British Speedway Grand Prix 2026: Manchester Preview
The Grand Prix circus rolls into Manchester this weekend for a double-header that could end with a record. New promoter, new era, same old question: can anyone stop Bartosz Zmarzlik? Here’s everything you need before the tapes go up.
Forget Cardiff. The Principality roof and the 40,000-strong roar are a memory now, and have been since the British round went north. For the second year running the FIM Speedway Grand Prix of Great Britain lives at the National Speedway Stadium in Manchester, and for the second year running it’s a double bill: rounds three and four of the World Championship crammed into one weekend, Friday 5 and Saturday 6 June.
If you’ve never done a GP double-header, here’s the short version. Two full Grand Prix meetings, back to back, two nights, two sets of points, two winners. It’s a lot of speedway for your money and a brutal test of consistency for the riders. Get it wrong on the Friday and you’ve got twelve hours to stew on it before you do it all again.
A new era starts here
This is the first British round of a new chapter for the sport. Discovery’s run as promoter is over, and Mayfield Sports Events Ltd has taken the keys to the championship for 2026. What that means for the long-term feel of the series is still anyone’s guess, but Manchester is one of the first big showcases under the new banner. Worth keeping an eye on how it’s run, how it’s presented, and whether the atmosphere inside the NSS can match what Cardiff used to deliver.
Zmarzlik and the seventh title
Let’s not dress it up. Bartosz Zmarzlik is the man everyone else is chasing, and he arrives in Manchester as the defending world champion having taken the 2025 crown. That’s already six world titles, which puts him level with two of the biggest names the sport has ever produced, Tony Rickardsson and Ivan Mauger, on six apiece.
A seventh in 2026 would put him out on his own. The greatest of all time, no argument, no asterisk. He won’t win it in Manchester, but a strong weekend on British soil would set the tone for the rest of the year and tell the paddock the Pole has no intention of slowing down.
Kurtz, the nearly man with momentum
If anyone’s going to take the fight to Zmarzlik over a full season, it’s Brady Kurtz. The Australian finished runner-up in 2025 and missed the title by a single point, which is about as close as it gets without actually winning it. He ended the year on fire, reeling off five straight Grand Prix wins, and then went and won the Speedway of Nations world title in Torun on top of that.
Carry that form into 2026 and Manchester could be where the Kurtz title charge properly kicks off. He’s hungry, he’s quick, and he’s got a point to prove.
The home hopes
Here’s where it matters for the British crowd. Dan Bewley is the name on everyone’s lips, and rightly so. The West Cumbrian finished third in the world last year and, crucially, won one of the two Manchester legs in 2025. He knows this track, he knows how to win on it, and he’ll have the home fans behind him from the first heat to the last. If there’s going to be a British winner this weekend, it’s him.
Robert Lambert flies the flag alongside him as the reigning British champion and a top-seven rider in the world. Lambert’s still chasing that elusive first Grand Prix win, and a home double-header is as good a stage as any to finally get the monkey off his back.
And then there’s the story that wasn’t. Tai Woffinden, Britain’s only three-time world champion, was handed a wild card for 2026 as the perfect comeback after the horror crash at Krosno in March 2025 that left him with multiple fractures and put him in an induced coma. For months it looked like one of the great sporting returns. Then, in March, he withdrew, choosing to focus on club racing and his recovery rather than rush back to the sport’s biggest stage. A reminder that grit only takes you so far when the body needs time. He’ll be back. Just not this weekend.
The line-up
Fifteen permanent riders, joined at each round by a wild card and two track reserves. The 2025 top seven qualified automatically: Zmarzlik, Kurtz, Bewley, Sweden’s Fredrik Lindgren, Australia’s Jack Holder, Latvia’s Andzejs Lebedevs and Lambert. They’re joined by Grand Prix Challenge and European Championship qualifiers including Dominik Kubera, Kacper Woryna, Leon Madsen, Michael Jepsen Jensen and Patryk Dudek, plus SGP Commission picks Max Fricke and Jason Doyle, the latter now into a remarkable twelfth straight GP season.
It’s a grid stacked with world champions, of nations and individual, and not a soft touch among them. On a tight indoor circuit like the NSS, gating is everything and the racing is close. Expect contact, expect drama, expect the odd exclusion.
Need to know
- Event: FIM Speedway Grand Prix of Great Britain (rounds 3 and 4)
- Venue: National Speedway Stadium, Manchester
- Dates: Friday 5 and Saturday 6 June 2026
- Defending world champion: Bartosz Zmarzlik
- Top British hope: Dan Bewley
- 2025 Manchester winners: Dan Bewley (round one), Bartosz Zmarzlik (round two)
Two nights, two Grand Prix, one stadium going off its head. If you can get there, get there. If you can’t, find the best seat you can and don’t move for two days. Full details at FIM Speedway
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