The Asian Le Mans Series, an ACO-regulations racing championship that is, in principle, meant to bring prototype and GT racing to Asia, will conduct its full 2026–2027 calendar in Europe. In effect, that makes it the third championship on the Continent to run a variation of the same rule framework, alongside the naturally Europe-based European Le Mans Series and the Europe-focused FIA World Endurance Championship.
Double-header race weekends in France, Spain and Portugal will form a six-race season for the series, which is also set to become the first to introduce pro-am line-ups in the converged Le Mans Hypercar category that has served as the top class in both IMSA and the WEC since 2023. The move to European venues has come because of the ongoing conflict in Iran, which has spilled into areas close to the Asian Le Mans Series’ usual host circuits in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. By effectively cancelling and relocating those rounds, the championship joins Formula 1 and the FIA WEC in shifting races while the situation continues.
Although the revised calendar’s European rounds are an unusual development caused by specific regional concerns, the championship’s slow movement westward has been an issue for some time, dating back to the pandemic period. Through the 2010s, the Asian Le Mans Series held races in key regional markets such as Japan, China, Thailand, Australia and Malaysia; after 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, the whole championship was reduced to two double-header weekends in the United Arab Emirates.
That unusual format continued well after COVID concerns had eased, with only Malaysia briefly returning to the schedule. With no Malaysian round planned for 2026 or 2027, the season would seemingly have gone back to being a two-weekend championship based in neighbouring Dubai and Abu Dhabi, had these required calendar revisions not taken place.
Because of these calendar changes, the series is now set to be temporarily renamed the Winter Le Mans Series. However, since the announcement appears on the Asian Le Mans Series website and still refers to the championship as the “Asian Le Mans Series” in its headline, that new branding seems to be only partly official. The final outcome is one of the most unusual race calendar decisions seen in recent memory, but it does at least ensure that six more races featuring top-class Le Mans machinery will take place during the usually quiet racing stretch between November and February.
