RIYADH, 30 October 2026 — Portugal and Morocco will host the 2027 Dakar Rally, organisers announced on Friday, moving the world’s most gruelling endurance race out of Saudi Arabia after repeated Houthi attacks on the kingdom made staging it there impossible.
The Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), which runs the rally, said the 49th edition will open with a prologue and first special stage in Portugal’s Algarve region before heading to Morocco for 11 stages and a rest day in Agadir. The route covers 7,824 kilometres in total, including 4,341 kilometres of timed special stages, running from Loulé-Faro to Marrakech.
The race, initially scheduled for 1–15 January, has been rescheduled to 9–23 January, subject to approval by the FIA World Motor Sport Council, organisers said.
A return to Africa after nearly two decades
The move brings the Dakar back to African soil for the first time since the rally left the continent nearly two decades ago. Created in 1978 as the Paris-Dakar, the race ran from the French capital to the Senegalese capital until security threats along its North African route forced it to South America in 2009. It has been held in Saudi Arabia since 2020.
Race director David Castera said the relocated edition would lose none of its character. “Although it has been moved, the 49th edition of the Dakar will still meet the sporting standards which has always made the event the most demanding of endurance rallies,” he said.
Why Saudi Arabia lost the race
ASO announced on Sunday that the 2027 event would not be held in Saudi Arabia because of security concerns, describing the decision as “exceptional and one-off”. Organisers had hoped to keep the race in the kingdom by working on a new route in the northern part of the country, but the latest strikes rendered that impossible, reports said.
Among them was a missile strike on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport this month that killed 13 people and injured hundreds more — the deadliest attack on Saudi civilian infrastructure in the current campaign. In recent weeks, Houthi attacks on Saudi airports, energy sites and cities have reached a scale unprecedented since the start of the conflict in Yemen in 2014, according to reports.
The rally is the latest in a string of sporting events in the region disrupted by the conflict, as organisers weigh the safety of competitors, crews and spectators against the logistics of staging international events in the Gulf.
Back to Saudi Arabia in 2028
Organisers said they intend to bring the rally back to Saudi Arabia in 2028 to celebrate its 50th edition. Morocco, which will host the bulk of the 2027 route from north to far south, gives the event a return to the desert terrain where the Dakar made its name — and a bridge back to the kingdom the following year.
For Saudi Arabia, the loss is a symbolic blow to its ambitions as a host of global sporting events. For the rally itself, the 2027 edition will be a homecoming of sorts: a race born in Africa, returning to the continent where its legend was forged.
