The 2027 calendar hands Max Verstappen the Nürburgring 24 Hours and takes away his practice
The FIA published the 2027 Formula 1 calendar on 16 September, twenty-four races and ten sprints. Lay it over the endurance calendars for the same year and one line jumps out. The ADAC RAVENOL 24h Nürburgring runs from 27 to 30 May 2027, and there is no Formula 1 race anywhere near it.
Max Verstappen has said he wants to go back. The calendar has just told him he can.
Two clear weeks on either side of the Nürburgring
The Canadian Grand Prix finishes on 23 May. Monaco is not until 6 June. The 24 Hours sits in the middle of that gap with four days of clear air on one side and five on the other, which is not the kind of squeeze that forces a private jet out of Montreal on Sunday night.
That is a better run than he had in 2026, when the race fell on 14 to 17 May and he made it work anyway. He was leading it, too. The #3 Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo of Mercedes-AMG Team Verstappen Racing, shared with Lucas Auer, Jules Gounon and Daniel Juncadella, broke a driveshaft in the closing hours and rejoined only to complete laps at the end. The win went to the #80 Mercedes-AMG of Maro Engel, Maxime Martin, Fabian Schiller and Luca Stolz.
Asked afterwards whether he would return, Verstappen said he would “for sure try”, adding that “it always depends a bit on my schedule”. In 2027 the schedule cooperates. He also named that race, not any of the twenty-four Grands Prix, as his favourite of 2026: “Pure motorsport.”
Le Mans and Spa are open too
The Nürburgring is not the only one. The 24 Hours of Le Mans runs 9 to 13 June 2027, dropped neatly between Monaco on 6 June and the Portuguese Grand Prix on 18 to 20 June. The CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa follows on 24 to 27 June, between Portugal and Silverstone on 2 to 4 July. All three of Europe’s big twice-round-the-clock races are free of Formula 1 next season. We have the full list on our 2027 24-hour race dates page.
Le Mans is the one with the most noise around it and the least certainty. Verstappen told BBC Sport in September that he and Fernando Alonso had discussed going there together, with conditions attached: “It needs to fit our schedules. It needs to make sense, it needs to be on my terms, and there needs to be a real chance to go there and win it.” Ford, which enters the Hypercar class in 2027 and is the obvious route for a Red Bull-aligned entry, has since poured cold water on it. In a statement reported on 20 September the manufacturer said: “At this moment, there are no plans to have Max drive the Ford Racing hypercar at Le Mans next year.”
Spa is the one to watch after the Nürburgring, and we looked at his interest in it earlier this year.
Seven of the eight NLS rounds land on a Formula 1 weekend
Here is the catch, and it is not the race, it is everything that leads to it. The Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie runs eight races in 2027, every one of them on a Saturday. Seven of those Saturdays are Formula 1 days.
| NLS round | Date | Formula 1 that weekend |
|---|---|---|
| NLS 1 | Sat 20 March | Saudi Arabian GP |
| NLS 2 | Sat 17 April | Chinese GP |
| NLS 3 | Sat 3 July | British GP |
| NLS 4 (6 hours) | Sat 7 August | nothing |
| NLS 5 | Sat 11 September | Spanish GP, Madrid |
| NLS 6 | Sun 12 September | Spanish GP, Madrid |
| NLS 7 | Sat 25 September | Azerbaijan GP |
| NLS 8 | Sat 9 October | Singapore GP |
One free date, 7 August, in the middle of the summer break between Hungary and Monza. It happens to be the six-hour race, the longest round of the NLS year. The rest of the 2027 NLS calendar is unavailable to anyone with a Formula 1 contract.
The qualifying weekend goes as well
Here the calendar turns against him, and it is not the race, it is everything that leads to it. ADAC Nordrhein had planned a new 24h Nürburgring Series from 2027 and put it back a year to 2028 on 11 September, but the build-up events around the main race still run. The 24h Nürburgring Prologue falls on 2 to 4 April 2027, which is the Australian Grand Prix. The 24h Qualifiers, two four-hour races and the last serious running on the 24-hour layout before May, fall on 30 April to 2 May. That is the Miami Grand Prix.
The licence is not the obstacle this time
None of this touches his eligibility. Verstappen took his DMSB Permit Nordschleife on 13 September 2025, driving a Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 CS alongside Chris Lulham in NLS 7, and said at the time that contesting a 24-hour race there in a GT3 car “would be amazing”. He then went and did it. The permit is in hand and it has been used in anger.
Not every one of these calendars is equally settled
One caution on all of the above. The Formula 1 calendar is the fixed point here: once the FIA publishes it, it moves rarely and not by much. The others are softer. NLS, ADAC Nordrhein and SRO publish their dates earlier and adjust them more often, and three of the four ADAC supporting events are still marked provisional. A single shifted Saturday could open or close the whole argument, so this is a snapshot of how the 2027 calendars look today rather than a fixed picture. Our Formula 1 calendar 2027 and GT World Challenge Europe calendar 2027 pages are kept up to date as changes are confirmed.
The date is free, the preparation is not
Our short answer is that he goes. The race weekend is clear, the permit is valid, the team exists, the co-drivers exist, and he has already said out loud that he wants another go at a race he was leading when it broke. Red Bull let him do it in 2026 with a harder calendar than this one.
The interesting part is what he does with 7 August. A driver who has raced the Nordschleife twice in two years does not strictly need another four-hour run to stay sharp, but a six-hour race in the summer break is the only piece of competitive Nordschleife mileage the 2027 calendar offers him, and the alternative is arriving in May off the back of test days. If his name turns up on an NLS entry list next year, that is the date it will be on.
