NASCAR has been experimenting with its schedule, bringing in a mix of new venues and tracks that have stood the test of time, aiming to keep both longtime followers and new viewers hooked. But unlike stick-and-ball leagues, where teams or cities hold the keys to venues, NASCAR runs on a different model.
Most tracks fall under two umbrellas: NASCAR itself and Speedway Motorsports (SMI). Since the 2019 merger of NASCAR and the International Speedway Corporation, NASCAR controls 11 venues, including Daytona and Phoenix, while SMI holds ten, such as Charlotte and Las Vegas.
Other tracks are owned by families, corporations, or local authorities, though they account for less than a third of the current and future schedules. Even then, NASCAR and SMI often step in to operate or lease these venues when race weekend rolls around.
Across the board, NASCAR runs events at 35 tracks in the United States, spread over three national series. The calendar spans short ovals, road courses, street layouts, and superspeedways, each bringing its own test.
Daytona International Speedway remains the sport’s flagship venue, hosting the Daytona 500 and the Coke Zero Sugar 400 each year.
Homestead-Miami Speedway continues to draw both drivers and fans, with its worn surface shaping race outcomes. NASCAR has slated the track to host the season finale again in November 2026.
Martinsville Speedway, with its paperclip layout, is known for tight racing and tempers that boil over. Its fall race serves as a crucial step in the chase for the NASCAR Cup Series Championship.
Darlington Raceway carries its own identity, with its shape and long runs making it a test. It hosts the Southern 500 and has long been tied to throwback weekend, though that theme has been shelved this year.
Chicagoland Speedway is returning to the schedule after seven years, hosting a race weekend from July 3 to July 5, 2026, replacing the Chicago Street Race and slotting into the Cup Series In-Season Challenge.
Iowa Speedway made its Cup debut in 2024, stepping in after Auto Club Speedway shut its doors. Its first race drew a crowd and secured a return date for the future.
Kansas Speedway, built in the early 2000s, moved from one race to two, and recent seasons have put it on the map for its style of racing.
Michigan International Speedway, stretching beyond two miles, shifted from two races to one, a move that has changed its place on the calendar.
Phoenix Raceway in Arizona has held two dates each year, with its fall race serving as the championship decider since 2020.
Richmond Raceway, known as “America’s Premier Short Track,” is a 0.75-mile D-shaped asphalt oval located in Henrico County, just outside Richmond, Virginia. For the 2026 season, the track will feature a highly anticipated double-header weekend in August, highlighted by the return of Saturday night Cup Series racing.
Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama, with two race weekends each year, draws crowds; its next event is set for April 25 to April 26, 2026, featuring the Jack Link’s 500.
Watkins Glen International, known as “The Glen,” sits at the southern end of Seneca Lake and shifts its NASCAR weekend to May for the 2026 season.
Bristol Motor Speedway stands as NASCAR’s flagship short track, a venue that keeps fans on the edge and drivers on a tight rope. The track hosts two races each season. The spring event, once run on dirt, returned to its concrete roots in 2024, bringing the focus back to close-quarters racing. Then comes the Bristol Night Race, a fixture that continues to light up the sport.
Charlotte Motor Speedway holds a place of its own on the NASCAR calendar, standing as the only venue to stage races across two layouts. The spring Coca-Cola 600 stretches into the sport’s longest race, while the fall Roval event mixes up the thrill of oval and road course sections into a contest that often descends into chaos.
Dover Motor Speedway stands among the latest tracks to join the Speedway Motorsports roster. The venue once held two dates on the calendar before handing one over to Nashville Superspeedway, trimming its time on the calendar. Even so, the track continues to draw a crowd, holding its place on the schedule as a stop that still fills the stands, this year for its first-ever All-Star Race.
Atlanta Motor Speedway, now running under the EchoPark Speedway name after a sponsorship deal in June 2025, is a 1.54-mile quad-oval based in Hampton, Georgia. For the 2026 season, the track, with its superspeedway-style format, stays the course, hosting two NASCAR Cup Series weekends.
Las Vegas Motor Speedway is NASCAR’s most western oval. The track hosts two races a year, including a Chase race.
Nashville Superspeedway now sits under the banner of Speedway Motorsports (SMI), but the track’s path to that point has taken a few turns.
The facility was built and initially operated by Dover Motorsports, Inc., which held the reins from its opening in 2001 until 2011, before the gates were closed to major competition for a decade. The silence did not last forever, as the track returned to action in 2021, bringing NASCAR racing back into the fold.
Not long after the engines fired up again, Speedway Motorsports moved in on both of Dover’s NASCAR venues, acquiring the entirety of Dover Motorsports in a transaction valued at around $131.5 million, a move that crossed the finish line in December 2021.
New Hampshire Motor Speedway, known as “The Magic Mile,” will stage its 2026 NASCAR weekend from August 21 to August 23, placing it at a key point in the calendar. It will serve as the regular-season finale for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and stand as the penultimate race of the regular season for the NASCAR Cup Series, raising the stakes as the field edges toward the cutoff.
North Wilkesboro Speedway was once written off by fans, a track left to gather debris and fade from the map. Then came the COVID-19 pandemic, and with it, a push from the ground up, as Speedway Motorsports brought the venue back to life through a grassroots campaign. Once the gates reopened, NASCAR wasted no time in putting it back on the schedule, shifting the All-Star Race to the track and giving it a place back under the lights, and in 2026 it will host its first points race in nearly three decades.
Sonoma Raceway stands as NASCAR’s lone stop in California, a road course that has worn more than one face over time. The venue offers multiple layouts, with NASCAR having raced on two of them through the years. The track has also changed names over time, once running as Sears Point International Raceway and later as Infineon Raceway before settling into its current identity.
Texas Motor Speedway put NASCAR back on the map in Texas in the late 1990s, marking the sport’s return to the state. The venue once stood among five tracks to host the All-Star Race, sharing the spotlight in that informal rotation. Now, it holds a single race weekend each season in the spring, a shift that has trimmed its role on the calendar, but helped with it’s prominance.
Bowman Gray Stadium, known as “The Madhouse,” stands as a 17,000-seat multi-purpose venue in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with a place carved deep in the sport’s fabric. It holds the distinction of being NASCAR’s longest-running weekly racetrack and also serves as the home field for the Winston-Salem State University Rams football team.
Circuit of The Americas, known as COTA, stands as a 3.426-mile (5.513 km) motor racing facility in Austin, Texas, built as the first track in the United States designed for Formula 1. The circuit is known for its 133-foot climb into Turn 1, where the run uphill leads into a tight hairpin.
The venue joined the NASCAR schedule in 2021 and has since become a stop that draws attention. Speedway Motorsports runs the NASCAR event at COTA in partnership with Circuit of the Americas, LLC.
The DuraMAX Texas Grand Prix was held on March 1, 2026, on the 17-turn National Course, where Tyler Reddick of 23XI Racing took the win.
The Indianapolis Motor Speedway, known as “The Brickyard,” stands as the world’s highest-capacity sports venue, with over 250,000 permanent seats. Set in Speedway, Indiana, the circuit is known as the “Racing Capital of the World” and is home to the Indianapolis 500.
The NASCAR Cup Series will return to the 2.5-mile oval for the Brickyard 400 on July 26, 2026. In late 2025, IMS wrapped up a project to remove moisture-damaged bricks in Turn 2 that had caused bumps, followed by repaving and diamond grinding, as officials worked to smooth the surface ahead of the 2026 season.
Few venues carry the weight of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the United States. When NASCAR went to IMS in the 1990s, it turned heads, as many saw the combination of stock cars and the Brickyard as a mismatch. The series then took a detour, racing on the track’s road course from 2021 to 2023, before returning to the oval in 2024, bringing the show back to its roots.
Pocono Raceway, aka “The Tricky Triangle,” is a 2.5-mile superspeedway in Long Pond, Pennsylvania, a track that does not follow the usual NASCAR track dimensions and has long marched to the beat of its own drum.
It remains one of the few major NASCAR venues still under independent, family ownership, with Mattco, Inc., led by CEO Nick Igdalsky, keeping the operation in-house while much of the sport has shifted toward larger groups. For the 2026 season, the track’s premier NASCAR weekend has been moved up one week from previous years.
Pocono and NASCAR share a deep history, with the Tricky Triangle often seen as the sport’s most unconventional “traditional” stop. Its layout and setting have kept it on the radar, turning each race weekend into one that draws attention year after year.
World Wide Technology Raceway (WWTR), formerly known as Gateway Motorsports Park, is a 1.25-mile (2.01 km) oval and multi-purpose motorsports facility in Madison, Illinois, just outside St. Louis, a venue that has carved out its place in the racing landscape.
It holds a distinction few can match, standing as the only track to host a NASCAR Cup Series race, an NTT IndyCar Series race, and an NHRA Drag Racing Series event in the same season, putting different forms of racing under one roof.
The facility is independently owned by Curtis Francois, a St. Louis native and former race car driver, who bought the track in 2011, stepping in to keep the doors open when demolition loomed.
Set almost midway between Illinois and Missouri, the circuit, better known as Gateway, had long been on the wish list for NASCAR Cup Series fans before finally landing its first race date in 2022, bringing stock car racing to a track many had waited to see on the schedule.
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