Amaury Sport Organisation and the Saudi Motorsport Company have moved the January race out of the kingdom, calling the decision exceptional and one-off, while the wider Gulf sporting calendar unravels around it; and the race's new home is still unannounced.
Published 26 October 2026 · 07:03 GMT
Amaury Sport Organisation and the Saudi Motorsport Company have moved the January race out of the kingdom, calling the decision exceptional and one-off, while the wider Gulf sporting calendar unravels around it; and the race's new home is still unannounced. Amaury Sport Organisation and the Saudi Motorsport Company jointly decided that Dakar Saudi Arabia 2027, scheduled for 1 to 15 January 2027, will not be held in the kingdom, following recent developments in the region, calling the decision exceptional and one-off.
The Dakar Rally will not run in Saudi Arabia in 2027. Amaury Sport Organisation and the Saudi Motorsport Company said jointly on Sunday that Dakar Saudi Arabia 2027, scheduled for 1 to 15 January, will not be held in the kingdom, following recent developments in the region. The decision, they added, is exceptional and one-off. The race will go ahead in a different territory, to be announced in the coming days, with a return to Saudi Arabia planned for the landmark 50th edition in 2028. After six years in the kingdom, the world's toughest off-road race is on the move again.
Several facts are now fixed. Saudi Arabia has hosted the rally since 2020, and the 2027 race would have been its eighth in the kingdom and the event's 49th edition overall. The original Saudi route, unveiled in May with a start and finish at King Abdullah Economic City, had already been reworked once, with organisers developing an alternative course in the north of the country as the security situation worsened. That fallback did not survive the latest attacks. Meanwhile: Jeddah's Formula One grand prix was cancelled, the final round of the World Rally Championship in Saudi Arabia next month was scrapped, and an exhibition tennis tournament featuring Djokovic, Alcaraz and Zverev was postponed until late December.
The one fact everyone wants is the one nobody has: the destination. Organisers have promised an announcement in the coming days, and until then the route is speculation, however well sourced. Specialist media point to a start in Spain and a finish in Morocco, and an earlier report said the race would begin with a European prologue before heading to Morocco for around a dozen stages. Neither version is confirmed, and stage count, start city and finish city all remain open. What is certain is only that the January dates stand and the kingdom does not.
A rally is not a war, yet its relocation measures something no communique can: whether a country is judged safe enough to stage a moving city of drivers, mechanics, journalists and spectators across open desert. Saudi Arabia has spent a decade buying into the centre of world sport, and the Dakar was a flagship acquisition. Its departure is therefore not only a logistical problem for one race; it signals a shift in the risk calculus for the whole Gulf sporting calendar. When golf, cycling, tennis, Formula One and rallying all retreat in the same month, the pattern stops looking like bad luck and starts looking like a verdict; one that sponsors, broadcasters and host cities across the region will read closely, including in Morocco, where a push to stage the 2030 World Cup final is already under way.
Together, the month's cancellations describe a threshold crossed, not a single incident. The Dakar organisers tried to adapt: first the original route, then a northern alternative, then finally relocation. Each step bought time, and each step was overtaken by events. That pattern, adaptation, then retreat, now runs across the Gulf calendar, as insurers, teams and federations apply a stricter test than host governments would like. The rally's return to Saudi Arabia in 2028 is promised, but promises of that kind are only as strong as the security picture when the trucks roll again. Until then, the sport's centre of gravity shifts toward alternative hosts.
The immediate losers are clear: Saudi hotels, suppliers and the local motorsport economy lose a January showcase, while teams must re-plan logistics at short notice. The less obvious effects run deeper. A Moroccan or Spanish finish would hand North Africa or southern Europe a global television audience in midwinter, and it would revive the Dakar's founding mythology, a race that once crossed the Sahara to its namesake capital, at precisely the moment when African motorsport is pushing for a bigger stage, as Formula One's own return to Africa shows. Conversely, every event that leaves the Gulf weakens the argument that sport can be insulated from war; an argument worth billions to its hosts.
Three things will settle the story: the announcement itself, expected in the coming days, host territory, start and finish cities, and whether the January dates hold. Second, the reaction of teams and sponsors, whose logistics will reveal whether the new route is a like-for-like replacement or a scaled-back edition. Third, the 2028 question, whether the promised return to Saudi Arabia survives contact with the security picture, or whether a successful African edition creates its own momentum. The wider context will not stand still either, with diplomacy around the Saudi-Houthi confrontation still unresolved. For now, the race is homeless, and the map is about to be redrawn.
How the West reads a retreat from the Gulf calendar From Western newsrooms, the story is framed as security arithmetic. Reuters, which first reported the Africa move days before the announcement, stresses the sequence: an original route, a northern fallback, then a deterioration that made even the fallback untenable. In that reading, the organisers held on as long as they could, until contingency planning ran out of road.
What Singapore and Asia hear in the relocation From East Asia, the coverage is cooler and more logistical. The Straits Times, carrying the Reuters account, leads with the mechanics, the dates, the exceptional and one-off character of the decision, and the promised return in 2028, rather than with the politics. The subtext is regional: Asia's calendar has already absorbed cancellations in Jeddah and Bahrain, and the question is whether the disruption stays contained to the Gulf or spreads further east.
Why Africa watches a homecoming that is not yet confirmed From the Global South, the story carries a different charge. Al Jazeera and Gulf News both note that a move to Morocco would return the race to Africa for the first time since 2007, closing a circle that began with the Paris-Dakar in 1978 and was broken when security threats pushed the race to South America in 2009. For African readers, the unconfirmed reports are therefore more than rumour: they raise the prospect of the world's toughest race coming home, with the jobs, roads and attention that follow.
Amaury Sport Organisation and the Saudi Motorsport Company jointly decided that Dakar Saudi Arabia 2027, scheduled for 1 to 15 January, will not be held in the kingdom, following recent developments in the region. The decision follows attacks by Yemen's Houthis on Saudi cities, airports and energy infrastructure, and it comes as other Saudi sporting events are cancelled or postponed. Organisers called the move exceptional and one-off, and intend to return in 2028.
The new territory has not been announced. Organisers say it will be named in the coming days, and the race will go ahead in January. Specialist media report the preferred option is a start in Spain and a finish in Morocco, which would return the race to Africa for the first time since 2007. None of that has been confirmed by the organisers, so the destination, start city and finish city remain open.
The Dakar is the latest in a series of disruptions. Jeddah's Formula One grand prix was cancelled and the Bahrain race was called off and later rescheduled in Malaysia, the final round of the World Rally Championship in Saudi Arabia next month was scrapped, golf's Saudi International was postponed indefinitely, cycling's Urban World Championships was cancelled, and an exhibition tennis tournament was postponed until late December.
Organisers say they intend to bring the rally back to Saudi Arabia for its landmark 50th edition in 2028. That promise depends on the security picture at the time, and a successful edition elsewhere in 2027 could change the calculation. The 2027 race itself keeps its January dates, from 1 to 15 January, wherever it is ultimately held.
