The 2025 Formula One season is in its final week, and although we’re headed for a thrilling finale at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix with Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri and Max Verstappen all in contention, it’s never too early to think about next year.
Where better to start than with the 22 drivers that will take to the starting line in 2026.
Red Bull completed the puzzle early Tuesday, announcing a series of moves that included promoting Racing Bulls rookie Isack Hadjar to the top Red Bull team to join four-time reigning champion Max Verstappen. Subsequently, 18-year-old Arvid Lindblad will make his F1 debut at Racing Bulls alongside Liam Lawson, leaving Yuki Tsunoda, who will remain within Red Bull’s system as a reserve and test driver, without a seat as the carousel stops turning.
With the final three drivers now confirmed for next season, here’s a complete look at all 22 drivers that will get behind the wheel in 2026, along with what we know about their contracts and notes for each team.
McLaren
Oscar Piastri: multiyear contract
Lando Norris: multiyear contract
It’s certainly not outlandish to say that the back-to-back constructors’ champions have the most balanced pair of drivers on the grid. In 2025, each driver has won seven races. Norris maintains a slight advantage in qualifying, besting his teammate in 12 of the 23 Grands Prix, but Piastri has qualified ahead of Norris for four of the six sprint races.
But the end of this season threatens to upend the tenuous peace that McLaren has established with its ever-present “Papaya Rules.” It’s difficult to keep things fair and balanced between two top-tier drivers, especially if one of them emerges from this year as the new champion. How McLaren manages its approach going into a new set of regulations will be worth watching. This could be the start of a dynasty, or a short-lived period of success, depending on how the team adapts and adjusts.
The final pieces of the puzzle 🧩
— Formula 1 (@F1) December 2, 2025
Our 2026 grid is locked in!#F1 pic.twitter.com/hZ96oaLSPg
Mercedes
George Russell: multiyear contract
Kimi Antonelli: Under contract through 2026
Outside of Verstappen, Russell was perhaps the driver involved in the most speculation going into next season—in part because Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff continuously mentioned a possible pursuit of Verstappen. That likely would have left Russell without a seat at Mercedes, until Red Bull settled the situation with its top driver and Wolff turned his focus back to negotiating in-house.
Russell has delivered throughout it all, becoming the only driver outside of the three championship contenders to win in 2025, doing so in both Montreal and Singapore. He’s comfortably slotted into fourth place in the standings, with almost 100 points between him and the next driver above or below him.
Mercedes, which has dropped off significantly during this four-year stretch of regulations, will seek a return to form in 2026 as Antonelli comes back for Year 2. It remains to be seen what the 19-year-old could do in a truly elite car, but the team should learn quickly next season if it’s got the right pair behind the wheel.
Red Bull
Max Verstappen: under contract through 2028
Isack Hadjar: under contract through 2026
All eyes had been on Red Bull since the summer break, but given the changeover the team experienced in the middle of the year with the firing of Christian Horner, it’s no surprise that it took the team some time to settle upon who would be joining Verstappen. And a clear option started to emerge: Hadjar.
The 21-year-old rookie has been one of the biggest surprises of the 2025 season after a crash on the formation lap in his debut in Australia. He’s finished in the top six three times, including a podium in Zandvoort, and scored points on 11 different weekends—the most among drivers on the bottom five teams.
The question remains: Can he improve upon that form in what’s widely regarded as the most volatile seat in F1? Red Bull has tried out a number of drivers in the spot alongside Verstappen, including current grid members Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon and Liam Lawson, and only Sergio Pérez managed to last at least two full seasons. If the team hopes to compete with the likes of McLaren again, this can’t be a one-driver show any longer; Hadjar will have to deliver.
Ferrari
Charles Leclerc: multiyear contract
Lewis Hamilton: under contract through 2026
At the end of the penultimate race of the 2025 season in Qatar, both Ferrari drivers seemed out of answers and out of hope. The drought will continue: The most successful team in F1 history won’t be crowning a drivers’ champion for the 18th straight year.
Ferrari CEO and chairman John Elkann would tell you that some (or maybe even most) of the blame falls on Leclerc and Hamilton, but both will be back behind the wheel in 2026. The team will have a chance to develop an entirely new car and will have two of the winningest drivers on the grid to operate it. Whether or not that will be enough remains to be seen—and Ferrari doesn’t have a lot of time.
Hamilton turns 41 in January, and no drivers—even if we’ve never seen a seven-time world champion have this sort of longevity—have found success this late in their careers. Leclerc is regarded as one of the best talents on the grid, and would be sought after by every other team should the situation not improve at Ferrari. The Prancing Horse can either change its ways or stay the same and risk plummeting further toward rock bottom.
Williams
Alex Albon: under contract through 2026
Carlos Sainz: under contract through 2026
If we hadn’t gotten a historic finish to the season with three of the best drivers right now entering the final race with a shot at a championship, the story of 2025 very well could have been what happened at Williams. The team, now under the stewardship of team principal James Vowles, openly acknowledged that there would be very little development on the car this season in order to prioritize the new regulations in ’26. That’s exactly what Williams did—only to establish itself as a clear top-half team this season with one of the most reliable driver pairings on the grid.
It took time for Sainz to find his footing with a new team, but Albon picked up the slack in the first half of the season, finishing in the top five in three of the first six races. The post–summer break period has been dominated by Sainz, who finished on the podium in Baku and Qatar—the only driver outside of the top four teams to finish in the top three twice this season.
There’s a lot to like going forward at Williams, which hasn’t finished in the top four as a team since 2015.
Racing Bulls
Liam Lawson: under contract through 2026
Arvid Lindblad: under contract through 2026
The decision at Racing Bulls was always going to follow what happened with Hadjar and Red Bull, but there was still a dilemma to solve: continue with the experienced Tsunoda or give a younger, unproven talent a chance?
RB opted for the latter, elevating Lindblad from F2 to a full-time seat in F1. He became the youngest race winner in F2 history earlier this season at the sprint race in Saudi Arabia, before winning a full-length race in Barcelona. Though he’s sixth in the standings and has had some up-and-down results, Lindblad showed enough for the brass at Red Bull to move him up another rung on the ladder.
At Racing Bulls, he’ll pair with Lawson, who seemed to regain his footing somewhat after a two-race stint at Red Bull. Whether he can do enough to prove he deserves another shot at the top team remains to be seen, but Red Bull clearly sees more potential for Lawson to get there than it does in Tsunoda.
Your VCARB line-up for 2026 😮💨@liamlawson30 will welcome Arvid Lindblad as his new teammate next season, as Arvid makes the step up from #F2 💨 Let’s have it! 🤘#F1 #VCARB pic.twitter.com/iC2x2TritY
— Visa Cash App Racing Bulls F1 Team (@visacashapprb) December 2, 2025
Aston Martin
Fernando Alonso: under contract through 2026
Lance Stroll: under contract through 2026
Plenty of critics counted Alonso, 44, out after he went scoreless across the first eight race weekends this season. Since then, he’s scored the most points outside of the top seven drivers in the standings and Sainz—more than Albon, Hadjar and Nico Hülkenberg.
But the real story around Aston Martin is how much owner and chairman Lawrence Stroll has empowered Adrian Newey to set the team’s course going forward. Newey, one of the most successful car designers of the past three decades, will also serve as team principal next season, giving him an additional role to manage. It’s a very hands-on approach, and he’ll have two very different drivers to manage—Alonso, a former world champion in the twilight of his career, and Stroll, a now F1 veteran who’s never managed to crack the top 10 in points by the end of the season.
Haas
Esteban Ocon: under contract through 2026
Oliver Bearman: under contract through 2026
Given the slow start to the season, it wasn’t immediately clear if Bearman would get up to speed and match Ocon in his rookie season. But since the summer break, he’s been the best first-year driver on the grid, hands down.
The highlight, of course, was his fourth-place finish in Mexico, where he held his own against Verstappen and even beat Piastri. He followed that up by crossing the line sixth in Brazil two weeks later, cementing a fourth consecutive race weekend of scoring points.
It’s clear Bearman’s future is bright, and he’s already poised to beat Ocon in his first season in F1. But that’s not to say that Ocon, 29, is past his prime. This pairing is reliable and can elevate Haas’s ceiling if given a car to do so.
Sauber (Audi)
Nico Hülkenberg: multiyear contract
Gabriel Bortoleto: multiyear contract
There was some suggestion that Audi would tweak its lineup as it enters the F1 fray, but ultimately the new constructor opted to carry over its 2025 pair.
Hülkenberg brings a veteran presence to the team after delivering one of the moments of the season with his first career podium at the age of 37 in the 2025 British Grand Prix. He’s had a number of solid performances, but they’ve seemed to come in spurts, and scoring more consistently will be pivotal if he wants to remain a part of the Audi plan past next year. Bortoleto had steadied after a slow start and will enter his second year under the burden of increased expectations.
Alpine
Pierre Gasly: under contract through 2028
Franco Colapinto: under contract through 2026
The last-place team on the 2025 grid is eyeing a reset next year. But Alpine didn’t seem eager to make any changes to its lineup.
In fact, the French outfit doubled down on Gasly, who now has a long-term contract with the team. It’s a worthwhile investment for both sides, seeing as the 29-year-old is the clear No. 1 driver at the team and has squeezed just about everything out of a disappointing car this season. It’s the No. 2 spot that seems a little more perplexing. Colapinto replaced Jack Doohan after six races, but hasn’t scored a point since. He’s made it out of the first round of qualifying in just five of his 17 starts. Still, he’s only 22, and Alpine seems to be banking on him figuring something out with a full year behind the wheel.
Cadillac
Sergio Pérez: under contract through 2027
Valtteri Bottas: under contract through 2027
There’s no doubt that this is one of the most entertaining duos to line up on the grid next season, in addition to being among the most interesting. Cadillac announced that F1 veterans Pérez and Bottas would steward the new team through its first few years around the paddock, bringing with them a wealth of experience and combined 16 Grand Prix wins.
But lingering in the background is reserve driver Colton Herta, a 25-year-old American who will make the leap over from IndyCar to compete in F2 next season. If either one of the vets doesn’t live up to the billing as the team begins, it’s entirely possible that Cadillac could give Herta a chance to be just the third American in the past decade to make his mark in F1.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Resetting the 2026 F1 Grid: All 22 Drivers Confirmed for Next Season.
