial. Its name, revealed in March 2025, fuses Madrid with ring, a naming habit the Nürburgring and the Hungaroring made respectable long ago.

The notion of racing in the capital goes back to 2014. It gathered real momentum once Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who leads the Community of Madrid as its president, made it a priority, and the bill promptly became a subject of fierce political quarrel, as bills for racetracks tend to. In January 2024 Formula One confirmed that the Spanish Grand Prix would leave the Circuit de Barcelona Catalunya and settle at the IFEMA site from 2026 to 2035.

Jarno Zaffelli and his firm Dromo drew a lap of 5.414 kilometers, and Acciona and Eiffage built it for 83.2 million euros. Its 22 corners alternate quick sweeps with fiddly technical passages. Twice the track ducks through a tunnel beneath an elevated motorway, and between Turns 7 and 9 it falls steeply away downhill. The grandstands hold 110,000, and the paddock became the first in Formula One with a roof over it, a first for a sport that usually takes its weather as it comes.

Racing began on 13 September 2026, and Madrid had its first Formula One Grand Prix since Jarama staged one in 1981. Lando Norris started from pole, yet Kimi Antonelli won for Mercedes, with Max Verstappen second and Norris third, and George Russell set the fastest lap. The drivers left with a shared verdict: too few places to pass. For now that single round is the whole of the Madring's championship record, the first page of an agreement that runs to 2035.

Every Grand Prix here

• 2026 Spanish Grand Prix