Formula 1 will run 10 sprint races in 2027 — including, for the first time, one through the barrier-lined streets of Monaco — after the FIA’s World Motor Sport Council approved a 24-round calendar that stretches from Bahrain on 14 March to the Abu Dhabi finale on 12 December.
The increase from six sprints to 10 is the format’s largest single expansion since it was introduced at Silverstone in 2021, and it lands five new venues on the sprint roster: Bahrain, Australia, Japan, Monaco and Abu Dhabi. Canada, Silverstone, Monza, Interlagos and Lusail make up the rest. The season will both open and close with a sprint, and end with back-to-back sprint weekends in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.
Monaco gets two qualifying sessions, not more overtaking
Monaco is the headline, and the contradiction. The principality’s 78-lap Grand Prix is the most processional race on the calendar — a circuit where track position is effectively decided on Saturday and defended for two hours — which makes it an unlikely home for a format sold on wheel-to-wheel racing.
F1’s answer is that the sprint at Monaco, scheduled for the 4-6 June weekend, is not really about the 100km race at all. It is about running qualifying twice. Sprint qualifying takes place on Friday after a single 60-minute practice session, the sprint itself runs on Saturday morning in place of FP3, and Grand Prix qualifying follows on Saturday afternoon. With only one hour of running before the first competitive session, teams arrive at the most set-up-sensitive track of the year underprepared by design — and the two grids that emerge could look meaningfully different.
That is the bet: at a venue where qualifying is the spectacle, give the audience two of them. Whether a 30-minute race around Sainte-Dévote, the Swimming Pool and the tunnel produces anything beyond a single-file procession with a marginally higher crash risk is the question no one at F1 has answered directly.
The numbers behind the expansion
The sprint has grown steadily rather than dramatically. Three events in 2021, three in 2022, then six a year from 2023 onwards — the 2026 season runs sprints at Shanghai, Miami, Montreal, Silverstone, Zandvoort and Singapore. The format itself is not changing for 2027: a 100km race of roughly half an hour, no mandatory pit stops, points for the top eight on an 8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 scale, and a compressed sprint qualifying of 12, 10 and eight-minute segments.
What is changing is the exposure. F1 says total viewership across sprint weekends runs 12 per cent higher than conventional ones, and that sprint qualifying draws up to three times the audience of a free practice session. Replacing dead Friday running with a scored session is, on those figures, straightforwardly good business — for broadcasters selling Friday inventory, for promoters selling three-day tickets, and for a championship that now covers more than half its calendar with some form of Saturday points.
Stefano Domenicali framed the expansion as “giving our fans even more intensity, drama, and the wheel-to-wheel action that make our sport so special”. The F1 chief executive described the wider 2027 schedule as bringing together “some of the most iconic circuits and vibrant cities in the world”, while FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem called it “a strong reflection of the global appeal and continued growth of our sport”, combining “tradition, innovation, and fan engagement”.
What 10 sprints mean for the championship
The competitive arithmetic shifts. Ten sprints put a maximum of 80 additional points in play across a season — roughly three Grand Prix wins’ worth — enough to settle a close title fight without a single Sunday result changing. Drivers who bank consistent Saturday minor placings will be rewarded in a way that did not exist five years ago.
For teams, the cost is preparation time and parts. One hour of practice before parc fermé closes on a sprint weekend leaves little room to recover from a poor baseline, and Monaco is the least forgiving venue imaginable for that constraint. Adding a competitive session at a track where contact with a wall is routine also raises the damage bill in a budget-capped era where crash repairs come out of the same pot as development.
The sprint expansion sits inside a broader reshuffle. Portimão returns on 20 June and Istanbul on 3 October, subject to FIA homologation, while Barcelona drops out until 2028 — when it is set to rotate with Spa — and Zandvoort departs with no scheduled return.
Sprint racing began as an experiment three weekends long. In 2027 it covers 10 of 24 rounds, opens the season, closes it, and takes on Monaco. It is no longer a trial.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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