Max Verstappen isn’t short of places to be in 2026, but the Nürburgring has just made itself a lot easier to fit into his diary.
Officials behind the Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie have confirmed a date change for the second round of their 10-event calendar, moving NLS2 forward by one week to March 21. On paper it’s a minor tweak. In practice it’s a very deliberate bit of calendar choreography designed to give Verstappen — and any other top-line drivers with international commitments — a clean window to race at the Nordschleife.
The intent wasn’t dressed up as anything else, either. In the statement announcing the change, the VLN made it clear the reschedule “takes advantage of an existing gap in the Formula 1 calendar,” and explicitly referenced the “global visibility” the series picked up through Verstappen’s participation last year.
That’s the key line. The NLS doesn’t usually move dates for anyone, let alone a three-time-plus world champion with an F1 schedule that already squeezes mechanics and drivers to the limit. But Verstappen’s Nürburgring cameos in 2025 didn’t just generate clicks — they created genuine momentum, the kind promoters can point at when they’re selling the series to partners, teams and casual fans who otherwise wouldn’t know a Cup3 from a GT3.
Originally, the early part of the 2026 NLS calendar left Verstappen staring at conflicts. The season still opens on March 14, with another race two weeks later — dates that clashed with the Chinese and Japanese Grands Prix respectively. Without a reshuffle, the first realistic chance for Verstappen to appear would have been NLS6 in June, which is a long time to wait when the whole point is to keep the attention and storylines alive.
By dragging NLS2 into March 21, the organisers have effectively turned that early-season dead zone into a headline slot. It’s a smart move for them, and it tells you plenty about the pull Verstappen now has beyond the F1 paddock.
The irony is that his Nürburgring story began as a box-ticking exercise. Verstappen’s first outing at the Nordschleife last year came in a GT4-spec Porsche, a necessary step to secure his ‘Ring licence. He took the process seriously — written exam, driving test, the works — completing the requirements for Permit B under the guidance of instructor Andreas Gülden.
Then he did what Verstappen tends to do once the admin is out of the way: he went properly quick. In his first qualifying run he put the car seventh in the Cup3 class and, within the Cup3 subsection, was 25 seconds faster than the next CUP3(G) entry. That’s not “impressive for a first-timer” pace. That’s the sort of margin that makes experienced Nordschleife regulars raise an eyebrow and start re-checking their data.
And he wasn’t done. Just weeks later he came back in a Ferrari 296 GT3 and won a four-hour race at the Green Hell with team-mate Chris Lulham, controlling it from lights to flag. For anyone still trying to file Verstappen’s GT racing as a celebrity hobby, that result made it harder to keep the argument straight.
Verstappen has been open about what all of this is building towards. “Of course, I would really like to compete in the 24 Hours at some point,” he said after those outings, adding that more experience was still needed and that he hoped to do more races there in 2026. The date change now increases the chances of exactly that — more mileage, more time in traffic, more time learning the Nürburgring in conditions that no simulator can fully recreate.
That said, the sim angle is part of this story too. Verstappen’s pace and preparation was significant enough that Germany’s motorsport federation began re-evaluating its licensing criteria, with the DMSB looking at ways to include sim racing as a recognised component. It’s not hard to see why: Verstappen had done a raft of sim events at the Nordschleife before ever turning a wheel there in real life, and when he arrived he looked like someone who already had the circuit mapped into his muscle memory.
So the Nürburgring has moved a date, and Max Verstappen might get a race out of it. But the bigger point is what it says about where the sport is right now. Formula 1 drivers rarely get to freelance anymore; their calendars are too tight and their contracts too carefully managed. Yet here’s an endurance series in Germany openly adjusting itself to make room for the biggest name in grand prix racing — because it benefits everyone on their grid when he turns up.
NLS2 on March 21 is now a slot that matters. Whether Verstappen actually takes it will depend on the usual realities — approvals, logistics, and whatever his 2026 F1 campaign is demanding that week. But the door has been unlocked, and the Nürburgring has made it clear it wants him to walk through it.
