The World Endurance Championship is preparing to move the closing rounds of its 2026 season out of the Middle East, with Barcelona and Monza lined up as European replacements for the Qatar and Bahrain fixtures should regional security fail to improve.
Under the contingency plan presented to teams during last weekend's Sao Paulo round, the Qatar 1812km (25 October) would be replaced by a six-hour race at Barcelona on 18 October, while the 8 Hours of Bahrain (7 November) would give way to a six-hour Monza finale on the same November weekend. Both European events would run to the shorter format, cutting the winner's haul from 38 points to the standard 25 - a change that could reshape a tight championship run-in.
It would be the second reshuffle of the year after the Qatar season-opener was postponed, and organisers are not treating it as a formality. The plan is expected to go before the FIA World Motor Sport Council on 23 July, and would only be triggered if the situation in the Gulf does not settle.
For the teams, the uncertainty is already a live cost. Ferrari AF Corse, chasing the Hypercar title, has been building freight in duplicate to cover every outcome.
"I think every team has, together with the [series] organization and DHL, made already a 'Plan B' with double kits of material," said Ferrari AF Corse team manager Batti Pregliasco.
He laid out just how far ahead the logistics now run. "We have sent some material here that will go to Fuji directly and we keep the second kit that will go to Austin and [then] standby to know if we go to Qatar, Bahrain or to Europe," Pregliasco said.
That redundancy does not come free. "Of course, it's a cost, it's an effort, but we already spoke and work on these two plans to make it happen," he said, adding that shifting to other far-flung venues would only swap one logistical headache for another. "To go to other places like Sepang, China or whatever else, then you face the same problem of the logistic transportation, the huge cost."
For all the disruption, Pregliasco framed it as a question that sits above the sport. "It's a geopolitical problem that is more important than what is our job and our decision to be here, there or there - we need to think that safety is the priority for everybody," he said.
The Gulf's own stakeholders are not writing off the original races entirely. Bahrain's Minister of Sustainable Development, Noor bint Ali Alkhulaif, suggested the cancelled events could yet be revived. "There are talks about maybe plugging in some of the races that were cancelled back into the calendar," she said. "No confirmation still on that, [but] potentially."
The turmoil reaches beyond sportscars. Formula 1, which scrapped its Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix in March, has said it continues to "monitor and assess the situation." A European switch would also collide with the GT World Challenge Europe finale at Portimao, where up to 19 drivers are shared between the two grids - a knock-on the SRO is trying to solve by moving its race to the Saturday.
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*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/wec-plots-european-finale-as-gulf-conflict-forces-plan-b). Visit for full coverage.*