- IndyCar is in serious talks to race at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya as early as 2027, which would be the series’ first event in Europe and its first race outside North America in more than a decade, dating back to a street race in Brazil in 2013.
- The circuit sits close to the home region of five time IndyCar champion Alex Palou, a driver who grew up passing a go kart track on the way to school in a small Catalan town before anyone paid attention to him.
- No deal is signed yet, and questions remain about cost, scheduling, and whether the race would even count toward the championship, but the opening appears tied to Formula 1 handing some of its Barcelona dates to Madrid.
A homecoming that was not supposed to happen this way
Alex Palou was five years old the first time he asked his father to let him drive a go kart. They passed the circuit in Cardedeu most mornings on the way to school, a small track in the Baix Montseny region outside Barcelona, and the boy kept asking until his parents, barely out of their teens themselves and far from wealthy, found a way to buy him a kart. Neither of them had any connection to racing. His father watched Formula 1 on television and little else. Nobody in that family tree saw a path to American open wheel racing from a kart track an hour from the Mediterranean.
Now Sports Business Journal reports that IndyCar is in serious talks with the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya about a race as early as 2027, a deal that would send the series to Europe for the first time ever. IndyCar last raced outside North America at a street race in Brazil back in 2013, more than a decade ago. Five people familiar with the discussions told the outlet that nothing has been finalized. But the direction of the conversation is clear enough, and so is the reason Barcelona sits at the top of IndyCar’s list: the circuit is a short drive from where the series’ most dominant active driver learned to drive at all.
From a kart track near school to five IndyCar titles
Palou has won four straight IndyCar championships and five of the last six, a run of dominance that has few parallels in the sport’s modern era. He also won the 2025 Indianapolis 500, closing the one gap left on an otherwise complete resume. None of it looked likely when he was racing against future Formula 1 drivers Max Verstappen and George Russell on European karting grids before he had a driver’s license. Coaches at the Cardedeu circuit noticed his speed within months of his first race. Genis Marco, a coach who had also worked with a young Fernando Alonso, became one of his early supporters, and a scholarship at the CAR training center in Sant Cugat kept him moving through the ranks that Spain uses to find its next generation of racers.
The route from there to Indianapolis ran through Japan, not Europe. An offer to race in Japanese Formula 3 put Palou in front of IndyCar scouts who liked what they saw. He moved to the United States at 21 and signed with Chip Ganassi Racing before he turned 22, a jump that most European prospects never get the chance to make. He is 29 now, a father himself, and spends most of the year living in the country where he built his career rather than the region where he started it.
Why Barcelona, and why now
The timing traces back to Formula 1’s calendar, not IndyCar’s. Barcelona is giving up some of its F1 dates under a new European rotation that will alternate the Spanish Grand Prix with a race at Spa-Francorchamps, with Formula 1 not returning to Catalonia until 2028, 2030, and 2032. That leaves open weekends on a circuit that already hosts MotoGP and the World Endurance Championship, and IndyCar, operating under Penske Entertainment with FOX Sports as its American broadcast partner, has reason to want a toehold in Europe after a decade of growth confined almost entirely to the United States and Canada.
Plenty still has to be settled before a green flag ever drops. It is not yet clear whether a Barcelona round would count toward the championship standings or run as a stand alone exhibition, a distinction that would change how seriously drivers and teams treat it. Moving an entire IndyCar paddock, cars, parts, and crews across the Atlantic costs real money, and promoters and sponsors have not yet committed to cover it. A deal struck this fall would also leave less time than organizers would like to build ticket sales for a series that most European fans have never watched live.
What it would mean for a driver who rarely talks about home
Palou has said little publicly about his connection to the Baix Montseny region, and friends describe him as someone who keeps his attention fixed on the next race rather than looking back at where he came from. That has always been part of what makes him difficult to beat: four championships in five years do not come from a driver who spends much time reflecting on his own story. But a race at a circuit roughly 40 minutes from where he grew up, in front of the country that produced him, would be difficult for even Palou to treat as just another weekend on the calendar.
It would also be unlike anything IndyCar has tried to build around a single driver’s story. NASCAR has leaned on hometown narratives for generations, and Formula 1 built entire seasons of marketing around home races for its biggest stars, but IndyCar has never had a reason to send its tour to a driver’s backyard on another continent. A Barcelona round built partly around Palou’s roots would be a departure for a series that has spent most of its history racing in the same handful of American ovals and road courses.
A series looking past its own borders
IndyCar’s European ambitions reach well past one driver. The series already counts former Formula 1 drivers Marcus Ericsson, Alexander Rossi, and Mick Schumacher among its full time entries for next year, along with Dennis Hauger and Marcus Armstrong, both of whom came up through European feeder series before crossing the Atlantic to race in North America. A Barcelona date would give all of them, and the European broadcasters who have slowly built audiences for American racing, a race on home ground for the first time in their IndyCar careers.
The push abroad also lines up with how aggressively IndyCar has grown its domestic footprint under Penske Entertainment ownership. The series added street races in Arlington, Texas, and Washington, D.C. in recent seasons, part of a broader attempt to put IndyCar in front of audiences who have never had a race within driving distance. A Barcelona round would mark the clearest sign yet that Penske Entertainment wants that growth to stretch past American borders too, using a European champion as the natural hook for a market the series has never cracked.
For Palou, the stakes run differently. He has already won everything IndyCar has to offer domestically. What a Barcelona round would offer instead is something closer to a payoff for the distance he has traveled, literally and otherwise, after that first lap in Cardedeu. A five year old asking to drive a go kart near Barcelona could not have imagined American open wheel cars racing a few miles from that same circuit two decades later. If the deal gets finished, he will not have to imagine it anymore.
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