{"id":243938,"date":"2024-07-31T15:10:27","date_gmt":"2024-07-31T13:10:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rtrsports.com\/how-it-works-the-dakar\/"},"modified":"2026-10-26T12:07:45","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T11:07:45","slug":"how-it-works-the-dakar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rtrsports.com\/en\/blog\/how-it-works-the-dakar\/","title":{"rendered":"How does the Dakar Rally work? Length, stages, roadbook and classes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yanbu, 17 January 2026, the final stage. Seven kilometres from the finish, Ricky Brabec, leading the bike standings by three minutes and twenty seconds, reads a roadbook note that he himself will later call rather confusing. He takes a line too far to the left, has to loop round for about three kilometres to find the right track and, as he rejoins it, sees Luciano Benavides coming through, having seen what happened and kept to the correct line. At the finish, after two weeks and almost eight thousand kilometres of Saudi Arabia, two seconds separate them. It is the smallest margin in the history of the race and Benavides’ first win, though not the first in the family: his brother Kevin won in 2021 and 2023.<\/p>\n

If one scene explains how the Dakar Rally works<\/strong>, it is this one. The fastest rider does not automatically win: the winner is the one who goes fast without getting lost, for two weeks in a row. The Dakar is a rally raid, an off-road race over huge distances in which riders and crews tackle one stage a day, navigate with a roadbook and sleep at night in a camp that moves with them. It runs in January: in 2026 there was a prologue and thirteen stages, with one rest day, for about 8,000 kilometres, almost 5,000 of them timed. In the speed categories the winner is whoever finishes with the lowest total time, penalties and bonuses included; Dakar Classic, on the other hand, is a regularity event and Mission 1000 has a classification of its own.<\/p>\n

How long is the Dakar Rally?<\/h2>\n

The race itself lasts two weeks. The 2026 edition started on 3 January in Yanbu, on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast, with the prologue, a short test of around twenty kilometres that sets the starting order for the first stage and does not count towards the car standings (it does for the bikes): the quickest get to choose their slot, and they do not necessarily choose to go first. It finished on 17 January in the same city. In between came thirteen stages and a single rest day, on 10 January in Riyadh.<\/p>\n

Count the time riders and teams actually spend inside the Dakar, though, and the two weeks become three. Teams reach the start camp just after Christmas, the vehicles, shipped from Barcelona, were handed back in Yanbu at the end of December, and the final technical and administrative checks took place on 1 and 2 January. A first round of checks had already been held at the end of November in Santa Susanna, near Barcelona, before the vehicles were shipped to Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

The stages are far from identical. In 2026 they ranged from the twenty or so timed kilometres of the prologue to the 920 kilometres of the stage from Hail to Riyadh, which had 331 timed kilometres. The longest special stage, more than 480 kilometres, was stage eight, around Wadi Ad Dawasir. The total changes every year, along with the route.<\/p>\n

Special stages, liaisons and marathon stages<\/h2>\n

Every race day has two parts. The liaison, as the race still calls it in French, takes competitors from the bivouac to the start of the special stage and from the end of the special to the next bivouac: it is not timed, but it has to be completed within a set time, and penalties apply there too. The special stage is the part that decides the standings: a timed section of real off-road terrain where the Dakar is won or lost.<\/p>\n

At the end of the day comes the bivouac, the tented town that each evening hosts competitors, mechanics, organisers and journalists. Almost always, that is. On marathon stages the team mechanics are not there: competitors spend the night in a separate bivouac and fix their bikes, cars and trucks themselves, with whatever they carry on board. In 2026 there were two pairs of marathon stages: four and five, between AlUla and Hail, and nine and ten, between Wadi Ad Dawasir and Bisha.<\/p>\n

The roadbook: at the Dakar, getting lost is part of the race<\/h2>\n

The Dakar was born from a man who had got lost. In January 1977 Thierry Sabine, a French motorcyclist, was riding the Abidjan-Nice rally when he lost his way in the Sahara, on the Tchiga\u00ef plateau in northern Niger, and spent three days alone before he was found. He came home with a clear idea: a race that would take other people, of their own free will, to exactly that kind of place.<\/p>\n

Forty-nine years later, finding the way is still half the job. The route is not marked and nobody races with maps: competitors follow the roadbook, a sequence of notes with distances, compass headings, pictograms and danger warnings. For some years now it has been digital, on a tablet that is the same for everyone, and it is handed out a few minutes before the start of the special, so the richest teams can no longer spend the night studying it. The GPS, by design, shows little more than the heading to follow. Along the special there are mandatory checkpoints, the waypoints, which the system only validates if you pass close enough: missing one costs a time penalty, missing too many can mean exclusion.<\/p>\n

The note Brabec misread seven kilometres from the end is the same thing on a small scale. A reading error, in a race where you read and drive at the same time.<\/p>\n

The Dakar Rally classes<\/h2>\n

The Dakar is not one race but several, run within the same event on largely shared routes. The bikes have their own standings and, within them, the toughest category of all, Original by Motul, for riders without assistance and without team mechanics: spare parts and tools travel in a trunk that the organisers carry from one bivouac to the next. In 2026 it was won by Frenchman Benjamin Melot, at his seventh attempt in the category, after four podiums. Dakar bikes are a story in themselves, and we tell it in our article on which bikes are used in the Dakar<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The cars are split into several classes. Ultimate, or T1, is for prototypes built specifically for rally raids, and it is the class that decides the overall win among the cars: in 2026 Nasser Al-Attiyah took it, his sixth victory and the first for Dacia. Stock, or T2, is reserved for production-based cars, and Lithuania’s Rokas Baciu\u0161ka won it in a Defender. Challenger, or T3, is for lightweight prototypes; SSV, or T4, for side-by-sides, the light off-roaders whose two seats sit next to each other. Then there are the trucks, Dakar Classic, a regularity event for vintage cars and trucks, and Mission 1000, for vehicles with alternative powertrains.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

Quads, part of the Dakar for more than thirty years, were dropped from the programme with the 2025 edition: too few entries.<\/p>\n

From Paris to Saudi Arabia, and then?<\/h2>\n

The first edition left the Trocad\u00e9ro in Paris on 26 December 1978 and reached Dakar, the capital of Senegal, on 14 January 1979: 182 vehicles at the start, 74 at the finish, and victory for Cyril Neveu on a Yamaha. That is where the name comes from, and it stayed even after the race stopped going to Dakar. The last time it did was in 2007, with the final special around Lac Rose. Thierry Sabine did not see what came next: he died on 14 January 1986, during the race, when a helicopter crashed in Mali, along with the singer Daniel Balavoine and three other people.<\/p>\n

In 2008 the Dakar was cancelled the day before the start, because of terrorist threats in Mauritania, where eight of the fifteen stages were due to run. From 2009 to 2019 it moved to South America, between Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay; from 2020 to 2026 it was held in Saudi Arabia, seven editions in a row.<\/p>\n

Now the map is changing again. On 25 October 2026 the organiser, Amaury Sport Organisation, and the Saudi Motorsport Company announced that the 2027 Dakar, scheduled in Saudi Arabia from 1 to 15 January, will not be held there, following recent developments in the region. The race will still go ahead, in a different territory to be announced in the coming days, and Saudi Arabia will host it again in 2028, for the fiftieth edition. As of 26 October 2026 the new venue is not yet official; reports point to Morocco, with a possible start in Europe: if that is confirmed, it would be the first Dakar in Africa since 2007.<\/p>\n

Safety in the desert<\/h2>\n

A race like this has a price, and the Dakar has paid it more than once. After the 2020 edition, which cost the lives of Paulo Gon\u00e7alves and Edwin Straver, who died a few days after the finish from injuries sustained in the race, the FIM and the organisers tightened the rules for bikes: for 2021 they made the airbag vest mandatory, introduced an audible alarm from the Sentinel system to flag the most dangerous sections and created zones where speed is limited to 90 kilometres an hour.<\/p>\n

Every vehicle is also followed by satellite through the organisers’ tracking system, which has a button on board to call for help and send the vehicle’s position straight to the rescue teams. It is the part of the Dakar you see least on television, and the part that makes everything else possible.<\/p>\n

What a brand finds at the Dakar<\/h2>\n

For a sponsor the Dakar has an advantage few other motorsport events can offer: the calendar. It runs in January, when Formula 1 and MotoGP have yet to start their seasons (in 2026 MotoGP opened its season at the end of February, Formula 1 on 8 March), and for two weeks it produces a story a day, made of stages, retirements, navigation errors and comebacks like Benavides’. On the vehicles, at the bivouac and in the content riders and teams publish every evening, a brand finds a space that is hard to find anywhere else at that time of year.<\/p>\n

The other side of the coin is that the Dakar has to be told, not just shown: a logo on the side of a car crossing the desert, left on its own, is an empty sticker. It works when the presence is surrounded by a content and activation programme built around those two weeks. We cover this on our page about Dakar Rally sponsorship<\/a> and, for those looking at two wheels, in our article on motorcycle sponsorship, from MotoGP to the Dakar<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Two seconds over almost eight thousand kilometres. That is how you win the Dakar: with one mistake fewer than everyone else.<\/p>\n

\r\n\r\n

Frequently asked questions about the Dakar Rally<\/b><\/h2>\r\n \r\n
\n
\r\n\r\n

\r\n How does the Dakar Rally work?<\/b>\r\n <\/h3>\r\n\r\n
\r\n
\r\n

It is a rally raid of about two weeks. Every day competitors tackle an untimed liaison and a timed special stage, navigating with a digital roadbook handed out a few minutes before the start. In the speed categories the winner is whoever has the lowest total time, penalties included; Dakar Classic is a regularity event.<\/p>\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n\r\n <\/div>\r\n
\n

\r\n\r\n

\r\n How long is the Dakar Rally?<\/b>\r\n <\/h3>\r\n\r\n
\r\n
\r\n

The race lasts about two weeks. The 2026 edition ran from 3 to 17 January, with a prologue, thirteen stages and a rest day in Riyadh. The final technical and administrative checks took place in Yanbu on 1 and 2 January, so for riders and teams the commitment comes to about three weeks.<\/p>\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n\r\n <\/div>\r\n
\n

\r\n\r\n

\r\n How many kilometres is the Dakar Rally?<\/b>\r\n <\/h3>\r\n\r\n
\r\n
\r\n

In 2026 the route measured about 8,000 kilometres, almost 5,000 of them timed special stages. The longest stage, between Hail and Riyadh, was over 900 kilometres in total, while the longest special stage was more than 480 kilometres.<\/p>\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n\r\n <\/div>\r\n
\n

\r\n\r\n

\r\n Where will the 2027 Dakar Rally be held?<\/b>\r\n <\/h3>\r\n\r\n
\r\n
\r\n

Not in Saudi Arabia. On 25 October 2026 the organiser announced that the 2027 edition will still go ahead, but in a different territory, to be announced in the following days. Saudi Arabia will host the 2028 Dakar, the fiftieth edition.<\/p>\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n\r\n <\/div>\r\n
\n

\r\n\r\n

\r\n What is a marathon stage in the Dakar?<\/b>\r\n <\/h3>\r\n\r\n
\r\n
\r\n

It is a pair of consecutive stages in which competitors receive no help from their team mechanics: in between, they spend the night in a separate bivouac and fix their vehicles themselves. In 2026 stages four and five, and nine and ten, were marathon stages.<\/p>\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n\r\n <\/div>\r\n
\n

\r\n\r\n

\r\n What classes race in the Dakar Rally?<\/b>\r\n <\/h3>\r\n\r\n
\r\n
\r\n

Bikes, including the unassisted Original by Motul class, then Ultimate (T1), Stock (T2), Challenger (T3) and SSV (T4) cars, trucks, Dakar Classic for vintage vehicles and Mission 1000 for alternative powertrains. Quads were dropped from the programme in 2025.<\/p>\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n\r\n <\/div>\r\n
\n\r\n <\/div>\r\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Through the evolution of the route, technical vehicle categories and rigorous safety measures, the Dakar continues to be a symbol of adventure and endurance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20040],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-motor-racing"],"acf":[],"contentshake_article_id":"","yoast_head":"\nHow long is the Dakar Rally? How it works, stages, classes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How long is the Dakar Rally? Two weeks in January: a prologue and 13 stages, about 8,000 km, a digital roadbook and several classes. 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