The Daytona 2025 winner is William Byron from Hendrick Motorsports. Byron won his second straight Daytona 500 - once in 2024 and 2025 - and he is likely going to be looking for another win in 2026.
The next Daytona 500 race is due on Sunday, February 15, 2026, at 2:30 pm ET. The racer of this event is still to be determined, besides Byron. Among the early favorites are Joey Logano, Ryan Blaney, Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, and others.
The Daytona 500 historically takes place at the same racetrack every year. This is the Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida.
The 2026 Daytona 500 marks 67 years of the event’s inception. The event has been exclusively hosted at the same raceway.
The Daytona 500 in 2026 can be watched on a large selection of streaming services and TV channels, and you may pick from:
The 2026 NASCAR season kicked off on February 1 with the Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium, and early favorites have already emerged for the Daytona 500. Among the most likely contenders for victory at the iconic speedway are:
Superspeedway races like Daytona are notoriously unpredictable, meaning long shots often have a realistic chance of winning, even though the odds may not suggest it.
There are more drivers to look into for Daytona in 2026, including three-time winner Denny Hamlin, who is also racing this season, along with good all-round performancers such as Brad Keselowski. Bubba Wallace couldn’t finish last year’s race, but he is still tipped as one of the strong underdogs for the race.
More interestingly, gearheads should be looking into Tyler Reddick, who finished second in the 2025 race, seconds behind Byron.
The Daytona 500 is a 500-mile race, as its name suggests. Each lap is 2.5 miles, for a total of 200 laps.
This is one of the longest single-day motorsports races, behind only the Coca-Cola 600, which has sought to push the boundaries of what drivers can physically achieve.
Despite the 500 miles that racers need to cover, the racer is usually over in three to four hours.
The tickets for the Daytona 500 are usually bought from the official website of the raceway.
Very few racers have won the Daytona 500 more than twice, with the only outliers being Denny Hamlin (3), Jeff Gordon (3), Dale Jarrett (3), Bobby Allison (3), Cale Yarborough (4), and, notably, Richard Petty, who competed in the race 7 times.
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