What Is the NLS?

The NLS is the Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie, the endurance championship that runs on the Nordschleife roughly ten times a year. It is the largest regular grid in motorsport, the training ground for the 24 Hours of Nürburgring, and one of the very few places where a works GT3 team and a group of friends in a hatchback share the same race.

What the Name Means

Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie translates as Nürburgring Endurance Series. Long-time fans still call it the VLN, which was its name for decades — short for Veranstaltergemeinschaft Langstreckenpokal Nürburgring, the organising association of clubs behind it. The series was renamed NLS in 2020; the VLN still exists as the body that runs it.

Its roots go back to 1977, when a group of clubs agreed to run their separate Nordschleife events under one shared set of rules. Almost fifty years later that is still the basic idea: one rulebook, one circuit, everybody welcome who can prove they belong there.

The Circuit

NLS races use the Nordschleife joined to part of the modern Grand Prix circuit, giving a lap of just over twenty-four kilometres. That single number explains most of what follows. A lap takes a GT3 car around eight minutes and a small production car well over eleven, so the field is spread across the whole circuit at all times and the fastest cars are lapping the slowest almost continuously.

The Race Format

Almost everything happens on one Saturday. Qualifying in the morning, race in the afternoon, everyone home that night — there is no multi-day weekend. Most races run to four hours; the calendar usually carries one longer event, and in 2026 that is the six-hour ADAC Ruhr-Pokal-Rennen in August.

A car may be shared by up to three drivers, or driven solo for the full distance by one. Pit stops, fuel and driver changes are all part of the strategy, but the format is deliberately simple. The complexity at the Nürburgring comes from the traffic, not from the regulations.

Who Actually Races

This is the part that surprises people. A single NLS grid runs from professional manufacturer-backed GT3 teams at the front to privateers in road-legal cars with a roll cage and harnesses at the back. The 2026 season opened with 132 starters; round two fielded 136 cars across twenty classes, of which twenty-six were GT3s.

That round two also had Max Verstappen on the entry list, sharing a Mercedes-AMG GT3 with Daniel Juncadella and Jules Gounon — a useful illustration of the range. The same race contained a reigning Formula 1 driver and cars that would not look out of place in a supermarket car park.

You Cannot Simply Enter

The Nordschleife has its own licence, and it is earned in stages rather than bought. A driver starts with a course that combines an online test, classroom instruction, a bus tour of the circuit and supervised laps with an instructor. Eight clean laps in that programme earn the lower-grade permit, which allows racing in the less powerful classes.

Only after at least seven trouble-free laps in an actual NLS race does a driver earn the higher grade — and only that grade opens the door to SP9, the GT3 class. There is no shortcut. A driver’s record elsewhere in motorsport does not exempt them from starting at the bottom of this ladder.

How the Championship Is Won

The NLS scores its drivers’ championship by position within a group rather than by outright finishing order. The practical consequence is unusual: the driver leading the championship is often not racing anywhere near the overall lead, and a well-run campaign in a modest class can beat a season of GT3 podiums. A separate NLS Speed-Trophy exists for the outright teams’ honours. The full points tables, dropped results and tie-breaks are in How NLS Championship Points Work.

If you have ever wondered why an NLS report celebrates a car that finished fortieth overall, this is why. See the class system for how those groups are actually drawn up.

Safety on a Twenty-Four Kilometre Lap

A circuit this long cannot be neutralised the way a short one can. Sending a Safety Car out would take several minutes just to collect a field spread over twenty-four kilometres, so the Nürburgring uses Code 60 instead: a 60 km/h limit applied only to the affected stretch, leaving the rest of the lap racing.

Why the NLS Matters

For manufacturers it is a development programme disguised as a championship — a place to run new machinery hard, repeatedly, on the most punishing circuit available, in the months before the 24 Hours. For everyone else it is the last major series where the route from spectator to competitor is still genuinely open, provided you are willing to start at the bottom and earn the permit.