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Introducing Yamaha’s Factory and Supported Teams and Riders for 2026
February 10, 2026 – Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd. will continue our motorsports efforts in 2026 with the same spirit of challenge we have carried since 1955, as we make various efforts under our basic policy of enhancing the value of the Yamaha brand, developing advanced technologies to feed back to our production machines and promoting the healthy growth of motorcycle racing.
For this season, we have made an organizational change by establishing the new MS Value Creation Department to handle motorsports planning and management. It will focus on creating value for stakeholders through our motorsports efforts.
Our primary focus remains on our efforts in the MotoGP World Championship. In 2024, we put together a new organizational structure as part of making a transformation aimed at global talent recruitment and updating development systems and processes. For 2025, our efforts centered around a dual factory team structure with the Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP and Prima Pramac Yamaha MotoGP teams. We saw last year as a season of “realization,” in which we took on the challenge of developing both the inline-four and V4 engines for the YZR-M1 simultaneously. Particularly with the latter, we explored and verified the potential it held through tests and wildcard entries. In November last year, we made the decision to exclusively use the V4 engine configuration for the YZR-M1 starting in 2026.
Coming into 2026, our challenge continues as we approach the season with the same dual-factory structure as before. Four riders will be developing our current V4-powered machines toward taking victory while we also work in the background on developing our prototype for the 2027 MotoGP regulations. As we make efforts across various aspects of development, we are aiming to create new value in several domains. We are doing so by strengthening our organization, developing talent, advancing technologies like engines, chassis, electronics and aerodynamics, and developing manufacturing and production techniques that allow us to deliver these with high quality. Going forward, we aim to feed the knowledge gained from these efforts back into our products and manufacturing processes, transforming experience into value for our customers and stakeholders.
In addition to MotoGP, the BLU CRU Pramac Yamaha Moto2 team, who compete in the Moto2 World Championship, enters its second year in 2026. The team serves as an objective for up-and-coming riders who are aiming to reach the pinnacle of road racing. Through the season, the team’s riders will work to develop the mental, technical and physical skills they need to step up to MotoGP. This year, the team will field two young riders whom Yamaha and Pramac will support and develop toward becoming the kind of talent capable of taking on challenges alongside our company.
In production racing, Yamaha competes in the Superbike World Championship (WorldSBK), Endurance World Championship (EWC), Motocross World Championship (MXGP/MX2), AMA Supercross/Motocross, and the MotoAmerica AMA/FIM North American Road Racing Championship (MotoAmerica). Teams are run by Yamaha’s European and North American group companies, who campaign YZF-R and YZ series machines ridden by world-class riders aiming to win their respective championship titles.
BLU CRU: Promoting Motorsports and Developing Talent
Yamaha Motor, including all our group companies worldwide, are fully behind the BLU CRU efforts we make toward promoting motorcycles and motorsports around the globe. Our motorsports division specifically aims to discover talented young Yamaha riders in both on- and off-road disciplines and develop them into riders capable of taking on challenges with us in the future, in both racing and other areas.
In recent years, we have strengthened these BLU CRU efforts. One example of this is the Yamaha R3 BLU CRU FIM World Cup (R3 FIM World Cup), which was launched by group company Yamaha Motor Europe N.V. In it, YZF-R3 machines race as part of a support class for the Superbike World Championship. In response, the Asia-Pacific region now hosts the Yamaha R3 BLU CRU Asia-Pacific Championship, while South America hosts Yamalube R3 BLU CRU América Latina, both of which are YZF-R3 spec racing series. Yamaha has built a unified global tiered step-up structure across the entire group, and as part of this, riders who excel in these regional championships have the chance to be sent to Europe to progress further.
Riders who win the R3 FIM World Cup will progress into the FIM Sportbike World Championship (WorldSPB). If successful there, the next step is a rider development seat in WorldSSP. By this point, the path to the top of the sport is clear, with further progress represented by a full-on WorldSBK seat, or by a seat in the pinnacle of the BLU CRU program: the BLU CRU Pramac Yamaha Moto2 team.
Our BLU CRU efforts extend beyond racing itself, as they also encompass machine and rider talent development. We aim to cultivate the talent needed to promote and expand motorsports while creating new value.
