Where We Might See the WRC Return to the United States in 2026

Last weekend’s Rally Finland, held near the town of Jyväskylä, was one of the fabled annual events in the World Rally Championship. Kalle Rovanperä, Sébastien Ogier, et al., flew along the forest-lined gravel tracks—known for loose rocks, blind crests, and big jumps—at speeds nudging 112 mph (180km/h), watched by thousands of enthusiastic spectators for whom attendance from dawn to dusk is a long-standing tradition.

It is the kind of spectacle that WRC organizers hope will soon find its way to the United States.

The state of Tennessee is drawing closer to getting a place on the FIA World Rally Championship calendar from 2026 onwards. The WRC has not visited the United States since 1988, when the Olympus Rally—based out of Washington—held the last of its three world championship events, but the WRC is in the process of evolving its calendar.

Next year’s expansion will feature Spain’s return—its rally relocated to the Canary Islands—alongside new events in Paraguay and Saudi Arabia.

There are plans long-term to expand the schedule to 16 events—so long as the balance between quality and quantity is retained—and the United States is a pillar of that development.

“In terms of Rally USA, we have an existing relationship with the state of Tennessee, and particularly Chattanooga,” Simon Larkin, events director at WRC Promoter, explains to Autoweek. “We’ve already run and done a number of inspections over there. We’re going to push ahead and create a whole new organization structure over there, we have a new promoter that we’re just finalizing a deal with—of which we will be a stakeholder.

“Through 2025 the plan is to run a test event there, and we’re working with the [American Rally Association] to have it as a round of the ARA, because we also want to see the WRC coming to the US as a chance to improve the national championship as well. We think we can help them, that’s a critical step, and then put it on the [WRC] calendar for 2026.”

An exact date for 2026 has yet to be determined, but avoiding the summer months is a priority, evidently meaning spring or fall, depending on the structure of the rest of the calendar.

The event would be based out of Chattanooga, which would allow WRC Promoter to create a rally that retains the WRC’s traditions while bringing the sport to new fans.

“There’s more than enough amazing forest roads around there—the core of our sport—but there’s also a great opportunity to put on an amazing event there,” Larkin says. “We can put on a car show around it, we can put on amazing super special stages, we’re already looking a street stage, we could do a start/finish in Nashville.”

WRC Promoter’s expected involvement as a stakeholder of Rally USA also shows that this is not a short-term bandwagon-jumping project but one with long-term aims to grow the championship.

“We can see from all of our stats on social media, and in the other ways our sport is consumed—and it’s not a surprise in a country of 300-350 million people—that there is a high percentage of fans [in the US],” Larkin says. “That comes from our social media [data] and our own platforms like WRC TV, and if we can get thirty-, forty-, or fifty-thousand of them to come from within the US to come to a rally—or from across the border in Canada where there is a vibrant scene, and from Mexico where we’ve been going for 20 years—we think we can create a really viable event, and then also grow it.”

Larkin concedes WRC “takes the blame” for its lengthy absence in the United States and reckons “we missed an opportunity quite a few years ago where we had two of the biggest extreme sports stars competing in rallying, when we had Travis [Pastrana] and Ken [Block].”

But now attitudes have changed within the championship.

“I don’t think we’ve pushed hard enough to realize the change in business model for us that would be required in the US, it’s just a fact,” Larkin says. “We have to have the confidence in our product to put our skin in the game and then refinance that, and take the risk, and we’ve probably been a bit risk-averse. We’re done with that, we’re 100% onboard for taking that risk and backing ourselves in, let’s face it, the world’s biggest consumer market.”

The premier class, Rally1, only has three manufacturers in Hyundai, Toyota, and the M-Sport-run Ford, and WRC is eager to entice more, when new yet-to-be-defined technical regulations are introduced in 2027.

“The fact is—and it’s not to undermine the value of the US—it is a box ticking [exercise]: ‘Does that sport go to the US?’ Yes, and that’s just a fact,” Larkin says on the appeal of the US market. “There are a lot of American brands trying to break out of the US and we can give them a platform with a home event.”