Dorna can keep asking, but Albert Park isn’t about to become a two-wheeled annex to Melbourne’s F1 week.
The Victorian State Government has rejected a push to move MotoGP’s Australian round away from Phillip Island and into the temporary grand prix precinct that springs up each year around Albert Park Lake. The message from Spring Street was blunt: the Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix stays where it is, and any extra money Victoria is willing to tip in comes with strings attached.
“The Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix is synonymous with Phillip Island,” the government said in a statement, confirming it had ruled out Dorna Sports’ request to relocate the event. It also acknowledged it has agreed to contribute additional funding to help Dorna deliver “a bigger, better event beyond 2026” — but only if Phillip Island remains the venue.
That clause tells you everything about how Victoria sees this. MotoGP at Phillip Island isn’t treated as a movable asset that can be optimised for convenience; it’s positioned as regional Victoria’s biggest international sporting event and a pillar of the island economy. Tens of thousands of visitors, tourism dollars, jobs, the whole political pitch. For a government that funds the Australian Grand Prix Corporation — the promoter behind both the F1 Australian Grand Prix and the MotoGP round — the temptation to consolidate events in Melbourne might look tidy on a spreadsheet, but it comes with a nasty local backlash if it guts a key regional weekend.
Still, it’s not hard to understand why Dorna had its eye on Albert Park. Phillip Island is iconic and spectacular on television, but it’s also two hours from Melbourne, with finite accommodation and the kind of logistics that make even well-drilled teams sigh. Albert Park, by contrast, sits on the CBD’s doorstep. You’d have instant access to a major city’s hotels, transport and corporate hospitality machine — precisely the kind of ecosystem that modern rights-holders love.
The problem is that Albert Park isn’t a permanent circuit. It’s a public park with legislation wrapped around it, and those rules aren’t decorative. There are tight time constraints on when organisers are allowed to take control of the park, how long they can lock it down, and how it’s handed back. F1 already devours a significant slice of that annual allowance. Adding MotoGP would mean reopening those constraints and rewriting them through government — not just signing a new contract and calling it progress.
That’s before you get into the practical reality that, for all the event branding around “Albert Park”, Melbourne’s F1 race is still a major construction project. The venue has already been through significant changes in recent years, with the track reprofiled after the abandoned 2021 event. And it’s not done: plans are in motion to upgrade the pit building, with early groundworks already underway ahead of the current structure being demolished after this year’s race. A temporary pit facility is slated for 2027, with a full new building targeted to be ready in time for the 2028 F1 event.
In other words, even if you loved the romance of a Melbourne double-header, this is the least sensible moment to cram another global championship into the same footprint. Albert Park is already facing a disruptive couple of years as the paddock infrastructure gets torn down and rebuilt. The last thing anyone needs is another set of demands on access windows, circuit fit-out and local tolerance.
Contractually, the landscape also encourages Victoria to play hardball. Australia’s Formula 1 race is locked in until 2036. MotoGP’s deal, by contrast, is due to expire after this year’s grand prix. When the government says it’s willing to pay more to keep MotoGP at Phillip Island beyond 2026, it reads like an extension is on the table — just not on Dorna’s preferred terms.
There’s also a cultural argument here that governments love because it’s easy to defend. Phillip Island has hosted the Motorcycle GP 29 times, and the circuit’s identity is woven into the global MotoGP calendar in a way Albert Park simply isn’t for bikes. It’s fast, exposed, relentlessly punishing when the weather flips — and adored by riders for precisely those reasons. You can move an event, but you can’t transplant that kind of history and expect it to feel the same.
The irony is that Victoria owns the levers to make this happen if it ever wanted to. The Australian Grand Prix Corporation promotes both events and is funded by the state. If the political will existed to reshape the Albert Park legislation and build a MotoGP-friendly plan around the F1 build schedule, it could be forced through. The fact it’s been swatted away this decisively tells you the government views MotoGP’s regional pull as worth more — electorally and economically — than the neatness of bringing everything into Melbourne.
So Phillip Island stays, for now. And while the travel headaches won’t disappear, MotoGP retains one of its most distinctive venues — a track that doesn’t need reinvention, just a deal that reflects its value. In 2026, that’s the compromise Victoria is offering: more support, more spectacle, but no postcode change.
