WRC Rally 2026: Evans Takes Title, Results and 2027 Calendar

The 2026 World Rally Championship is over, and Elfyn Evans is the champion. The Welshman and co-driver Scott Martin won the title by five points from Oliver Solberg after the 13th and final round, Rally Italia Sardegna, finished on 4 October, while Toyota won 12 of the 13 rallies and the manufacturers' crown.

The final drivers' table was remarkably tight at the top. Evans finished on 243 points, Solberg on 238 and Sami Pajari on 237, so just six points separated the top three after ten months of competition. Sébastien Ogier was fourth on 189, Adrien Fourmaux was the best Hyundai driver in fifth on 183, and Takamoto Katsuta completed the top six on 175. The top four and Katsuta all drove Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 cars.

Evans arrived in Sardinia with a 21-point lead, which sounds comfortable but came with a catch. As championship leader he had to open the road on Friday, sweeping loose gravel off the stages for the cars behind him. Solberg started third on the road, survived a slow puncture to end Friday third, then took the rally lead with a stunning Saturday while Evans sat a distant fifth overall. Topping the Super Sunday classification cut Evans's advantage to three points, and when Evans had to stop and change a punctured front-right tyre on the Osilo–Tergu stage, the gap fell to a single point.

That left the whole season riding on the final test, the 7.10km Sassari–Argentiera Power Stage, where bonus points go to the fastest crews. Evans admitted he had overdriven his run and had more or less given up. Solberg was 1.9 seconds up on him with roughly 1.2km to go when the car stepped out on a left-hander along the Argentiera coastline, snapped the other way and went off into the dunes. He got going again and still won the rally, 57.6 seconds ahead of Ogier, but the time lost on that stage was enough to hand Evans and Martin the championship.

For Evans the title ends a long run of near misses. He had finished runner-up five times, in 2020, 2021, 2023, 2024 and 2025. He becomes the first Welsh world rally champion and the first British driver to win the title since Richard Burns in 2001, and it is also the first world crown for Martin.

The winners' list for the WRC rally 2026 season shows how completely Toyota controlled the year. Solberg won the opening Rallye Monte-Carlo, Evans took Rally Sweden, and Katsuta won back-to-back in Kenya and Croatia. Ogier won the Canary Islands, Thierry Neuville gave Hyundai its only victory in Portugal, Evans won Rally Japan and Ogier added the Acropolis. Pajari then won three in a row, in Estonia, Finland and Paraguay, before Solberg closed the season with wins in Chile and Sardinia.

Pajari's mid-season streak is the other big story of the year. Driving for Toyota's second Rally1 squad, Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT2, with co-driver Marko Salminen, the Finn turned three consecutive rallies into his first three top-flight wins and finished just one point short of second place in the standings.

The manufacturers' fight was settled one round early, in Chile. Toyota Gazoo Racing finished on 662 points against 440 for Hyundai Shell Mobis, with Toyota's second team third on 251 and M-Sport Ford fourth on 168. Solberg's Sardinia victory was a record-equalling 12th win from 13 events for Toyota, and it was the fifth time in six years the team has swept the drivers', co-drivers' and manufacturers' titles.

The season was also shorter than planned. The original calendar had 14 rounds and was due to finish with Rally Saudi Arabia in Jeddah on 11-14 November, but that event was removed in September because of the war involving Iran. An all-gravel replacement in Catalonia was discussed but not confirmed in time, so Sardinia, run from Alghero on 1-4 October, became the finale.

Attention now turns to 2027, which brings the new WRC27 technical regulations and ends the homologation cycle in which the GR Yaris Rally1 has just completed its fifth and final season. The 2027 calendar, announced on 8 October, has 15 rounds, the most since 2008. It opens at Monte-Carlo on 21-24 January and closes in Saudi Arabia on 25-28 November.

The headline additions are Rally US on 26-29 August, the first American round since 1988, and Rally Scotland on 30 September to 3 October, which brings the championship back to Britain. Italy's round moves from Sardinian gravel to asphalt around Rome on 8-11 July, while Portugal drops off the schedule for what is understood to be a single season, moving Japan up to round six. With new cars and new venues, 2027 will test whether Evans can defend a title he waited so long to win.