NASCAR adds Chicagoland event as 2026 schedule shuffled

A return to the Chicagoland Speedway, a street race in San Diego and a change to championship weekend highlight the 2026 NASCAR schedule, released Wednesday.
Also to be noted are the shift of the All-Star Race to Dover Motor Speedway, as well as schedule adjustments that move annual races to non-traditional dates.
The NASCAR Cup Series begins its 38-event calendar with the Clash, an exhibition at Bowman-Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem, N.C., on Feb. 1. The traditional season opener, the Daytona 500, will be run Feb. 15.
The season will conclude Nov. 8 in Florida at Homestead-Miami, with the finale that will decide the 2026 championship. That race has been held the past five years at the Phoenix Raceway.
The schedule also was released Wednesday for the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, which replaces the Xfinity Series, and the Craftsman Truck Series. The former will run 33 races, with the latter holding 25 events.
Racing returns to Chicagoland after six years away. The street race in downtown Chicago, held the past three seasons, is being replaced by the Chicagoland event in suburban Joliet, Ill.
The street race, instead, moves to a military base in Coronado, Calif., a San Diego suburb.
“Obviously, a lot of collaboration, a lot of time, a lot of energy that went into it, and it’s just a good blend like we’ve had over the past few years of innovation and tradition, of being able to celebrate our history and our roots and where we come from, but then also having these bold new moves that we’re introducing to the schedule,” said Ben Kennedy, NASCAR executive vice president and chief venue and racing innovation officer.
“For events like a street race in San Diego at the Naval Base Coronado or taking the championship race back to Homestead-Miami Speedway or even a beloved track that our fans have been asking for the past several years in bringing a points race back to Chicagoland, or bringing a points race to North Wilkesboro for the first time in 30 years. So a lot of milestone moments that will be created next year, certainly a lot of anticipated moments, I think, that our fans are going to have. Certainly proud of the work that everyone’s done to help put this together.”
Chicagoland also will be part of the five-race In-Season Challenge, a bracket-style tournament that will begin at Sonoma on June 28, then run through Chicagoland, EchoPark Speedway in Georgia and North Wilkesboro in North Carolina before concluding with the finale at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on July 26.
The Cup Series also will have two bye weeks, up from one.
The full 2026 Cup Series schedule follows:
Feb. 1 — Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium
Feb. 15 — Daytona 500
Feb. 22 — Atlanta
March 1 — Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas
March 8 — Phoenix
March 15 — Las Vegas
March 22 — Darlington, S.C.
March 29 — Martinsville, Va.
April 5 — off
April 12 — Bristol, Tenn.
April 19 — Kansas
April 26 — Talladega, Ala.
May 3 — Texas
May 10 — Watkins Glen, N.Y.
May 17 — All-Star Race (Dover, Del.)
May 24 — Coca-Cola 600 (Charlotte)
May 31 — Nashville
June 7 — Michigan
June 14 — Pocono (Long Pond, Pa.)
June 21 — San Diego
June 28 — Sonoma, Calif.
July 5 — Chicagoland
July 12 — Atlanta
July 19 — North Wilkesboro
July 26 — Brickyard 400 (Indianapolis)
Aug. 2 — off
Aug. 9 — Iowa
Aug. 15 — Richmond, Va.
Aug. 23 — New Hampshire
Aug. 29 — Daytona, Fla.
Sept. 6 — Darlington
Sept. 13 — Gateway (Madison, Ill.)
Sept. 19 — Bristol
Sept. 27 — Kansas
Oct. 4 — Las Vegas
Oct. 11 — Charlotte Roval
Oct. 18 — Phoenix
Oct. 25 — Talladega
Nov. 1 — Martinsville
Nov. 8 — Homestead, Fla.