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NASCAR Going Back To The Future With Return To Chicagoland Speedway

Jared Turner Written by Sports EditorJared Turner
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Chicagoland Speedway

Goodbye, Chicago Street Course. Hello, Chicagoland Speedway.

As previously announced, the Chicago Street Course is absent from the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series schedule — just released on Wednesday.

However, Chicagoland Speedway, a fixture of the Cup Series tour from 2001-2019, returns after a six-year hiatus. While the Chicago Street Course could resurface on a future schedule, the focus for now is on Chicagoland — a 1.5-mile track outside of Chicago in Joliet, Illinois, that produced some great racing and memorable moments over its original nearly two-decade run in NASCAR.

Why Is Chicagoland Speedway Back On The NASCAR Cup Series Schedule?

It certainly doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand why Chicagoland Speedway, which will host the Cup Series the weekend of July 4, has returned to the schedule for 2026.

For starters, NASCAR naturally wants to maintain a presence in and near Chicago — one of the nation’s most populated areas and largest TV markets — after bringing the Cup Series to the streets of downtown Chicago each of the last three years. But in addition to that, Chicagoland is a 1.5-mile track at a time when the Next Generation Cup Series car that debuted in 2022 is putting on by far its best shows at similar layouts.

While passing opportunities at short tracks and road courses have suffered with the Next Generation Cup car, the racing at mile-and-a-halves such as Charlotte Motor Speedway, Kansas Speedway and Las Vegas Motor Speedway has arguably never been better.

Appropriately, the Cup Series is experiencing a net loss of one road course (down from 6 to 5) next year to accommodate Chicagoland’s return to the schedule.

“If you look at the racing product for our mile-and-a-half tracks of the Next Gen car, they’re second to none on the schedule,” Ben Kennedy, NASCAR’s executive vice president and chief venue and racing innovation officer, said on a Wednesday Zoom call. “Mile-and-a-half racing has been some of the best racing we’ve seen every single week. And we have a little bit of dust to knock off in Joliet before we go there in July of next year. But July 4 weekend on the country’s 250th anniversary, we couldn’t ask for a better location than the Midwest and being in Chicagoland.”

Will Chicagoland Be Ready By The Time NASCAR Returns?

Although Chicagoland Speedway is understandably amped to be back on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule, the venue itself is going to need some work before NASCAR rolls into town next summer.

After all, Chicagoland has sat mostly idle since hosting its last Cup Series race on June 30, 2019.

“We have a facility development team that has made several site visits out to the racetrack and have taken a look at it,” NASCAR executive Ben Kennedy said Wednesday. “I think the good news is it’s relatively race-ready. So, we’ll probably have to replace some of the SAFER foam (on the SAFER barriers). We’ll probably have to put a fresh coat of paint on it, clean up some of the grandstands, renovate some of the suite areas.”

Some areas outside of the racetrack but on the grounds will also require some attention.

“There’s some parking areas that need to be repaved,” Kennedy said. “We’re going to have a long list of improvements that we’ll need to make to the facility.

“And we’ll make those well in advance of the time that we come there in July.”

Chicagoland Speedway’s official X account, which had not posted since November, is already gearing up. The previously dormant account quickly came to life after Wednesday’s NASCAR Cup Series schedule announcement.

Jared Turner Written by Sports EditorJared Turner
Jared Turner is a motorsports writer who has covered NASCAR for 20 years. He has interviewed over 20 NASCAR Hall of Famers and around 100 drivers, crew chiefs, and team owners, both past and present. He has also covered the sport for FOX Sports (where he was a two-time recipient of the FOX “X” Award for “Xtraordinary” job performance), NASCAR.com, Sporting News, NASCAR Pole Position Magazine, the SPEED network, and plenty of other online and print-only publications throughout his career. Notably, Jared has penned dozens of articles for NASCAR souvenir programs, including several featured prominently in Daytona 500 keepsakes. A Virginia Press Association award winner and former member of the National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA), Jared has racked up accolades both for his writing and his academic work. He studied both Communication and Psychology at Virginia Tech, where he was permanently enshrined in Phi Beta Kappa — the nation’s oldest and most prestigious academic honor society. Jared excels at feature writing and opinion writing, much of which stems from his dedication to all levels of racing.
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