2026 is a milestone year: the organiser bills it as the NLS's 50th season. The calendar keeps the familiar shape — ten races from March to October, all on the combined GP-and-Nordschleife layout at the Nürburgring.
The season opens on 14 March, and — as in recent years — the ADAC 24h Qualifiers are again part of the championship: the two four-hour qualifier races count as full rounds, feeding the build-up to the Nürburgring 24 Hours in May. Most rounds run to four hours, with one six-hour race the season's longest.
The headline entry is Max Verstappen. To let the four-time Formula 1 champion race a Mercedes-AMG GT3 on the Nordschleife, the series moved its second round forward by a week — to 21 March — so it no longer clashed with an F1 date.
The scoring principles are unchanged: class-by-class championships with each entrant's best eight of ten results counting. As ever, the real draw is the variety — a hundred-plus cars of very different speeds sharing one of the toughest circuits in the world. For the full explainer, see how NLS scoring works.