WorldSBK. 2026 season

Origin

The Superbike World Championship was created by the FIM in 1988 as a world series for production-derived four-stroke machinery — racing versions of motorcycles the public could buy, in deliberate contrast to the prototypes of grand prix racing.¹ The first round ran on Donington Park's National Circuit on 3 April 1988: Davide Tardozzi won race one on a Yamaha-powered Bimota by 1.090 seconds, with road-racing great Joey Dunlop on the podium, then crashed out of the lead of race two on the final lap, handing it to Marco Lucchinelli's Ducati 851.¹ That weekend's aggregate scoring was never used again, but the two-race format became the championship's signature. American Fred Merkel took the inaugural title for Honda at the Manfield finale in New Zealand and retained it in 1989.²

Turning points

The Ducati formula

Because the grid had to be homologated from road bikes, the rulebook balanced engine concepts rather than prescribing one — most consequentially allowing Ducati's larger-capacity V-twins to race the Japanese inline fours.³ Ducati turned that equivalence into an era: Carl Fogarty's four titles (1994, 1995, 1998, 1999) made him the championship's defining rider, his 59 race wins standing as the record for nearly two decades, and the marque remains the most successful in series history.³ Troy Bayliss added three Ducati titles across three different rule sets between 2001 and 2008, by which point the twins had grown to 1200cc against the fours' 1000.³

The Rea era

Jonathan Rea joined Kawasaki in 2015 and won the title in his first season — then kept winning it, six championships in succession through 2020, the first rider in superbike history to manage even three in a row at world level.⁴ He passed Fogarty's win record at Brno in June 2018 and retired from full-time racing in 2025 holding the records for race wins (119), podiums and pole positions.⁴ The streak ended only when Toprak Razgatlioglu took Yamaha's first riders' title since 2009 at the 2021 Indonesian finale; Rea's monopoly had meanwhile prompted the format's modern shape — since 2019 each round runs three races, two full-length sprints around a short Sunday-morning Superpole Race.³⁴

Manufacturer churn at the top

The 2020s broke the Kawasaki-Ducati duopoly's grip on the riders' crown in both directions: Álvaro Bautista won back-to-back titles for Ducati in 2022 and 2023, then Razgatlioglu — having switched from Yamaha — delivered BMW's first world championship in 2024 on the M 1000 RR and retained it in 2025.⁵ His 2025 season ran to 21 wins and 616 points, including a run of 13 consecutive victories that equalled his own record, and was decided at the Jerez finale just 13 points ahead of Ducati's Nicolò Bulega.⁵

Today's shape

Razgatlioglu left as champion: only the fourth rider with three or more titles, after Fogarty, Bayliss and Rea, he moved to MotoGP with Pramac Yamaha for 2026 — the first reigning or former Superbike world champion to make that jump since Ben Spies in 2010, and the first Turkish rider in the premier class.⁵⁶ The championship he vacated opened at Phillip Island in February 2026 with Bulega — runner-up in both 2024 and 2025 — winning the first race from pole, while Bimota took its first double podium since that opening 1988 weekend, a neat closing of the series' first circle.⁷ Race weekends keep the three-race format, and the title fight Bulega was denied two years running is now his to lose.⁷

Footnotes

1. "1988 Donington Superbike World Championship round," Wikipedia, accessed 11 June 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Donington_Superbike_World_Championship_round; WorldSBK, "1988 – WorldSBK is born," accessed 11 June 2026, https://www.worldsbk.com/en/news/2017/1988+WorldSBK+is+born. ↩ ↩²

2. WorldSBK, "FEATURE: where WorldSBK all began and where magic continues to happen," accessed 11 June 2026, https://www.worldsbk.com/en/news/2022/FEATURE+where+WorldSBK+all+began+and+where+magic+continues+to+happen; Devitt, "History of the World Superbike Championship," accessed 11 June 2026, https://www.devittinsurance.com/guides/motorcycle-racing/world-superbike-championship/history/. ↩

3. Devitt, "History of the World Superbike Championship," accessed 11 June 2026, https://www.devittinsurance.com/guides/motorcycle-racing/world-superbike-championship/history/. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

4. "Jonathan Rea," Wikipedia, accessed 11 June 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Rea; Guinness World Records, "Most consecutive wins of the Superbike World Championship," accessed 11 June 2026, https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/496705-most-consecutive-wins-of-the-superbike-world-championship. ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. BMW Group PressClub, "He did it again: Toprak Razgatlioglu is the 2025 WorldSBK World Champion," accessed 11 June 2026, https://www.press.bmwgroup.com/global/article/detail/T0453411EN/he-did-it-again:-toprak-razgatlioglu-is-the-2025-worldsbk-world-champion?language=en; WorldSBK, "#TripleToprak: Razgatlioglu takes third World Championship after fierce Bulega fight in 2025," accessed 11 June 2026, https://www.worldsbk.com/en/news/2025/TripleToprak+Razgatlioglu+takes+third+World+Championship+after+fierce+Bulega+fight+in+2025. ↩ ↩² ↩³

6. Crash.net, "Pramac Yamaha confirm Toprak Razgatlioglu MotoGP move for 2026," accessed 11 June 2026, https://www.crash.net/motogp/news/1073139/1/pramac-yamaha-confirm-toprak-razgatlioglu-motogp-move-2026. ↩

7. WorldSBK, "STARTING IN STYLE: Bulega takes lights-to-flag victory at Phillip Island as Montella, Baldassarri claim maiden podiums," accessed 11 June 2026, https://www.worldsbk.com/en/news/2026/STARTING+IN+STYLE+Bulega+takes+lightstoflag+victory+at+Phillip+Island+as+Montella+Baldassarri+claim+maiden+podiums; WorldSBK, "STATS ROUND-UP: Bulega surpasses Biaggi and Melandri, Bimota take first double podium since 1988," accessed 11 June 2026, https://www.worldsbk.com/en/news/2026/STATS+ROUNDUP+Bulega+surpasses+Biaggi+and+Melandri+Bimota+take+first+double+podium+since+1988. ↩ ↩²