Middle East and whether Jeddah will be able to host the opening
round of next season. It was made official on Tuesday morning that
the Jeddah Corniche Circuit will host the season opener of Formula
E’s 13th campaign , marking the start of the Gen4 era. The venue
next to the Red Sea is scheduled to host a double-header under the
lights on December 18-19 this year, before the season continues in
Mexico City in January 2027. However, the ongoing crisis in the
Middle East has already seen Formula 1, MotoGP and the World
Endurance Championship all cancel or postpone races in the region.
Starting the Gen4 era in the Middle East is dependent on
developments in the crisis, with reports of a deal between Iran and
the United States fluctuating in recent days. Interestingly,
according to Dodds, one Formula E manufacturer would currently be
happy to race in Jeddah, giving the series reason to be optimistic
about starting the season without delay. Should Jeddah need to be
postponed until later in the season – something Formula E is open
to doing if necessary – then Mexico City would instead host the
opening round of the Gen4 era. Currently, Formula E is assessing
the conditions under which it can safely start the season in
Jeddah, and what would need to happen for a postponement. “So, I
was with one of our manufacturer partners last week, a big
manufacturer, and I asked them the question, which was: if we were
racing in Jeddah this weekend, and you had to go to your board and
say, ‘Is everyone okay if we travel to the Middle East and race
there?’, what would the answer be?” Dodds revealed during an
interview with RacingNews365 . “They went away to get that answer,
so they officially put the request in, and they came back and said
they’d been told there were zero restrictions on travelling there,
so we’d be absolutely fine to go there. “So, what we’ve got
underway is a big piece of work that basically says under what
conditions we’d be fine to race and under what conditions we
wouldn’t be fine to race. “But I think it’s interesting for us to
already be getting feedback from teams and manufacturer partners
that, under the current conditions, they’d be okay to travel and
race in Jeddah. “So, our expectation is that we’ll be racing in
Jeddah next season to kick off our season in December.”