WorldSBK Announces New World Sportbike Championship as the Axe Falls on Another

The World Superbike Championship will host a new championship in 2026, as the World Sportbike Championship is announced.

The new series will succeed World Supersport 300 (WorldSSP 300) as the new bottom rung on the World Superbike racing ladder. WorldSSP 300 has held a place within the WorldSBK family since 2017, making use of single and twin-cylinder road-derived machines such as the Honda CBR500R, Kawasaki Ninja 400, KTM RC390 R, and Yamaha R3. Each bike had specific minimum weight and rev limit restrictions to help maintain equality across the grid.

While the spec of the outgoing bike is known, it’s not yet known how the new World Sportbike class will shape up. The press release from Dorna merely stipulates that it is set to use “mid-tier capacity engines”, and that it will “promise exciting competition and enhanced opportunities for manufacturers, teams, and riders alike.” The phrase “enhanced opportunities for manufacturers” leads us to believe that the Sportbike class will rely on the new breed of more road-focused sportsbikes, the kind that are selling well for most manufacturers in a most of global regions.

Here in the UK, we have the BSB, which includes the National Sportbike Championship, a class that joined the calendar in 2023. Eligible bikes listed on the MSVR website for that championship are the Yamaha R7, Aprilia RS660, Kawasaki Ninja 650, and Honda Hornet 750, although Kove has a presence, thanks to Casey O’Gorman and James Hillier, and the Triumph Daytona 660 is also in the mix.

It’s expected that the new series could follow the lead of the BSB, although further confirmation of that is as yet not known. WorldSBK confirms that “additional details regarding technical specifications and sporting regulations for World Sportbike” will be “released in due course”.

Images: WorldSBK / BSB

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