What’s Happening?

NASCAR’s next video game does not yet have a release date, but what we can do is speculate. Based on past precedent, when will NASCAR’s newest video game be released? Will it be sooner than one may expect?

• iRacing officially acquired the NASCAR license in October with the goal of a new NASCAR game in 2025. However, they did not go into any further detail about that.
• The last NASCAR console video game was NASCAR 21: Ignition, which was released in the fall of 2021 by Motorsport Games. This game was heavily criticized by fans and critics alike, and Motorsport Games failed to release anything after this one.
• Fans are eagerly anticipating the next NASCAR video game. They look forward to a new game that hopefully rectifies some of the issues of the previous game.

Release Date

iRacing officially announced they acquired the NASCAR license on October 5, 2023. Our timeline for the new game will start there.

The two previous NASCAR games with new developers were NASCAR Heat Evolution, released in 2016, and NASCAR 21: Ignition, released in 2021. Here is how long it took from the announcement of the acquisition of the license until they released the actual game.

• NASCAR Heat Evolution – January 1, 2015 (Acquired Eutechnyx) -> September 13, 2016
• NASCAR 21: Ignition – Late 2019 (Acquired 704Games) -> October 28, 2021

It has taken roughly 2 years to make a NASCAR video game from the ground up. Given, iRacing’s official acquisition of the NASCAR license in October of 2023, that means a likely Autumn 2025 release, with the possibility of a Late Summer 2025 release date. We do not know exactly how long iRacing has been working on the game, but these are the general trends.

Screenshots

Now that we have an idea of when the game will come out, we can anticipate when certain elements of the game will be released. One milestone is when the first screenshots of the game are released. Here is how long before the release date that the first screenshots were released for the last 2 games.

• NASCAR Heat Evolution – June 2016 (3 Months before release)
• NASCAR 21: Ignition – August 2021 (2 Months before release)

Given our autumn or potentially late summer 2025 release date, the first screenshots of the game could come in the late spring or early summer of 2025. This would put them about 2-3 months before the official game release.

Trailer

Next up is the first trailer of the game. This is an important milestone as well, as this will be fans’ first look at gameplay and the features of the game.

• NASCAR Heat Evolution – July 18, 2016 (2 months before release)
• NASCAR 21: Ignition – August 11, 2021 (2 months before release)

It seems that about a month or so after the first screenshots come out, trailers have generally been released. That puts the trailer release around the same time of year as screenshots, but just a little bit later in the year.

Overall, it’s entirely possible that we will not know much about the next NASCAR video game until mid to late 2025. It takes a long time to develop a video game, and the general timelines followed in recent years show that.