2025 WRC Calendar

01st August 2024

Ben Miles

The full 2025 World Rally Championship calendar has been revealed. Comprising 14 rounds, the season begins with the traditional Monte Carlo Rally opener in January and ends with the WRC’s first visit to Saudi Arabia in November, making this the longest rally season since 2008.

With major changes for the coming season including the new final round and the addition of a second round in South America, the 2025 World Rally Championship should be one of the most interesting since the Covid-shortened season of 2020. Here’s the things you need to know.

What new rallies are there in the WRC in 2025?

Three brand-new rallies join the calendar for 2025: Rally Islas Canarias, Rally Paraguay and Rally Saudi Arabia.

Rally Islas Canarias takes place on the largest of the Canary Islands, Gran Canaria, and has been a part of the European rallying scene since the 1970s. The 2025 season will be the first time that the event has been elevated to the very top level. Run on Tarmac roads, Rally Islas Canarias is currently set to be on the WRC calendar for two years through to 2026.

Rally Paraguay has run as Rally Trans Ituapa since the late 1980s and will become the second South American round on the WRC calendar alongside Rally Chile in 2025. The two southern hemisphere events will run within a fortnight of each other, ensuring that cars don’t need to be shipped back-and-forth from Europe.

Finally, Rally Saudi Arabia will be the championship’s first visit to the Middle East. A brand-new event based out of Jeddah, the Saudi rally will take the spot Japan has occupied since 2022 as the final round of the season, and has signed a decade-long contract with the WRC.

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Which rallies will not be back for 2025?

Croatia, Latvia and Poland. Poland’s contract was only for a single season in 2024, while Croatia falls off the calendar after four successive seasons after an agreement could not be reached for a new contract. Latvia’s disappearance from the WRC schedule was expected as a rotation with the neighbouring Rally Estonia, which last year moved down to the regional European Rally Championship.

What are the rest of the WRC rounds for 2025?

We kick off the season as usual in Monte Carlo on the 13^th January, before the WRC’s usual early-year trip to the icey lands of Sweden for the Championship’s only snow round.

Kenya’s Safari rally has retained its place in spring. That change to move the African round to an earlier slot was made last year, pushing the event to a more traditional time and bringing more variability of conditions.

After its sojourn to the coast of Africa, the championship will begin a tour of the Mediterranean with Rally Portugal in May, Rally Sardinia in June and the Acropolis Rally in Greece later the same month. The latter switches from being the tenth round of the championship last year to the seventh in 2025, as part of the WRC’s attempts to rationalise the calendar’s travel requirements better.

We move north in July and August for Estonia and the traditional trip to Sweden, before Chile completes the South American leg just after Paraguay. The final leg of the season sees a significant amount of travel for the teams. In October they will return to Europe for the third running of the Central European Rally across Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic, before flying to Japan and Saudi Arabia in November.

How many gravel and Tarmac rallies are there in 2025?

With the addition of Rally Islas Canarias, the WRC will retain the same ratio of surfaces as in 2024. There will be four Tarmac rallies: Monte Carlo, Islas Canarias, Central Europe and Japan, and eight gravel rallies: Kenya, Portugal, Sardinia, Greece, Estonia, Finland, Paraguay, Chile and Saudi Arabia, joined by the one snow rally in Sweden.