Formula One Returns to Portimao on 20 June 2027, Six Years After Its Last Race in the Algarve
The FIA published the 2027 calendar on Wednesday, putting Portugal ninth of 24 rounds and directly after Monaco. The return had been agreed; what Wednesday added was the date, and a mid-June slot the Algarve does not currently fill.
Formula One comes back to Portugal on 20 June 2027. The Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (International Automobile Federation, or FIA) published the 2027 calendar on Wednesday after approval by its World Motor Sport Council, and the Portuguese round sits in the European stretch of the season, immediately after Monaco.
The race is the ninth of 24, according to the Lusa news agency, which puts the Portuguese Grand Prix on Sunday 20 June, between Monaco on 6 June and Britain on 4 July. The venue is the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve (Algarve International Circuit, or AIA) at Portimão, and the weekend runs from 18 to 20 June.
It will be Portugal's first world championship round in six years. Portimão hosted in 2020 and 2021, both pandemic seasons in which the calendar was rebuilt around whatever circuits could take a race at short notice, and Lewis Hamilton won on both occasions.
What the FIA announced
The 2027 season carries 24 Grands Prix across 22 countries, the same race count as recent years, with Sprint events rising from six to ten. Pre-season testing runs in Bahrain from 24 to 27 February, and the championship opens there before moving to Saudi Arabia, then Australia, Japan and China, then Miami and Canada. Türkiye also returns, in October, slotted between Azerbaijan and Singapore. The season closes with Austin, Mexico City, São Paulo and Las Vegas, then Qatar and Abu Dhabi.
Portugal is not among the Sprint venues. Bahrain, Australia, Japan, Monaco and Abu Dhabi take Sprint events for the first time, joining returning hosts Montréal, Silverstone, Monza, São Paulo and Lusail.
Mohammed Ben Sulayem, president of the FIA, described the calendar as combining "tradition, innovation, and fan engagement", singling out "the return of Portugal and Türkiye". Stefano Domenicali, president and chief executive of Formula 1, said the sport was "thrilled to welcome Portugal and Türkiye to the championship".
The deal behind the date
Wednesday's calendar confirms a date rather than a decision. Formula 1 had already announced Portugal's return for 2027 and 2028 under an agreement involving the Portuguese government, Turismo de Portugal (the national tourism board) and the company that runs the Algarve circuit. What had not been public until now was where in the season the race would fall.
The placement matters commercially. A mid-June Sunday sits inside the Algarve's high season but ahead of its August peak, and a slot directly after Monaco keeps the freight and paddock movement within Europe, which is the logic the FIA cites when it describes the calendar as following "a more efficient geographical flow of events across the season".
For the region, a Grand Prix is a concentrated burst of demand on an accommodation stock that already runs close to full in summer. Portimão's circuit opened in 2008 and has hosted MotoGP, World Superbikes and endurance racing, but a Formula One weekend brings a different order of magnitude in hospitality, freight and broadcast presence. Algarve hoteliers have spent this year warning about a softer summer and the region's reliance on British visitors; a June race weekend is, among other things, a large British audience arriving at a point in the calendar the region does not currently fill.
What is still unknown
Neither the FIA release nor Lusa's report sets out the public contribution to the deal, the ticketing arrangements, or what work the circuit needs to meet current Formula One requirements. The 2020 and 2021 races were run under exceptional conditions, and circuit homologation, paddock capacity and run-off standards have all moved since.
Faro airport, the obvious arrival point, is also the pressure point. It handled the Algarve's summer traffic this year alongside the rollout of the European Union's new border checks, and a Grand Prix weekend would add a sharp inbound and outbound spike across three days in a month when the airport is already busy.
The calendar as published is provisional in the ordinary sense that Formula One calendars always are: dates have moved before, and the World Motor Sport Council can revisit them. But the 2027 championship now has a Portuguese round with a date attached to it, and the Algarve has 21 months to prepare for it.
