NASCAR's Ben Kennedy outlines plan to announce future Championship venues beyond Homestead-Miami

NASCAR announced that the Cup Series Championship race will take place at Homestead-Miami Speedway in 2026 and will rotate each year. In an interview with Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic, Ben Kennedy, NASCAR executive vice president, chief venue and racing innovation officer, revealed the plan to announce future championship venues beyond Homestead.

Ultimately, NASCAR wants to announce future championship venues well in advance, but the governing body is not ready to reveal the host track for the 2027 season. “If we can continue to bump forward the announcement year after year, I think it’s going to help all of us from a planning perspective and from a promotion perspective because that just gives us a much longer window to be able to talk about these events,” Kennedy said.

 “It’d be great to plan a few years out as that gives us opportunities to engage the local community, gives us opportunities to promote the event and have a lot of bites at the apple and really create a lot of anticipation. A lot of other sports are planning their finals and their big events years in advance, and we’d like to eventually do the same.”

Homestead-Miami was the longtime home of NASCAR Championship weekend

NASCAR will have the Cup, Xfinity and Truck Series Championship races at Homestead next year. The track was the home of the championship weekend from 2002 through 2019 before moving to Phoenix.

While speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Kennedy spoke about the feedback he received when speaking to drivers and teams about where they would like to have the championship race.

“I would say from the conversations that we had, a lot of it had to do with the racing product. Homestead has put on some of the most phenomenal finishes, especially when we had the championship there, but even since then, and we’ve crowned so many legends and Hall of Famers over the past 15 years when we did have the championship at Homestead-Miami Speedway,” Kennedy said. “So competition is a part of it, variability, and I think diversity in where you’re crowning the champion was another consideration.

“Then the third part is being in a big market where they feel like either the teams or partners or drivers can activate as well. Phoenix is great at that, and they’re great at hosting and hospitality and being able to have events in Avondale or Scottsdale or Phoenix area.”