The 2026 GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup season comes to a close at the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve, Portugal, this weekend with a three-hour race ending under the cover of darkness.
The 61-car grid features plenty of changes from the previous round at the Nürburgring, with numerous one-off entries, as well as a raft of driver swaps due to a clash with the FIA World Endurance Championship’s 6 Hours of Barcelona.
The headline amongst them, undoubtedly, is four-time Formula 1 World Drivers’ Champion Max Verstappen, who will make his GT World Challenge Europe debut aboard the 2 Seas Motorsport-run #3 Mercedes-AMG Team Verstappen Racing AMG GT3 EVO alongside Ben Barnicoat and Chris Lulham.
The #3 AMG, aboard which Lulham is regularly joined by FIA WEC-tied Daniel Juncadella and Jules Gounon, has endured a challenging Endurance Cup campaign where its pace has often gone unrewarded. A podium finish at the Nürburgring is its only result of note, with its pair of pole positions and a race win in the Sprint Cup a better indication of its form.
For the first time in GT World Challenge Europe’s 16-year history, the Endurance Cup Drivers’ title is not in play at the final round. Lucas Auer, Maro Engel and Luca Stolz have wrapped up the crown following a consistent campaign where they haven’t finished lower than fourth aboard the Winward Racing-run #48 Mercedes-AMG Team Mann-Filter AMG GT3 EVO.
The trio enters Portimão still chasing their first victory of the season, with this currently on track to be the third consecutive season the Endurance Cup champions go winless.
Winward Racing can still be overhauled for the Teams’ Championship by Comtoyou Racing, although at 26 points behind, the Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT3 Evo squad requires a perfect weekend. The #007 Aston Martin of Mattia Drudi, Marco Sorensen and Nicki Thiim has won twice this season, at Circuit Paul Ricard and the Nürburgring, and this weekend sees Sorensen replaced by fellow factory driver Ross Gunn, who last competed in the Endurance Cup full-time in 2024.
Comtoyou Racing has also made a change to the line-up of its #11 Aston Martin, which runs in the 17-car Bronze Cup. Valentin Hasse-Clot will make his season debut in the seat filled by Sérgio Sette Camara at the Nürburgring.
The most significant championship battles at the front of proceedings will be for the full-season titles, which combine the points earned across the Endurance and Sprint Cups.
In the full-season Drivers’ Championships, Auer/Engel have a 29.5-point advantage, meaning on paper they are already champions. This, however, will be reduced to 20 points should they lose an appeal against a disqualification from Race 2 at Misano, meaning a victory for either the #80 Lionspeed GP Porsche 911 GT3 R (992.2) or #32 Team WRT BMW M4 GT3 Evo could see them overhauled.
The 24 Hours of Spa-winning #80 Porsche has featured Sprint Cup Drivers’ Champions Bastian Buus and Ricardo Feller as its full-season pilots, with now two-time DTM Drivers’ Champion Thomas Preining joining them for the Endurance Cup.
In the #32 BMW, meanwhile, reigning full-season Drivers’ champions Kelvin van der Linde and Charles Weerts have been the regular crew, with Jordan Pepper acting as third driver.
In the Teams’ Championship, Team WRT leads Winward Racing by five points as the Belgian squad seeks to win a third consecutive title.
WRT is another team which has been forced to tweak its driver line-up for this weekend, with Neil Verhagen replacing Dan Harper in the #46 BMW.
Other changes in the Pro class include at fellow BMW squad Rowe Racing, where Philipp Eng and Marco Wittmann have replaced Raffaele Marciello and August Farfus in the #98 M4 GT3 Evo. Jack Hawksworth will pilot the #59 Garage 59 McLaren GT3 Evo in place of Marvin Kirchhöfer, whilst at Mercedes-AMG Team GetSpeed Ralf Aron has replaced Maxime Martin aboard the #17 Mercedes-AMG.
Aron, notably, is one of a number of drivers who have already turned plenty of laps at Portimão this month, albeit on Goodyear rubber as opposed to the Pirelli tyres utilised in SRO competition. The Estonian raced in the European Le Mans Series season finale at the venue last weekend.
AF Corse has made no fewer than three changes across its pair of Ferrari 296 GT3 Evos. Albert Costa has joined the #50 crew, with Nicola Lacorte and Lorenzo Ferrari joining regular Tommaso Mosca in the #51 Ferrari.
Another change comes at TGI Team by GRT, with Maximilian Paul returning to the #63 Lamborghini Temerario GT3 line-up after missing the Nürburgring through injury. This weekend will bring the Temerario GT3’s first season of racing to a close, with both TGI Team by GRT and outgoing Endurance Cup champions Rutronik Racing hoping to end the campaign on a high.
The eight-car Gold Cup offers the closest Endurance Cup title battle, with four crews still in contention for both the Drivers’ and Teams’ title.
The Gen M-branded #998 Rowe Racing BMW of Ugo de Wilde, Jens Klingmann and Tim Tramnitz leads the #58 Garage 59 McLaren of Benjamin Goethe, Louis Prette and Thomas Fleming by only three points, with a non-classified finish for the McLaren at the Nürburgring following a gearbox issue whilst leading, having proven costly.
Goethe and Fleming are two of the four drivers attempting to pull double-duty between Portimão and Barcelona, likely as a consequence of their title contender status. The third is Paradine Competition’s Darren Leung, who likewise can still claim some season-long silverware, with Team Motopark’s Rui Andrade the fourth.
The AF Corse-run #71 Selected Car Racing Ferrari of Simon Birch, Frederik Schandorff and Malte Ebdrup, like the #998 BMW, has put its challenge together through consistency and is yet to finish outside of the top four, and trails by only 11 points.
The #111 CSA Racing McLaren of Arthur Rougier, Simon Gachet and James Kell completes the contenders, although at 25 points behind will require a perfect weekend to become a factor.
The full-season Teams’ Championship is also still up for grabs, with AF Corse leading Garage 59 and CSA Racing by 12 and 25.5 points respectively.
Away from the championship battles, Tresor Attempto Racing will be looking to build on its strong recent run of form. Alex Aka, Dylan Pereira and Andrea Frassineti won at the Nürburgring, whilst Aka and Pereira scored an outright victory at the Barcelona Sprint Cup round earlier this month.
2026 has been the year of the #30 Team WRT BMW in the Silver Cup, with a clean sweep of all six titles across Endurance, Sprint and the full-season confirmed as early as the Zandvoort Sprint Cup event in September. One major target is still left to be ticked off for the Ignacio Montenegro, Amaury Cordeel and Matisse Lismont-crewed entry, though, with the trio yet to win in the Endurance Cup.
Part of Team WRT’s dominance has come courtesy of others struggling for consistency, with no other team having finished on the Silver Cup podium on multiple occasions in the Endurance Cup.
The #9 Pure Rxcing Porsche, #66 Tresor Attempto Racing Audi, #45 Rinaldi Racing Ferrari and #65 HRT Ford Racing Mustang GT3 Evo have all won races, and with nothing to lose this weekend, will be looking to add a second rostrum visit to their 2026 record.
Rinaldi Racing has made a change to its line-up for this weekend, with Axcil Jefferies replacing Rafael Duran, whilst having missed the Nürburgring, Maxime Oosten returns to the #65 Ford in place of Niklas Kalus. At Paradine Competition, British Touring Car Championship race winner Daryl De Leon will make his GT World Challenge Europe debut in the #992 BMW.
And in the Bronze Cup, the Drivers’ championship picture is not as clear as it may seem, after Dustin Blattner withdrew from the previous round at the Nürburgring.
His regular ride, the #74 Kessel Racing Ferrari, finished on the podium in the Eifel. This means that his co-driver Dennis Marschall leads the Endurance Cup solo, but as a professional driver is unable to win the Bronze Cup alone, meaning that the gap that matters is the 16 points between Blattner and the #991 BMW of Leung and James Kellett.
Blattner is returning alongside Marschall and Lorenzo Patrese this weekend, whilst Robert De Hahn will race alongside Leung and Kellett at Paradine Competition.
In the season-long Drivers’ Championship, the same scenario applies, with Marschall’s comfortable lead effectively irrelevant.
Here, Marvin Dienst and Rinat Salikhov – who will share the #87 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG with Gabriele Piana – lead Leung by five points.
Eddie Cheever of the #93 Ziggo Sport Tempesta Racing Porsche is fourth, but also ineligible for the crown, whilst his fellow Sprint Cup champion Peter Dempsey has forfeited his outsider chance of the title by prioritising his FIA WEC programme. Lucas Wolf will instead join Cheever and Jonathan Hui in the Herberth Motorsport-supported machine this weekend.
Charles Dawson and Kiern Jewiss, who, along with Reece Barr, won at the Nürburgring aboard the #222 2 Seas Motorsport Mercedes-AMG, trail Dienst/Salikhov by 14.5 points, whilst, despite missing three races across the Nürburgring and Barcelona, Blattner can still salvage a successful title defence at 18.5 points in arrears.
In the full-season Teams’ Championship, Kessel Racing leads Winward Racing by 23.5 points.
The Bronze Cup also has one additional award to consider, with the best full-season entry receiving an automatic invitation to the 2027 24 Hours of Le Mans. The standings for this prize, which is scored slightly differently to the Drivers’ and Teams’ championship, are not available to the public. DSC understands that Kessel Racing is currently in a strong position but can still be overhauled by multiple teams.
As stated above, the entry has received a sizeable boost for this weekend, with a 55-car grid at the Nürburgring becoming a massive 61-car field.
Razoon – more than racing’s #914 Porsche returns having missed the Nürburgring, with Clemens Mühlbacher, Leo Pichler and Max Mutschlechner set to race in the Bronze Cup. The Austrian outfit will also field a second car for the first time, the all-Brazilian #41 Porsche of Marcos Gomes, Alan Hellmeister and Sebastião Malucelli. This car will also run in the Bronze Cup.
“For me, it’s a joy beyond words to be part of the world’s biggest GT championship,” said debutant Malucelli. “I’m absolutely delighted to have the opportunity to compete alongside drivers who have always been my role models in GT3 racing. Portimão is a circuit I’m already familiar with from the Porsche Cup Brazil [which raced at the venue as part of its 24 Hours of Le Mans support race-headlined tour of Europe this summer], so I think it’s a brilliant opportunity to make my debut in GT3 racing.”
In the Bronze Cup, they will face competition from additional one-off Porsches from High Class Racing and Car Collection Motorsport, with both squads making their second starts of the season having raced at the 24 Hours of Spa.
High Class Racing’s #269 Porsche will be driven by Max Moritz, Klaus Bachler and Raphael Rennhofer, whilst Reinhold Krahn, Pietro Armanni and Joel Sturm will pilot the #8 Car Collection Motorsport machine.
“For this race, the aim is quite simply to deliver a strong performance together with the team, improve my driving skills and make the most of every aspect of the car to extract as much pace as possible – all whilst avoiding mistakes and driving as consistently as possible,” said 21-year-old Italian Pietro Armanni, who is another debutant.
Sprint Cup outfit KPX Motorsport is concluding its first season of operations with its Endurance Cup debut, as Jop Rappange, Nigel Schoonderwoerd and Yelmer Buurman share its #77 BMW in the Bronze Cup.
The #999 GetSpeed Team PCX Racing Mercedes-AMG is entered in Bronze for Patrick Charlaix, Jordan Boisson and Marvin Klein, with the team’s regular Bronze Cup-entered #12 Mercedes-AMG receiving a line-up tweak as Mikaël Grenier returns having missed the Nürburgring.
And finally, Team Motopark will field two cars, following on from its series debut at the 24 Hours of Spa. Christian Mansell, Aaron Walker and Andrade will share the #19 Mercedes-AMG in the Silver Cup, with the #20 entry of Dominik Baumann, Nikita Mazepin and Philip Ellis competing in Pro.
This weekend marks the first time the Endurance Cup has raced at the 4.6-kilometre venue commonly known as Portimão, while the Sprint Cup raced here in 2014 and 2015. Winward Racing – under its previous name HTP Motorsport – and Team WRT were the Main Race winners on these occasions.
This will also be the circuit’s last appearance on the schedule for the time being, with GT World Challenge Europe confirmed not to return next year.
The final round of the 2026 GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup season will be held at the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve, Portimão, from 16th to 17th October 2026, with a pre-event test scheduled for the 15th October.
A pair of Free Practice sessions will take place on Friday 16th, before Qualifying at 17:55 WEST. The three-hour race is scheduled to begin at 17:00 WEST on Saturday.
Images courtesy of SRO/JEP and Frozenspeed
