Revolution in the Motocross World Championship: goodbye to team loyalty as top champions switch colors in 2026

Motorsport is (also) business. A commercial and advertising showcase for manufacturers, where teams are companies and inevitably have to balance the books. All this while the riders are either professionals or dream of becoming one. Therefore, career choices aim to align technical-sporting prerogatives with strictly economic reasons. This is professional sport, and as a result, so-called “one-club men” no longer exist.

The 2026 Motocross World Championship kicked off with a burst of firecrackers in sequence on January 1. The day culminated with the announcement of Mattia Guadagnini’s return to KTM (as a privateer with the Van Venrooy team), preceded earlier in the afternoon by two long-awaited press releases. On one side, Yamaha made Tim Gajser’s signing official, and shortly after, Honda HRC announced their deal with Jeffrey Herlings. Such an explosive market in the knobby-tire world had never been seen before. At most, you’d get one major jersey change per year, but never a sequence of new unions one after another.

The striking aspect is that, in the cases of Herlings and Gajser, we’re talking about two of the most successful motocross riders in the history of the sport. Both, moreover, around the age of thirty, decided to switch after spending most of their lives with their previous outfits. The two stories intertwine, with decisions made in the summer and announced only at the start of the new year due to contractual reasons not only with their former teams/manufacturers (KTM for Herlings, Honda for Gajser), but also with their respective apparel suppliers.

Seeing Jeffrey Herlings go from KTM orange to Honda HRC red, from an Alpinestars jersey to a FOX kit, was a shock to many, even though this epochal change has been public knowledge for several months now. “The Bullet” decided to leave KTM after 112 Grands Prix and 5 world titles, but above all after 16 years with the Mattighofen manufacturer, strongly courted by Honda and Giacomo Gariboldi, who put a two-year contract (2026–2027) on the table. They thus convinced the flying Dutchman to postpone his retirement plans if he couldn’t reach an agreement with KTM for the future.

Tim Gajser’s move from Honda to Yamaha is no less significant. It may not be the 16 years of Herlings’ previous stint, but we’re talking about 12 here. “TIGA” became a professional thanks to Honda and the Gariboldi Team, which took him on when he was very young, saving his career and finances. In fact, he and his father Bodo found themselves out on the street, and Giacomo Gariboldi signed him, even paying off his family’s debts.

Sixteen years for Herlings at KTM, 12 for Gajser at Honda, with 2026 presenting a new challenge for both. In an MXGP Motocross World Championship where “one-team flags” no longer exist, much like what has already happened overseas, where brand ambassadors include Ryan Villopoto at Yamaha (even though he never raced with them in his career), Jeremy McGrath at Kawasaki, or Ricky Carmichael at Triumph. If Tony Cairoli at Ducati was a shock, in hindsight it was only the beginning of a revolution in the MXGP circus.