Fever Pitch: WRC is Back for the Start of the 2026 Season With Rallye Monte-Carlo in 1080p For the First Time

Fever pitch: WRC is back for the start of the 2026 season with Rallye Monte-Carlo in 1080p for the first time By Heather McLean

Tuesday, January 20, 2026 - 09:37

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WRC Rallye Monte-Carlo is back on 22 to 25 January 2026

The 94th edition of Rallye Monte-Carlo is set to start the 2026 World Rally Championship (WRC) season with a roar. The legendary route blends alpine endurance with a rare urban spectacle. Rallye Monte-Carlo 2026 [22 to 25 January 2026] is set in the dramatic scenery of the high-altitude hub of Gap.

With a route spanning 17 stages and over 339 kilometres, crews face a relentless mix of dry tarmac, slush, sheet ice, and snow, often all within a single ten-minute window.

WRC is producing the world feed for its rights holding broadcasters, as well as Rally.TV+, its streaming platform, with its long-time technical services partner, NEP Finland.

While WRC is planning a host of new broadcast innovations to accompany the launch of the new generation of cars that will hit the dirt in 12 months' time, the 2026 season is not completely bereft of inspiration.

Florian Ruth, WRC Promoter's senior director content and communication, tells SVG Europe: Next year there will be some major changes for the broadcast, while this year is a bit of a transition year for the broadcast. It's the last year of the current generation of cars, so therefore we didn't change, for example, the TV graphics as that is what we're aiming to change for next year, but we have one major change this year; a technical format change. We're switching from 1080i to 1080p.

Massive change

He goes onto to explain why WRC has decided to improve the quality of its broadcasts now: It's a little step, but it's a massive step in terms of quality of our broadcast. We are actually increasing the quality of the broadcast for our fans, for our viewers all around the world. This will be very visible [in the broadcast], especially [on the footage from] the onboards.

All our onboard cameras are natively 1080p, so what we've been doing is down-converting all our content, not only from the onboard cameras, but also for example, from our heli footage. So we will have less conversion and a higher quality. This will be recognisable on the broadcast from the first stage onwards this season, where we will offer our feed in a higher quality for our fans.

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The location of the WRC rallies is the reason this step change has taken time, and also why the promotor is not pushing for 4K. Explains Ruth: A lot of championships and sports are discussing the quality and a lot of championships have gone to 4K, which for us on the way how we produce and for the remoteness of our events, is just not possible. So we discussed a lot what would make sense for us, and 1080p is for us at the moment the best possible quality output that we can provide.

Ruth notes the step forwards has meant a lot of changes for both WRC and for its partners on the broadcast: NEP Finland, Tata Communications, and SES.

He says: That's quite a massive change in the production. It took quite a long time to get to this point, but also to prepare our broadcasters for this, and to prepare all our channels for this. Right now as we speak, we're doing a test with all our broadcasters. So we're doing test feeds so that all our takers are prepared for next week, Ruth says, speaking one week before the event.

Monaco will be the first time that WRC goes live with 1080p. Ruth comments: The files and the volume and the quality is just so much higher when you switch the broadcast from 1080i to 1080p. We were on 1080i for a long time just because of the circumstances and the surroundings at the rallies, which are such remote areas to get the signals out of, and so on. But now we have found a good technical concept and we're confident that we can push out the higher quality.

We are increasing the bandwidth with our partners; it starts with our technical provider, NEP, upgrading all their facilities to 1080p, and with our connectivity partner Tata Communications, so we need bigger fibre, but also with our satellite distributors, SES, because also there, we're switching the capacity. So we are increasing and we are investing in transportation and in capacity for our viewers. It's a joint effort from us with all our partners.

The investment in 1080p will also make a difference to WRC's social media output, increasing the quality for fans watching clips. Ruth adds: All of all our clips and so on will be just more crisp, more sharp, and even more spectacular than what we've had before.

Rallye Monte-Carlo is going to be present in Monte-Carlo itself more than ever this coming weekend. The race will be in the city streets on Thursday for the opening ceremony on Saturday for a Super Special Stage, and again on Sunday for the Prize-Giving Ceremony

Fever pitch

Rallye Monte-Carlo is going to be present in Monte-Carlo itself more than ever this coming weekend. The race will be in the city streets on Thursday for the opening ceremony on Saturday for a Super Special Stage, and again on Sunday for the Prize-Giving Ceremony.

Says Ruth: We have quite a spectacular Thursday ahead of us, with three stages on Thursday after the ceremonial start. What is just historically so spectacular is always the first night stage in Monaco, in Monte Carlo. There will be thousands of fans. It's a massive spectacle. It's all the fans with the flares and fireworks and creating this absolute spectacle on Thursday night, and obviously we want to broadcast this and bring it to our viewers at home.

The Super Special Stage in Monaco Harbour is a co-production between WRC Promotor and Automobile

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