Next weekend, Formula 1 will return to the Dutch coast for one last orange party. From 21–23 August, Zandvoort will host the final Dutch Grand Prix before dropping off the calendar in 2027. That feels like a strange way to reward one of the most distinctive events F1 has built in the modern era.
What the teams said – Race day in the Netherlands
This is not a race nobody wants. The 2025 Dutch Grand Prix attracted 305,000 visitors across race week, according to the event organisers. More importantly, the crowd does not just arrive; it transforms the entire town. Zandvoort feels less like a corporate motorsport event and more like a festival that happens to have Formula 1 cars in the middle of it.
The numbers make the goodbye even harder to understand. Organisers say 98% of visitors reached the event by public transport or bicycle, while Dutch railway operator NS reported that almost 140,000 fans travelled by train during the 2025 weekend. Formula 1 itself has praised Zandvoort as a leading sustainable sporting event whose ideas have been copied elsewhere on the calendar.
And yet, it is leaving.
To be fair, Formula 1 did not simply throw Zandvoort away. The promoter chose not to continue after 2026, despite discussions about annual or rotating events. The organisers are privately funded, so continuing the race means balancing huge opportunity against huge financial risk.
But for me, that is exactly the problem.
If an event can attract hundreds of thousands of fans, create one of the loudest atmospheres in the sport and deliver the kind of sustainable transport model F1 says it wants, yet still decide that staying is too risky, something about the modern Grand Prix business model is backwards.
F1 keeps searching for new markets, new venues and bigger spectacles. Zandvoort already has the spectacle. It has history, personality, passionate fans and a fast, banked, challenging circuit.
Maybe Formula 1 should spend less time searching for the next great Grand Prix — and more time making sure the great ones it already has can survive.
Joleen Jublee 
Jamez 
Scarlett Johnstone