The Mexico City Grand Prix 2026 is round 19 of the season and runs from Friday 30 October to Sunday 1 November at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez. It's a conventional weekend with no sprint, so there are three practice hours, one qualifying session on Saturday afternoon and a 71-lap race on Sunday that starts at 14:00 local time (20:00 in the UK).
That's the short version. The longer one involves a championship that could be settled here, a Mexican driver starting his 300th Grand Prix in front of his own people, and a circuit 2,240 metres above sea level that makes the cars feel slightly wrong all weekend.
Session times for the Mexico City Grand Prix 2026
Mexico City stays on UTC-6 all year, but the clocks move around it. The UK is already on GMT, and the US leaves daylight time early on Sunday morning, so Saturday and Sunday use different US offsets. These are from the official F1 timetable, which F1 says is still subject to change.
| Session | Mexico City | UK | US ET / PT |
|---|---|---|---|
| Practice 1, Fri 30 Oct | 12:30 | 18:30 | 14:30 / 11:30 |
| Practice 2, Fri 30 Oct | 16:00 | 22:00 | 18:00 / 15:00 |
| Practice 3, Sat 31 Oct | 11:30 | 17:30 | 13:30 / 10:30 |
| Qualifying, Sat 31 Oct | 15:00 | 21:00 | 17:00 / 14:00 |
| Race, Sun 1 Nov | 14:00 | 20:00 | 15:00 / 12:00 |
For India the race is at 01:30 IST on Monday morning and qualifying at 02:30 on Sunday, which is a commitment. Australia does better: lights out at 07:00 AEDT on Monday, with qualifying at 08:00 on Sunday.
How to watch in the UK, US, India and Australia
Sky Sports F1 has every session in the UK. In the US, 2026 is the first year of Apple TV's exclusive deal, so ESPN is out of the picture and the race streams on Apple TV, with F1 TV Premium bundled in. FanCode holds the streaming rights in India, and Kayo (with Foxtel) carries it in Australia.
At home in Mexico, Televisa's deal with F1, which runs to 2028, puts the Mexican Grand Prix on free-to-air Canal 5, with Sky Sports covering the rest of the weekend for pay-TV subscribers. Check local listings on the day, as broadcasters sometimes juggle practice sessions.
Apple TV+
DAZN Spain
DAZN F1 Spain
Canal+ SportNo subscription? DAMITV's F1 stream page carries every session free in HD, and you don't need to sign up for anything.
Where the title race stands
Kimi Antonelli has been the story of 2026. The Mercedes driver left Singapore on 340 points, 102 clear of his team-mate George Russell, with six rounds left. Lewis Hamilton (229) and Max Verstappen (221) were next, with Charles Leclerc on 215 and Lando Norris on 201.
The maths, roughly: Antonelli needed a near-perfect afternoon in Austin plus bad luck for Russell, Hamilton and Verstappen to wrap it up in Texas. If that doesn't happen, Mexico City becomes the next realistic place for it. A 20-year-old being crowned in front of a packed Foro Sol would be quite a scene, though I wouldn't print the T-shirts yet. Bookmakers have had him around 98 per cent for weeks, and the only question is when.
Verstappen comes in with momentum. He won Singapore from pole on 11 October, his 73rd career win and second of the season, beating Leclerc by seven seconds while Antonelli came third. He also has history here: five Mexico City wins, more than anyone else on the current grid.
Russell's season has been fine, which is the problem when your team-mate is having a year like this. An engine penalty sent him to the back in Singapore, and he recovered only to ninth.
Checo's 300th, in a Cadillac
This is the bit the grandstands will care about most. Sergio Pérez is back on the grid after a year out, driving for the new Cadillac team alongside Valtteri Bottas, and Mexico is expected to be his 300th Grand Prix.
The results have been hard going. Neither Cadillac driver had scored a point by mid-October; the closest call was Monaco, where Pérez was promoted to tenth by someone else's penalty and then lost it to one of his own. He finished 17th in Singapore. Pérez, for his part, has called this "without a doubt one of my best years" in terms of confidence and driving level, and anyone who watched his final Red Bull season will understand why he might feel that.
Cadillac are running Pérez down Paseo de la Reforma in a show run on Wednesday 28 October, from 10:00 local, so the city will be fully worked up before practice even starts. Points on Sunday would be a minor miracle. A clean race and a few overtakes in the stadium section would do.
Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, Mexico City. Photo: ProtoplasmaKid, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The track, and why the air matters
The Autódromo is 4.304 km long and sits inside a public sports park in the east of the city. The run from the grid to Turn 1 is one of the longest on the calendar, so the start is always busy, and the last sector drops through the Foro Sol stadium, where the podium is held.
Altitude is the thing. The thin air means less downforce and less cooling, so teams run their biggest wings and the cars still slide around like it's a low-grip track. Under the new 2026 rules, with the battery doing more of the work, how each power unit copes up here is one of the more interesting unknowns of the weekend.
Last year Lando Norris won from pole by about 30 seconds, the biggest winning margin of 2025, with Leclerc second and Verstappen third. Norris's McLaren hasn't had the same edge this season, so don't read too much into that.
A pick for Sunday
I'm leaning Verstappen for the win. He's in form and his record here is excellent. Antonelli on the podium feels like the safest bet of the weekend, and if Austin goes his way he may only need that. Leclerc is my outside shout, as Ferrari have tended to go well in Mexico.
Same weekend, different sport: Canelo Álvarez fights Christian Mbilli in Riyadh on Saturday night, and DAMITV's boxing streams have that one. If you're following the Spanish-language coverage, our Gran Premio de México guide tells the Pérez story in more depth, and the Malaysian MotoGP guide covers the other big race of the weekend.
