Dakar Rally 2027 Moved Out of Saudi Arabia, With New Host to Be Named in Coming Days

Since Houthi missiles and drones began hitting Saudi targets in recent weeks, including Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport, the war has been reaching into the kingdom's sports calendar. On Sunday, Oct. 25, it claimed its biggest motorsport event yet.

The Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) and the Saudi Motorsport Company said in a joint statement that Dakar Saudi Arabia 2027, scheduled for Jan. 1 to 15, "will not be held in the Kingdom, following recent developments in the region." The statement called the decision "exceptional and one-off."

The rally will still happen. "The 2027 edition will take place in a different territory and will be organised by ASO," the statement said. The location will be announced "in the coming days." ASO said it is in direct contact with competitors, teams and partners about the transition.

Where it could go

Organisers have not named a replacement. Specialist race media say the preferred option is a start in Spain with Morocco as the destination, according to AFP's account of that reporting. Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing sources involved in the World Rally-Raid Championship, that the rally would be run in Africa.

A Moroccan finish would put the Dakar on African soil for the first time since 2007. The race began in 1978 as a run from Paris to the Senegalese capital. It was cancelled on short notice in 2008 over security concerns in North Africa. It then ran in South America from 2009 to 2019 and has been held in Saudi Arabia since 2020.

The timing is tight. The start was 68 days away when the announcement came, and teams now have to rework shipping, logistics and entries for a route that does not yet exist publicly.

Why Saudi Arabia is out

Organisers had tried to save the Saudi date. AFP reports they were working on a new route in the northern part of the country. The strikes this month, including the attacks on the Riyadh airport, made that impossible.

The death toll from the airport attacks is reported differently. AFP puts it at 13 dead and hundreds injured. Al Jazeera cites 18 dead. Either way, AFP describes recent Houthi attacks on Saudi civilian infrastructure as reaching a scale not seen since the Yemen conflict began in 2014.

The backdrop is a Yemen truce that held from 2022 until it collapsed in July, as the wider U.S.-Iran war that began in February spread across the region. The Houthis have said they hit the Riyadh airport and called it a military target, a claim already in our earlier reporting. Fighting between government forces and the Houthis has also intensified on several fronts inside Yemen, according to Al Jazeera.

A growing list of cancellations

The Dakar joins a long list of events pulled from Saudi Arabia this year:

• The Formula One grand prix in Jeddah was cancelled.
• The Bahrain race was called off and later rescheduled under the same name in Malaysia.
• The final round of the World Rally Championship in Saudi Arabia, due next month, has been scrapped.
• The WTA Finals, scheduled for Riyadh next month, will be held at Indian Wells, California.
• An exhibition tennis event with Novak Djokovic, Carlos Alcaraz and Alexander Zverev, the Six Kings Slam, has been postponed from October to late December.
• The Asian Tour's Saudi International golf event has been postponed with no new date, and the Urban World Championships in cycling were cancelled, according to The Independent.

The Gulf calendar is not fully cleared. The last two F1 races of the season, in Qatar on Nov. 29 and Abu Dhabi on Dec. 6, remain scheduled, as does next month's Qatar MotoGP. AFP reports all three are the subject of intense internal debate.

What organisers say comes next

The organisers' position is that this is a pause, not a divorce. They intend to bring the rally back to Saudi Arabia in 2028 for its 50th edition, and described the 2027 move as a one-off. The Saudi Motorsport Company signed onto the statement alongside ASO.

The 2028 return depends on conditions in Saudi Arabia more than a year from now, and no one has said what would trigger a further change. The first concrete answer is due within days: ASO has promised to name the 2027 host territory, and teams are waiting on it to plan a January start.