NASCAR Unveils 2026 Points System & Championship Format – And It Will Sound Familiar To Many Longtime Fans

We finally have our answer.

NASCAR announced today their new championship format for 2026, and while it’s not a return to the full-season points system that fans have been asking for, it seems like a step in the right direction.

There’s been a lot of debate recently over the NASCAR points system, and whether the sport should do away with the playoffs and go back to crowning a champion based on full season points standings. NASCAR first adopted a “postseason” format back in 2004 when it unveiled the “Chase for the Nextel Cup.” Previously, the series had simply awarded points based on finishing position and whoever had the most points at the end of the season was a championship. Simple enough, right?

But back in 2003, NASCAR Cup Series champion Matt Kenseth stunk up the show. He dominated the points standings despite only winning one race the entire season, and was so far ahead before the final race of the season that he had already locked up the championship – making the season finale essentially meaningless.

In an attempt to boost ratings at the end of the season when NASCAR was competing with the NFL for viewers, they’ve since gone to some sort of a playoff system, though the format has changed multiple times over the years.

Under the most recent system, which was largely implemented in 2014, a driver could lock themselves into the playoffs with a win during the first 26 races, regardless of where they were in the points standings. The thought was that it would incentivize drivers to race hard to compete for a win each week, but there’s one obvious problem: If a driver who was well below the cut line somehow manages to sneak out a win, they take a spot in the playoffs away from a driver and team who performed better throughout the season, but didn’t manage to win a race.

In 2024, Harrison Burton won at Daytona and took a spot in the playoffs, only to be eliminated in the first round. And the discussion came up again in 2025 when Shane Van Gisbergen, who was sitting at 33rd in points at the time, won the race in Mexico City over the summer to lock himself into the playoffs. (He went on to win three more races, making it harder to argue that he didn’t belong in the playoffs, though there’s certainly discussion to be had based on his points standings and performance throughout the rest of the season – and the fact that he was eliminated in the first round of the playoffs).

The 2024 champion, Joey Logano, received plenty of criticism for being crowned the champion during what was, overall, a pretty lackluster season. There’s no real arguing that he was the best driver all season, but a win at Nashville that year locked him into the playoffs and he managed to win at the right times during the final 10 races to secure the championship.

All of the controversy has led to renewed calls for NASCAR to do away with the playoff format altogether and go back to simply crowning a championship based on who has the most points at the end of the season. It not only rewards consistency, but it places a higher value on running well throughout the season and doesn’t risk a driver winning a championship based on what critics call “arbitrary” rules.

Well today NASCAR made it official and announced the championship format for 2026, and while it’s not a return to a full-season points system, the hope is that it will fix some of the complaints about the previous format.

The new system is largely a return to the “Chase for the Cup” system used from 2004 to 2014. The first 26 races will make up the regular season, with the top 16 drivers at the end of the regular season making up the field for the final 10-race Chase.

The points leader at the end of the regular season will then go into Chase with 2,100 points, which will be 25 points over 2nd place, 35 points over 3rd place, and points decreasing in 5-point increments after that. The champion, at the end of the season, will be the driver with the most points at the end of the 10 race Chase.

In order to keep a premium on winning races, the winner will now be awarded 55 points, up from 45 points under the previous format. But NASCAR President Steve O’Donnell also believes that the new format will put more of an emphasis on consistency than the latest format provided.

The big change, obviously, is that there will be no more elimination races: All 16 drivers will be competing for a championship throughout the full 10 race Chase, and the champion will no longer be decided by a single race at the end of the season.

It’s no doubt an improvement over the current format. It means that a single bad race won’t end a driver’s championship hopes, but also rewards consistency and keeps an emphasis on winning races with the added incentive of 10 extra points.

The format also eliminates the “win and you’re in” format, where a driver automatically qualified for the postseason simply by winning a race, no matter what they’ve accomplished the rest of the season.

Personally, I think this is probably the best format we were going to get (there’s no way NASCAR was actually going to go back to a full-season format), and Dale Earnhardt Jr. acknowledged that while it’s not perfect, it’s a major improvement:

“This is as close, in my opinion, that you can get without going all the way. But what I believe it does is, it makes it simpler for our fans to follow. I’m a fan of the sport, and now I’m compelled to plug in every single week because I know there’s a long form objective for my driver to accomplish to be able to be able to give himself the opportunity to win the championship…

With the way that they’re going to stack the bonus points… it’s critical that these drivers have success every single week.”

It’s obviously been a rough offseason for NASCAR, and a tough time for the sport in general with fans feeling increasingly like leadership was out of touch with those who tune in. But in my opinion, this is a MAJOR step in the right direction and something that has me fired up for the Daytona 500.

2026 NASCAR Chase Format:

• The field sizes for The Chase in each series remain the same — the top 16 drivers in the Cup Series, 12 in O’Reilly and 10 in Trucks — but all drivers qualify based on regular-season points. The “win-and-you’re-in” rule that provided regular-season winners with automatic playoff berths is no more.
• Race winners now collect 55 points, a 15-point increase over the previous points system. Points awards for all other positions and stage results remain the same, but bankable playoff points are no longer part of the format.
• Points will be reset for each series’ Chase field with a 25-point premium awarded to the regular-season champion. Top seeds will start The Chase with 2,100 points, 2,075 for the second seed and 2,065 for the third, with a five-point drop for each seed after.
• The Cup Series’ Chase spans the final 10 races of the season, with nine Chase races for the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series and seven in the Craftsman Truck Series.
• The driver with the most points at the end of the season will be the series champion.