Automotive competitions in 2025 will have a very rich calendar on a global and European scale. And also, a lot of changes. The WRC2 category, where the Škoda Motorsport specials start, is mainly affected by the new calendar, but the rally is also planning changes to the technical and sporting rules.
The 2025 rally season will be a busy one. If only because there are fourteen events in the FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) for 2025, instead of this year’s thirteen. In the FIA European Rally Championship, the number of events remains at eight, yet here too we will find several novelties.
Škoda Motorsport will continue its intensive customer support in both of these championships, and in this respect the teams will also see some nice new features that will help improve their competitiveness. The Škoda specials will then certainly be seen in all fourteen FIA WRC events and eight FIA ERC events.
Extended WRC season
Compared to the 2024 season, we will see three new events in the WRC series in 2025. Traditionally, the season will start at the end of January in Monte-Carlo, followed by competitions in Sweden and Kenya, so the start of the season is identical. The fourth stop, however, will see the WRC championship in the Canary Islands at the end of April. This will be the island rally’s debut in the world championship, and after a two-year hiatus, the highest level of world competition will also return to Spain with this event. The event attracts a combination of smooth tarmac and treacherous weather, with the possibility of fog forming in the mountain passages.
Rally Estonia, the eighth stop of the World Championship, will be the newest event on the calendar. It returns after being part of the ERC calendar last year and shows the high level of competition in both championships, as well as the variety that the change of events on the calendar brings.
The last novelty in the calendar will be the very final competition. The FIA World Rally Championship 2025 will not be concluded by the traditional Rally Japan, which remains on the calendar, but by the new Rally Saudi Arabia, which follows Japan with a date at the very end of November. The championship will thus be slightly longer, starting a day earlier than in 2024 and finishing six days later.
FIA WRC 2025 Calendar
| Order of the competition | The competition | Date of the event |
| 1 | Rally Monte Carlo | 23rd – 26th January |
| 2 | Rally Sweden | 13th – 16th February |
| 3 | Safari Rally Kenya | 20th – 23rd March |
| 4 | Rally Islas Canarias | 24th – 27th April |
| 5 | Vodafone Rally de Portugal | 15th – 18th May |
| 6 | Rally Italia Sardegna | 5th – 8th June |
| 7 | EKO Acropolis Rally Greece | 26th – 29th June |
| 8 | Delfi Rally Estonia | 17th – 20th July |
| 9 | Secto Rally Finland | 31st July – 3rd August |
| 10 | Rally de Paraguay | 28th – 31st August |
| 11 | Rally Chile Bio Bio | 11th – 14th September |
| 12 | Centra European Rally | 16th – 19th October |
| 13 | FORUM8 Rally Japan | 6th – 9th November |
| 14 | Rally Saudi Arabia | 27th – 30th November |
One new and two returns in ERC
The ERC Championship calendar remains at eight events for 2025, but three of them are (old) new. Spain will provide the season opener this time, but instead of the WRC ‘promoted’ event in the Canary Islands, the ERC will be held in Andalusia in early April. Then comes the 2024 season opener, a competition in Hungary, followed by an event in Sweden, and as a fourth stop, there’s news again: the return of a gravel event in Poland.
Then, as last year, the European Championship returns to the Italian capital of Rome, followed by the Czech Barum Rally and the Rally Great Britain. These three events will therefore have the same position on the 2025 calendar as they did in 2024. The season will then be concluded with Rally Croatia, which has been part of the WRC calendar since 2021. This event is therefore returning to the ERC after many years and will be the denouement of the championship.
FIA ERC 2025 Calendar
| Order of the competition | The competition | Date of the event |
| 1 | 42nd Rally Sierra Morena – Córdoba Patrimonio de la Humanidad, Spain | 4th – 6th April |
| 2 | V-Híd Rally Hungary | 9th – 11th May |
| 3 | BAUHAUS Royal Rally of Scandinavia, Sweden | 29th – 31rd May |
| 4 | 81st Rally Poland | 13th – 15th June |
| 5 | Rally di Roma Capitale, Italy | 4th – 6th July |
| 6 | Barum Czech Rally Zlín | 15th – 17th August |
| 7 | JDS Machinery Rali Ceredigion, United Kingdom | 5th – 7th September |
| 8 | Croatia Rally | 3rd – 5th October |
Technique and body
In the WRC2 category, where Škoda Rally2-specification cars start in both championships, nothing changes in principle for the teams and drivers. But bigger changes await the WRC championship, i.e. the Rally1 specials. Here, from the new season onwards, the use of plug-in hybrid drive, which the specials have had in recent seasons, should be abolished. The reason is financial savings. It will also make the cars a little lighter (1,180 instead of 1,260 kilograms).
At the same time, the World Motor Sport Council is likely to confirm a return to a more transparent scoring system. That’s good news for WRC2: since the system from the 2024 season didn’t take off in WRC (neither drivers nor spectators liked it), there’s basically no danger that a similar principle, where a lot of points were scored by crews after the second (not third) day of competition, could appear in the WRC2 category.
