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British rally fans have just been given two reasons to look forward to 2027. The World Rally Championship is returning to the UK with Rally Scotland, and now the BBC has confirmed a three-year deal to show WRC action across the country. The timing makes this much bigger than a normal TV-rights announcement.
From 2027, the BBC will show selected live stages from every WRC round, including each rally’s final Power Stage. There will also be a 60-minute highlights programme for every round, plus clips and other coverage across BBC platforms and iPlayer. Rally Scotland will get even more attention, with extensive live coverage across all four days.
For British rallying, that is quite a change. The WRC has not been on the BBC since Rally GB in 2001. In recent years, UK television coverage has been spread across different broadcasters, which made the championship less visible to casual viewers. From next year, someone who does not already follow rallying will have a much easier way to discover it.
At the same time, the championship itself is coming back to British roads. Rally Scotland is planned around Aberdeen, with gravel stages across Aberdeenshire and Moray. It will be the UK’s first WRC round since Wales Rally GB in 2019. Organisers have already completed an FIA candidate event as part of preparations for the 2027 return.
There is another interesting part to the timing. WRC is also changing its top-level car rules in 2027, with the aim of making competition more accessible and increasing the number of cars fighting near the front. So British viewers could be returning to the championship just as a new era begins.
Rallying once had a much bigger place in mainstream British sports coverage. The combination of a home WRC event and regular BBC exposure gives the sport a real opportunity to reach people who might never pay for specialist motorsport coverage. It does not guarantee another rally boom, but it removes one of the biggest barriers: people will actually be able to find and watch it.
Could regular free-to-air coverage make rallying a mainstream British sport again, or has the way people follow motorsport changed too much?
