The changing landscape of Formula E’s venues will continue to be shaped by its evolution in getting faster but other elements are also modelling the schedule for the 2026-27 season, the first of the Gen4 era.
Capable of hitting speeds of 335kph and reaching 200kph in just 4.4seconds (1.5 seconds quicker than GEN3 Evo), Gen4 will be the only single seater to feature permanent all-wheel drive. 40% of energy used will be recaptured by the during a race and the car will have 50% more power in race mode and 71% more in attack mode than its predecessor.
Clearly Gen4 needs a bit of extra wiggle room. But how much is that fundamental and how much of it is image, in the sense that Formula E has to juggle cost with prestige and attractive locations.
Formula E Notebook has learned that, despite some doubt as to the whether or not the highly expensive Tokyo EPrix can continue beyond 2026, recent meetings and developments indicate that a new deal with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and the Big Sight exhibition venue is looking positive.
With Sao Paulo, Jeddah, Mexico City, Monaco, Shanghai, Berlin and Miami set to stay on the calendar, a spine of the next schedule looks similar to the season 12 campaign.
New races at permanent venues too could be added, among them the Circuit of the Americas in Austin and Zandvoort the current home of the Dutch Grand Prix.
Jarama, which staged a successful first race last month will also be on the 2026-27 schedule but likely later in the season. It was a kind of litmus test for Formula E, who took a long forgotten Grand Prix venue and gave it a polish and spruce up.
The roots of that came at the end of 2024 with the hastily organized pre-season test. It might just have started a new movement in race location hunting for Formula E.
“I have to say every driver came out of the testing and made a point of coming to us and saying that is a proper old school racing track with the high elevation,” FE’s CEO, Jeff Dodds, told media at a round-table event this week.
“I think Jarama will be box office for the Gen4 car because the way you can sit up and look out over the track and see it unfold in front of you, I think it would be a fantastic track.”
That view of the experience in both spectating and TV viewership is one that Formula E needs to enhance for Gen4, when the car will give more scope than ever for creative camera angles and ‘wow factor’ in showcasing the 0-100kph in 1.8s acceleration, active diff inspired rotation and immense torque-split cornering performance.
While all that would be absolutely astonishing at long lost Diriyah, Rome and Hong Kong, the practicalities of achieving that are just not possible anymore both from a track logistics point of view and in the case of Rome and Hong Kong budget.
“We’ve had to discount (design not finance) tracks in the past because the cars would look a bit small physically and the top speeds of the car meant that it just wouldn’t look fast enough because they’re very big, wide circuits that have been designed perhaps for F1 in the past,” adds Dodds.
A lot of, if not all of those tracks now come into our range when we look at potential circuits for the new Gen4 car. Because you’ve got a car that’s going 200mph entering braking zones.
“It’s just a bigger, more muscular car on the track as well. So, it really has opened up circuits to us that we haven’t considered. I guess the bad side is there are circuits we love racing on currently, that it means the Gen4 car is going to find it very difficult to race on.”
That is clearly a reference to London ExCeL which will be the first big casualty with Brands Hatch or Silverstone in the frame to becoming the new UK home for Formula E.
“I’ve been honest enough to say that publicly, that somewhere like London in the ExCeL, which is a fan favourite, and by the way it’s a race that I really love personally, it’s already tight,” confides Dodds.
“It’s turns 4 and 5 or 3 and 4, it’s already tight when those Gen3Evo cars come out of the indoor section into the outdoor section and they’ve got a tight bottleneck that comes up. You simply won’t be able to do that in a Gen4 car. It would be too dangerous, and it would be too complex, it would make for a very complex race.”
A probable 20 race first Gen4 calendar will be known in June, as will the initial plot-out for the sporting format. Formula E is growing up, and it can only take a certain amount of its former venues with it. But what it must hold on to is its USP of racing (at least) close to cities. That’s where imagining a race at Silverstone, Imola or even at potentially somewhere like Paul Ricard, the venue of this week’s test, becomes troublesome.
We saw it at Misano and to an extent we see it at Shanghai too. Out of town is out of mind for all but F1 races. In Formula E the urban feel is vital for fans and also the corporates because they like to take their colleagues or there partners to make a weekend of it, rather than see a car park and an airfield. That’s the reality that Formula E has to juggle in its brave new world of Gen4.
