After the opening round in Saudi Arabia, the early edition in Portugal and the return of the Desafío Ruta 40 in Argentina, this weekend it is Morocco’s turn. The 27th edition of the Rallye OLA Energy du Maroc, the fourth round of the 2026 World Rally-Raid Championship (W2RC), takes place between Agadir and Zagora. Following the administrative and technical scrutineering on 26 and 27 September, the prologue for the bikes and the shakedown for the cars get under way on Monday 28 September, after which five stages follow through to Saturday 3 October.
The entry lists show a total of 243 competitors at the start: 133 bikes, split across RallyGP, Rally2, Rally3 and Quad, and 110 cars in Ultimate, Challenger, SSV and Stock.
For the second year the rally is run under the leadership of Marc Coma, the five-time world champion who won Morocco himself three times on a bike (2006, 2009 and 2014) and now directs the rally on behalf of organiser Pro Dunes, with former Dakar winner Luc Alphand at his side for the car section. At the press conference in June, Coma announced that parts of the route that had “faded somewhat into the background” would be brought back, alongside new sections that are “not easy to find in Morocco”. For the cars the route has grown 13 percent this year: 2,838 kilometres with 1,656 kilometres of special stages, against 2,773 kilometres with 1,591 kilometres for the bikes.
After the three days of scrutineering in Agadir, stage 1 heads to Zagora, from where four loop stages are run. Stage 2 is regarded as the toughest, with a new route through the Atlas mountains, stage 3 is more accessible and aimed at the amateurs, stage 4 runs through canyons and is the point at which the car and bike routes diverge, and stage 5 is shorter but promises one more surprise before the finish in Zagora.
Title fight wide open again among the bikes after Argentina
Among the bikes the gap has shrunk considerably after the Desafío Ruta 40. Daniel Sanders (Red Bull KTM) leads the championship with 67 points, three ahead of Tosha Schareina (Monster Energy Honda) and six ahead of Luciano Benavides (KTM). All three factory teams line up in Morocco at full strength: KTM with Sanders, Benavides and Edgar Canet, Honda with Schareina, Ricky Brabec and Adrien Van Beveren, and Hero Motosports with Ignacio Cornejo. Sanders and Schareina won the last two editions of this rally, in 2024 and 2025, while Benavides and Brabec stood on the podium in those same years.
For Brabec it is also an emotional reunion: the American has announced that the 2027 Dakar will be his last rally on a bike. His former teammate Skyler Howes (34) has now found a new employer after his Honda contract expired in the first half of this year: he has signed with the ZXMoto Joyride Factory Rally Team and will help develop the Chinese brand’s new ZXMoto 450 Rally, making his debut in the new colours right away at the Rallye du Maroc. Howes closed out his Honda chapter in style, incidentally: fourth in January’s Dakar, with his very first Dakar stage win, and fifth in the Desafío Ruta 40 in May.
For ZXMoto the arrival of Howes is a logical move. The brand was only founded in 2024 by Zhang Xue, previously co-founder of Kove, and was only presented publicly at the EICMA show in Milan late last year. The rally programme, announced in August as the ZXMoto Joyride Factory Rally Team, is built around Spain’s Joyride Race Service, which previously worked with KTM and, alongside Howes, also brought in Austrian Tobias Ebster (ex-Hero Motosports) for the Rally2 class. For the project, Morocco is above all a first reconnaissance: by his own account Howes had spent only a few hours on the bike before being sent straight into the Moroccan desert, with the 2027 Dakar as the ultimate target on the horizon for the whole team.
In Rally2 the fight is between Martim Ventura and Toni Mulec, with just four points between them and teammate Preston Campbell right in the middle. Ventura and Campbell (both Honda) still had little experience in Morocco last year, but have since caught up with Slovenian KTM privateer Mulec, who won Rally2 on the Dakar earlier this year. In Rally3 exactly one point separates Murun Purevdorj and Alan Eduardo, and in the Quads defending champion Antanas Kanopkinas (CFMoto) is the top favourite.
Dacia hunting for a third win in a row
Among the cars it is tight too: Sébastien Loeb leads with 114 points, Nasser Al Attiyah follows three points back and Seth Quintero (Toyota) thirteen back. All three brands in the championship, Dacia, Toyota and Ford, arrive with their full line-up: Dacia with Loeb, Al Attiyah and Lucas Moraes, Toyota Gazoo Racing W2RC with Henk Lategan, Quintero and Akira Miura (with a second Toyota crew for South Africa) and Ford Racing with Carlos Sainz, Nani Roma, Mattias Ekström and Mitch Guthrie. In the manufacturers’ standings Dacia, with 315 points, holds a comfortable margin over Toyota (250) and Ford (175).
Morocco is a happy hunting ground for Dacia: the Sandrider made its debut here in 2024 with a win for Al Attiyah, and Loeb took his first Morocco rally win here last year, though Al Attiyah lost his title chance on that occasion in the closing stage to Lucas Moraes, who was still driving for Toyota then and has since joined Dacia. Al Attiyah is the record holder in Morocco with seven wins. Behind the top three, Nani Roma, Moraes, Lategan, Ekström and Joao Ferreira are fighting for fourth place in the championship, with a mere seven points separating them.
In Stock, Stéphane Peterhansel (Defender), the winner in Argentina, has cut the gap to teammate and leader Rokas Baciuska to 29 points. In Challenger nine points separate Puck Klaassen (KTM X-Bow) and Portuguese leader Alexandre Pinto (BBR), and that same margin separates Jeremías Ferioli (Can-Am) and Mindaugas Sidabras (Izoton) in the SSV class.
Early testing and a Malle Moto class added
In the run-up to the rally, Morocco has, as often happens, grown into an extended testing ground. Factory teams have used the desert around Erfoud, Merzouga and Zagora for years to clock kilometres towards both the Rallye du Maroc and the Dakar itself. This year too, several top teams, including Dacia, KTM and Honda, travelled to Morocco well over a week before the start. Some crews combined that with an informal, baja-style test day in the country, though for some the involvement remained limited: Kees Koolen, for example, took part for only a few days. That loose preparatory phase is separate from the official test day the organisation itself has on the programme, on 25 September, a day after the service park in Agadir opens its doors.
One of the most striking pieces of news comes not from the top teams but from an organisation bulletin: a new “Malle Moto” class has been added for amateur bike and quad riders who compete without any assistance structure. After each stage they may work on their vehicle only themselves, or with help from fellow competitors in the same class or officially designated rally staff, and their luggage between the Agadir and Zagora bivouacs is limited to a single bag of no more than 100 litres, three spare tyres and two complete wheels, a work stand and basic tools. Anyone who breaks the rules risks immediate exclusion. It underlines how demanding pure amateur rally riding without support is, and the top five finishers still receive their own trophy at the prize-giving, just as in RallyGP, Rally2, Rally3 and Quad.
Dutch participation strongly represented among the cars and trucks
The Netherlands is well represented in Morocco this year, particularly in the Ultimate class and among the trucks.
Bikes
- Lars van Berkel – BAS World KTM Team
- Berend de Ruiter – HT Rally Raid
Cars (Ultimate)
- Kees Koolen / Wouter Rosegaar – RD Limited
- Rik van den Brink / Gydo Heimans – Century Racing CR7 (SRT)
- Michael van Eikeren / Jasper Riezebos – MP Rallysport
- Rients Hofstra / Wouter de Graaff – Red-Lined Europe
- Gertjan van der Valk / Branco de Lange – MP Rallysport
Cars (Challenger)
- Puck Klaassen / Augusto Sanz – KTM X-Bow Lab Team
- Paul Spierings / Kala Senders – Rebellion-Spierings
- Roger Grouwels / Rudolf Meijer – QFF Racing
- Lex Peters / Arjan van Tiel – G Rally Team
Trucks
- Mitchel van den Brink / Bart van Heun / Jarno van de Pol – Team de Rooy
- Kay Huzink / Mark Salomons / Corne Blok – Team de Rooy
For Mitchel van den Brink it is a return: after a spell with the MM Technology truck, he is driving for Team de Rooy again this year, with the Rallye du Maroc as a lead-in to the 2027 Dakar. Team owner Gerard de Rooy is pleased with the comeback: “We are very happy that Mitchel is back in our team,” he said, expressing the hope of one day again delivering a Dutch Dakar champion as a Dutch outfit. Van den Brink himself looks back on a good time, but is enthusiastic about the return: “I am very happy with it,” said the driver, who together with his regular crew of Van Heun and Van de Pol is using the Rallye du Maroc as the first test for Dakar 2027.
With five Dutch crews in Ultimate, four in Challenger, two Team de Rooy trucks and two bike riders, the Dutch contingent this year is broad and spread across several classes. RallyTracks will follow the rally over the coming days with stage reports.
