While there’s still no official 2025 MotoGP calendar, one of the most controversial rumours engulfing the paddock is doubt surrounding the Portuguese Grand Prix at Portimao thanks, in large part, to financial considerations.
The championship's only full time Portuguese MotoGP rider, Miguel Oliveira, has called for intervention from the country's government because of the "prestige" MotoGP brings to the nation.
Portimao first joined the championship’s calendar in 2020 during the COVID pandemic as an alternative European round, hosting one race in its inaugural year with no spectators in attendance and two in the second, with a full crowd allowed to attend the November race that year.
In doing so, it revived the Portuguese Grand Prix for the first time since 2012 and took it south to the Algarve coast and away from its traditional home of Estoril, just outside the capital city Lisbon, where facilities had been deemed no longer up to standard.
The Portimao race has been only a moderate success, with lacklustre crowd figures in its initial seasons - although with a gradual uptick over the years leading to a Sunday attendance rise from 44,000 in 2022 to 73,000 in 2024.
However, the race was hit with a considerable setback earlier this year, when circuit founder and CEO Paulo Pinheiro tragically died in July following a short battle with cancer.
The driving force behind the venue’s success in recent years (it also held F1 races in 2020 and 2021), Pinheiro stewarded the track from virtual bankruptcy shortly after it opened in 2009 to its more recent success.
However, without him to steer the project, sustaining all-important funding is proving to be considerably harder, and has left the circuit no longer able to find the multi-million Euro payment needed to host a MotoGP race - at least according to Portuguese MotoGP rider Miguel Oliveira of Trackhouse Aprilia.
"It's a shame,” he said at last weekend’s Aragon Grand Prix when asked about the rumours.
“The grand prix has been organised through a lot of effort of the [regional] Algarve administration. They had local municipalities' support to pay the fee to [MotoGP promoter] Dorna, zero intervention of the government.
“For the GP to go forward, we need the [national] government to pay the fee, simple as that. And we need the government to understand that they benefit the most from this situation.
"MotoGP brings a lot of money to the region, a lot of prestige image-wise to Portugal.
“And we do need the government to understand this and make a decision to go forward.
"Because to do it privately, the management of Algarve, they'd rather rent the track to any customer than actually having to pay someone to have MotoGP there! It just doesn't make any sense."
It seems that Oliveira won't get to wear new leathers on home turf - he is expected to join Pramac next year, which is switching from Ducati to Yamaha bikes.
Instead, MotoGP is seemingly looking to replace the Portuguese race with another round in Eastern Europe, with Hungary once again set to return to the calendar, at least provisionally.
Hungary last hosted a motorcycle grand prix round at the Hungaroring in 1992, but has been linked to a return multiple times.
Deals were made with Dorna in 2009 (at the unfinished Balatonring), in 2023 (at an unstarted project in Debrecen) and in 2024 (with the already-constructed Balaton Park track, which was to be both a MotoGP reserve circuit and a World Superbike round host), but none of the aforementioned events happened.
The announcement of the contract with Balaton Park for 2024 also claimed that MotoGP would return to the Hungaroring in 2025 pending significant safety works which have not yet been completed - but it seems that Dorna will at least announce next week its intention to try and visit the Balaton Park track next year.
