The brief

  • What happened: The 2026 Acropolis Rally has 58 crews, including 12 Rally1 cars—the largest top-class field at a WRC round this season—and 34 Rally2 cars. The rally runs June 25–28 on a heavily revised route based in Loutraki.
  • Why it matters: More Rally1 cars create more opportunities for road order, punctures and reliability to swing championship points. The Rally2 depth also means a small delay can move a contender several places rather than one.
  • What to watch: Thursday’s Athens super special sets the order before crews enter a floating parc fermé, but Friday’s long gravel stages will provide the first meaningful read on road cleaning, tire damage and heat management.

Fast context

The organizer’s entry announcement lists 58 crews: five Rally1 Toyotas, three Hyundais and four M-Sport Fords. Toyota brings Elfyn Evans, Takamoto Katsuta, Oliver Solberg, Sami Pajari and Sébastien Ogier. Hyundai adds Dani Sordo to Adrien Fourmaux and Thierry Neuville, while M-Sport fields Jon Armstrong, Josh McErlean, Mārtiņš Sesks and Jourdan Serderidis.

The same release counts 34 Rally2 cars and highlights the return of Lancia to the Acropolis through WRC2. That is a different measure from WRC2 championship eligibility: RallyJournal’s entry breakdown counts 30 WRC2-registered crews within the broader Rally2 field. The distinction matters when following class results and championship points.

This is also a substantially different Acropolis. The official WRC event page places the service park in Loutraki and lists 17 stages over 323.31 competitive kilometres. After Thursday’s head-to-head stage in Athens, cars will travel by ferry from Corinth to Itea, with the vessel serving as parc fermé overnight.

The spectacle is new; the competitive problem is familiar. Loose gravel can punish the first cars on the road, while exposed rocks and ruts on the second pass punish anyone who treats a clean line as a safe one. With this many credible entries, time lost to sweeping or a puncture will be harder to recover.

What changes next

The first serious checkpoint comes on Friday’s opening loop, when starting position and surface cleaning become visible in the splits. By the repeat passes, tire survival and suspension damage should matter more. The size of both front-line fields means the rally can reshape points even among crews that never fight for the overall win.