Classic TT 2026: Old Bikes, Current Heroes, and McGuinness Closing the Show

The Classic TT is back from 16 to 28 August, and anyone still filing it under “nostalgia weekend” hasn’t looked at the entry list. Dunlop, Harrison, Hickman, Todd and Coward are all in. Hickman is on the Norton Rotary. Ben Birchall is racing a solo. And John McGuinness closes the whole thing with a lap that will put a lump in a few throats.

There is a lazy take on the Classic TT that goes something like this: it’s a museum piece, a warm-up act for the Manx, a chance for retired lads to potter round on smoky two-strokes while everyone claps politely. Bin that take. The 2026 entry list is, near enough, the top end of the TT paddock riding thirty-year-old machinery flat out over the Mountain. That is not nostalgia. That is a proper race meeting with worse brakes.

When it actually runs

The Classic TT shares course time with the Manx Grand Prix across a near two-week block. Qualifying opens on Sunday 16 August with the Manx runners, and the Classic gets its first single familiarisation laps on Monday 17 and Tuesday 18 August at 19:50. Full sessions start from Wednesday 19 August.

There are three race days, and the Classic races sit alongside the Manx ones:

Date	Classic TT races
Monday 24 August	15:00 Historic Junior Classic TT (3 laps)
Wednesday 26 August	10:15 Formula One Classic TT (3 laps) · 12:15 TT Rewind / Classic Sidecar Parade · 13:15 Lightweight & Ultra-Lightweight Classic TT (3 laps) · 15:00 Junior 600 Classic TT (3 laps)
Friday 28 August	10:15 Historic Senior Classic TT (3 laps) · 13:00 Senior Classic TT (4 laps) · 15:30 John McGuinness MBE Parade

Contingency sessions are pencilled in for 19, 20, 21, 23, 25 and 27 August. Given how the Island’s weather has behaved lately, budget for them being used. All of it is subject to road closure approval, as ever.

The entry list is basically the TT top 20

Michael Dunlop heads it, which surprises nobody. Dean Harrison, John McGuinness, Davey Todd and Jamie Coward are all in, along with Mike Browne, David Johnson, Paul Jordan, Nathan Harrison, Rob Hodson, Dominic Herbertson, Conor Cummins, Shaun Anderson, Michael Sweeney, Brian McCormack and the Manx pair of Michael Evans and Joe Yeardsley.

There is a solid overseas contingent in Formula One too: Stefano Bonetti, Amalric Blanc, Julian Trummer, David Datzer, Timothee Monot, Maurizio Bottalico, Michal Dokoupil and Horst Saiger. Derek McGee is back on the Mountain for the first time since 2019, and Michael Rutter returns after sitting out TT 2026 while he recovered from his 2025 Supertwin crash.

For Davey Todd it’s the first go at the Mountain Course since 2025, after the Daytona 200 crash in March wrote off most of his season, including TT fortnight and the Southern 100. Getting him back on the Island in August is worth the ticket on its own.

The Senior Classic TT on Friday 28 August is still the one that matters. Four laps, open to Formula One and Lightweight-eligible machines, and the fastest 60 riders from across the meeting swap white or green plates for the yellow ones. Small detail, enormous meaning if you’ve been going for years.

Hickman on the Norton Rotary is the story of the meeting

Peter Hickman is riding the WizNorton WRS 588cc Rotary in the Formula One Classic TT. It’s his first Classic TT appearance since before the pandemic and his first time on the rotary, and the backstory is better than the average PR line. Hickman’s father Dave won the 1977 Lightweight Manx Grand Prix and later worked as an engineer with the factory Norton and Honda teams, including on the original Norton rotary project that grew into the John Player Special bikes.

So: the fastest man ever round the Mountain, on the bike his dad helped build the bloodline of. The benchmark is Michael Dunlop’s 123.505mph lap on the same machine last year, which beat Steve Hislop’s 1992 Senior TT effort. Unofficial, but it counted with everyone watching.

WizNorton’s Andy Wilson reckons the bike is in its best specification yet after years of development input from Josh Brookes, Shaun Anderson and Dunlop. Four laps of the Mountain on a rotary is never the easy option. That’s rather the point.

Ben Birchall, solo

Fourteen Sidecar TT wins, and now Birchall is lining up on two wheels round the Mountain Course for the first time, in the Historic Junior class on Monday 24 August. Riders who’ve spent their careers in a chair don’t usually fancy the solo lark, and vice versa. It’s the entry everyone’s talking about, and given the state of flux around sidecar racing on the Island right now, it’s also a reminder of how much talent that paddock holds.

Two new races, and 60-plus entries for one of them

The programme has grown to six classes. Formula One, Historic Senior, Historic Junior and Lightweight are joined by the Ultra-Lightweight and the Junior 600.

The Junior 600 is the one to watch. It’s built around the middleweights that ran riot in the nineties, the Honda CBR600s and Yamaha YZF-R6s that carried McCallen, Moodie, Simpson, Duffus and Jefferies. Over 60 entries have gone in, including Dunlop, Todd, Herbertson, Yeardsley, Evans, Hodson, Marcus Simpson and Anderson. If you rode one of these to work in 1998, prepare to feel things.

The Ultra-Lightweight brings the 400s out, with Nathan Harrison, McGee, Yeardsley, Jonathan Perry and Harley Rushton entered, and 125cc machines are included for the first time. The Lightweight remains 250cc territory, where Dunlop won twelve months ago, and organisers reckon 116mph-plus laps are on if the weather plays.

McGuinness: thirty years, and that lap

The theme this year goes back to 1996, McGuinness’s first TT. Three decades on, the Morecambe Missile gets an exhibition of his bikes and memorabilia, and closes the meeting on Friday 28 August at 15:30 with a parade lap on the 2007 Fireblade he used to record the first 130mph lap of the Mountain Course, wearing the same leathers, gloves and helmet.

He’s 23 TT wins deep and finished sixth in the six-lap Superbike TT this June at 54 years old. This is not a retirement lap, whatever anyone tells you. It’s a victory lap for a career that isn’t done yet, and if you get a spot on the hedgerow for it you’ll remember it.

Worth the trip?

Thirteen days of course action, three Classic race days, the Manx Grand Prix running through the middle, the paddock open and the roads quieter than TT fortnight. Ferries and beds get tight closer to the date, so if you’re going, sort it now rather than in the second week of August.

And if you can only do one day, make it Friday 28 August. Historic Senior, Senior Classic TT and McGuinness. That’s a full day’s work.

Classic TT clashing with something else in your diary? Sort it out properly.

Track days, race meets, bike nights, rallies and ride-outs across the UK, all in one place. Free, always.

Find Your Next Ride →