Rally, rally-raid and the races against the clock.

For how a stage rally works (special stages, pace notes, service and the Power Stage), start with our rally and rallycross guide. This page is about the championships and their results.

The FIA World Rally Championship

Points and the 2026 rules

Wikipedia (secondary) gives the 2025 WRC scoring as 25, 17, 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 and 1 for the top 10 overall, plus two sets of bonus points. The FIA's 2026 Sporting Regulations, published 25 November 2025 and later updated, confirm those bonuses: 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 for the five fastest crews over Sunday's stages, and the same again for the five fastest on the Power Stage. The overall scale itself was not confirmed in the FIA excerpts checked.

Other 2026 rules from the FIA's regulations:

• A manufacturer can nominate up to three drivers, but only its best two score.
• Hankook supplies the tyres, with 28 per rally for Rally1 cars and 26 for other cars.
• An engine change after the start is allowed, at the cost of a 60-minute penalty and loss of points at that event. Rally1 cars nominated for manufacturer points may not change engines at all.

Wikipedia (secondary) adds that the hybrid unit fitted to Rally1 cars from 2022 was removed for 2025, with weight and air restrictor adjusted to keep the power-to-weight ratio.

2025

The FIA and wrc.com report that Sebastien Ogier won his ninth drivers' title in 2025, with co-driver Vincent Landais, at the Rally Saudi Arabia finale. That equalled Sebastien Loeb's record. Thierry Neuville won the rally, and Ogier finished the season four points ahead of his Toyota team-mate Elfyn Evans. Toyota had already clinched the manufacturers' title at the Central European Rally, its fifth in a row.

2026: a 13-round season

The 2026 calendar was planned with 14 rounds, from Monte Carlo to Saudi Arabia, according to Wikipedia (secondary). On 17 September 2026 the FIA and the WRC Promoter announced that the WRC element of Rally Saudi Arabia would not run in 2026, citing ongoing uncertainty in the region and its effect on logistics. The FIA said the event would still run as a round of the FIA Middle East Rally Championship, with a WRC return targeted for 2027, and that the change was subject to World Motor Sport Council approval. Rally Italia Sardegna, 1 to 4 October 2026, became the 13th and final round. Autosport added that Toyota and Hyundai had said travel policies kept their staff from going to the Middle East, and that no replacement round was added.

How the title was decided:

• Rally del Paraguay (27 to 30 August, round 11) was won by Sami Pajari, according to Wikipedia (secondary), which shows Evans leading afterwards on 216 points, from Pajari on 196 and Oliver Solberg on 175.
• Rally Chile was won by Solberg, and wrc.com reports that Toyota Gazoo Racing clinched the manufacturers' title there with two rounds left. wrc.com calls it Toyota's sixth straight and 10th overall manufacturers' crown, level with Lancia's record.
• Rally Italia Sardegna settled the drivers' title. Autosport reports that Solberg crashed two corners from the end of the Power Stage, yet still won the rally, 57.6 seconds ahead of Ogier, with Pajari third. Evans finished fifth and took the title.

wrc.com reports that Evans and co-driver Scott Martin were crowned 2026 world champions, five points ahead of Solberg and six ahead of Pajari; those margins come from a search excerpt because the page body could not be read. Autosport says Evans is Britain's first world rally champion since Richard Burns in 2001. Autosport's own reports give Evans's lead going into the finale differently, 21 points in one place and six points before the final day in another, so we do not quote a single figure.

The Dakar Rally and rally-raid

Rally-raid is a separate, off-road form of the sport, and its events run for days: the 2026 Dakar had a prologue and 13 stages. The FIA lists a World Rally-Raid Championship among its world championships, and Wikipedia (secondary) records that the 2025 Dakar was round one of that year's championship.

2025

The 2025 Dakar ran from 3 to 17 January 2025 in Saudi Arabia, from Bisha to Shubaytah, per Wikipedia (secondary). Autosport reports that Yazeed Al-Rajhi won the car category 3 minutes 57 seconds ahead of Henk Lategan, in a total time of 52 hours 52 minutes 15 seconds, with Mattias Ekstrom third. Wikipedia names Timo Gottschalk as Al-Rajhi's co-driver and the car as an Overdrive Racing Toyota Hilux, and lists the other category winners: Daniel Sanders (KTM) in bikes, Nicolas Cavigliasso and Valentina Pertegarini in Challenger, Brock Heger and Max Eddy in SSV, and Martin Macik in trucks.

2026

Dacia's release says the 2026 Dakar opened with a prologue on 3 January, followed by 13 stages from 4 to 17 January 2026, finishing with a loop stage at Yanbu on the Red Sea. Wikipedia (secondary) says it also started in Yanbu.

Extreme H

Extreme H is off-road racing with hydrogen power. The FIA describes the FIA Extreme H World Cup as the first FIA-sanctioned hydrogen racing event. Eight teams each field one woman and one man in the same spec car, the Pioneer 25, over a three-day format of a time trial, head-to-head knockouts, multi-car races and an eight-car final. Wikipedia (secondary) calls it the successor to the electric Extreme E series.

Coverage of the car's launch in Autosport describes a 75 kW Symbio fuel cell with front and rear motors of 200 kW each (400 kW in total), a weight of 2,200 kg and 0 to 100 km/h in 4.5 seconds, a figure the FIA also gives. It was built by Spark Racing Technology on the base of the Extreme E car. Total power is quoted as about 540 hp by Wikipedia and about 550 hp in other coverage.

The first World Cup was held on 9 to 11 October 2025 at Qiddiya, Saudi Arabia. SuperSport reports that Kevin Hansen and Molly Taylor (Jameel Motorsport) won the final on 11 October by 7.068 seconds, ahead of Carl Cox Motorsport and Team EVEN. The FIA has confirmed the World Cup returns to Qiddiya City on 29 to 31 October 2026, so as of October 2026 it remains a single-event World Cup rather than a multi-round world championship.

Pikes Peak International Hill Climb

A hill climb is also a timed event, with drivers making timed runs up a course. The organisers' history page says the Pikes Peak race in Colorado was first contested in 1916 and runs 12.42 miles with 156 turns, climbing 4,725 ft from a start at 9,390 ft to the summit at 14,115 ft. The course is now fully paved; Wikipedia (secondary) dates that to 2011, making 2012 the first all-asphalt race.

• Course record: 7:57.148, set in 2018 by Romain Dumas in the electric Volkswagen I.D. R, per the organisers (as of October 2026).
• 2025 (103rd running): KOAA and Pirelli report that high winds at the summit moved the finish down to Glen Cove, which is why Simone Faggioli's (Nova Proto NP01) winning time was 3:37.196. Pirelli says Dumas was second overall and won the Pikes Peak Open class in 3:42.252. Reports differ on the wind: Pirelli puts the gusts above 100 km/h (about 62 mph), while the organisers' official results release cites gusts over 85 mph in the upper section.
• 2026: DailySportscar reports that Dumas took his sixth overall win in the Ford Super Mustang Mach-E in 8:18.202 over the full course, the third-fastest full-course winning time, with Robin Shute second in 8:29.497.

The long story of the sport, from early road rallies to the Group B era, is on our rallying history page, and the FIA's place in it is on governing bodies.