Dakar 2027 Rally to be moved out of Saudi Arabia

The 2027 race will be held in a different territory

The 2027 Dakar Rally will take place not in Saudi Arabia but in a different territory, the organizers announced on Sunday, October 25. The statement says the race will go ahead and will still be organized by ASO together with the Saudi Motorsport Company (SMC), but the venue will change

A possible return to Africa

According to specialized media, the preferred option for 2027 is a start in Spain with a finish in Morocco. If this plan is realized, the multi-stage race, created in 1978, will return to Africa for the first time since 2007. Historically, the rally, formerly known as the Paris–Dakar, started in the French capital and ended in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, but due to security threats along the route in North Africa it was held in South America from 2009, and in Saudi Arabia from 2020. The organizers have stated their intention to bring the race back to Saudi Arabia in 2028 to mark its 50th edition.

Context: a wave of sports event relocations

The relocation of the Dakar became yet another case of a sports event being cancelled, postponed or moved amid the war between the United States and Iran that broke out in February. According to AFP, in recent weeks the Houthi attacks on Saudi civilian infrastructure have reached a scale unprecedented since 2014, including a strike on Riyadh airport this month that killed 13 people and left hundreds wounded. It was these strikes, the agency reports, that made it impossible for the organizers to keep the race in Saudi Arabia through a new route in the north of the country. The civil war in Yemen, which had subsided after the 2022 truce, flared up again in July amid the broader Middle East conflict.

Other events in the region in question

A number of competitions in the region have already been postponed or cancelled: the Formula 1 Grand Prix in Jeddah is cancelled this season; the race in Bahrain was first removed from the calendar and then moved under the same name to Malaysia; the World Rally Championship finale in Saudi Arabia next month is also cancelled. An exhibition tennis tournament featuring Novak Djokovic, Carlos Alcaraz and Alexander Zverev has been postponed until the end of December, and the WTA Finals, which were planned to be held in Riyadh, will instead take place in Indian Wells in the United States. At the same time, the last two races of the Formula 1 season — in Qatar (November 29) and Abu Dhabi (December 6) — and the November MotoGP round in Qatar remain on the calendar, although, according to AFP, they are the subject of intense internal discussions.

Why it matters

The decision affects fans, teams and the organizers of one of the world's most famous rally raids, as well as Saudi Arabia, for which the Dakar has been part of its sports strategy since 2020. In practical terms, this means a change of route and logistics for the 2027 race within days, when the new host country will be named, as well as uncertainty for the other events in the region: even the remaining Formula 1 and MotoGP races, according to AFP, are being discussed by the organizers. A return to Africa for the first time since 2007 would be a notable milestone in the history of the competition.