Rally Paraguay 2026 Will Be WRC’s Longest Round

Rally Paraguay 2026 was officially launched at the Paraguayan Olympic Committee headquarters on Tuesday, with organizers confirming that the second edition of the WRC event will be the longest round on the entire 2026 world championship calendar, agência latinapress reported.

The event, scheduled for August 27–30 in the department of Itapúa, will feature 22 special stages — up from 19 in the 2025 inaugural edition — and more than 360 km of timed competition, surpassing the 335 km of the debut. Sixty driver-co-driver teams are expected to participate, a 25% increase from the 48 that competed last year. As the eleventh round of the WRC season, Paraguay’s rally will carry significant championship implications late in the calendar.

Route and Schedule

Competition begins Thursday, August 27 with the shakedown technical test in Nueva Alborada, followed by a ceremonial start at the Centro Cívico Encarnaceno — the Sambódromo. Friday’s opening leg takes crews through Cambyera, Nueva Alborada, Yerbatera, and the Autódromo across two passes, with the Yerbatera stage at 33.26 km marking the longest single timed section of the event.

Saturday is the marathon day, with double passes through Bella Vista, Bella Vista Sur, Hohenau, and Trinidad. The day’s highlight — and the biggest addition for 2026 — is a night super special stage on Asunción’s Costanera waterfront, a 3.10 km timed sprint designed to bring the WRC spectacle to Paraguay’s capital. Sunday concludes with stages through Encarnación, Artigas, and Artigas Oeste, finishing with the Power Stage in Encarnación. The prize-giving ceremony will be held at El Molino San José.

Building on a Debut That Changed Paraguay’s Profile

The 2025 debut was a breakthrough for both the WRC and for Paraguay. The event attracted 210,000 spectators and reached an estimated 800 million television viewers globally — figures that helped Paraguay achieve the world’s highest tourism growth rate in 2025, with international arrivals surging 53% year-on-year. The WRC, alongside the Pan American Junior Games in Asunción, anchored a strategy by President Santiago Peña’s government to use international sporting events as economic catalysts.

The numbers back the approach. Paraguay recorded 3.66 million international visitors in 2025, a 91% increase, with tourism receipts reaching an estimated $1.42 billion. Itapúa, the department hosting the rally, is already among the country’s most visited regions — and the expanded 2026 route, with stages running through Jesuit heritage towns like Trinidad, is designed to extend visitor stays and spending beyond the competition itself.

Why It Matters Beyond Motorsport

For the WRC, Paraguay offers something rare: a South American round that delivers logistical reliability, political stability, and enthusiastic attendance. Gol’s 45% capacity increase on routes to Paraguay and record airport passenger figures in 2025 signal that the country’s infrastructure is scaling to meet the demand these events generate. The night stage in Asunción is a deliberate move to extend the rally’s geographic footprint beyond Itapúa and give the capital a direct stake in the event’s economic impact.

Paraguay’s second WRC outing is larger, longer, and more ambitious than the first. Whether it can match the spectator turnout and global attention of the debut will determine not just the event’s future on the WRC calendar, but the viability of Paraguay’s broader bet that a landlocked country of seven million can compete for international attention through sport.

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