The Moto2-to-MotoGP conveyor belt picked up its pace for 2025, after a couple of 'lean years' in terms of pure numbers, with three riders promoted into the premier class.
But it's a Moto3 rising star that the MotoGP paddock is most excited about after what it saw in 2024.
Moto3 champion David Alonso will obviously feature in this article - and even a par-for-the-course Moto2 career will make him a MotoGP rider. But what about the rest of the names being earmarked, with varying degrees of likelihood, for a MotoGP future?
Here's our list of prospects to watch for 2025 - in no particular order, save for the first entry.
David Alonso
Colombia, age 18
2024: 1st in Moto3
2025: Moto2 with Aspar
Alonso was widely tipped for this year's Moto3 title, but still went well above expectations by delivering a genuine candidate for the best lightweight-class season grand prix racing has ever seen.
He reeled off 14 wins, seven of them in a row to cap off the campaign. But in that seven-win stretch he only led 36% of the laps - a nod to Moto3's chaotic nature, yes, but also to Alonso's remarkable ability to pick the right moment to go for the lead, honed to an almost supernatural level by the end of his Moto3 tenure.
Rival riders could only helplessly watch as he would turn fourth or fifth in the pack into the lead and then streak away, usually aided by in-fighting between his chasers.
And he proved himself over one lap, too - only seven riders in the Moto3 era have more poles.
Simon Patterson: It’s hard to see how Alonso doesn't end up a MotoGP rider in the near future - but even for a talent of his level, nothing is really ever certain, and he’s going to have to navigate what is always a diabolically tricky transition into Moto2.
Dani Holgado
Spain, age 19
2024: 2nd in Moto3
2025: Moto2 with Aspar
Holgado's Moto3 career was strong from the off - no surprise as he'd dominated the CEV Moto3 series the year before his arrival - but never truly blossomed over three seasons.
His qualifying never got better than 'patchy', especially when compared to the likes of Alonso, Collin Veijer or fellow third-year Ivan Ortola (the unofficial extra member of this list thanks his intermittent but impressive Moto3 successes while being 180cm tall).
That's generally not a great sign, but Holgado did ultimately fight his way through to finish second in the standings - and has on the whole done enough in Moto3 to at least remain in conversation for a MotoGP future.
Simon Patterson: Holgado’s biggest weakness right now is that he’s still to prove himself as anything other than a competitive Moto3 racer. He needs to shine in 2025, at least on occasion, because if he doesn’t then he quickly gets lumped in with names like Dennis Foggia, Lorenzo Dalla Porta and Danny Kent as someone whose Moto3 achievements were as good as it was going to get for them.
Izan Guevara
Spain, age 20
2024: 17th in Moto2
2025: Moto2 with Pramac Yamaha
Even for a series as notoriously tough on newcomers as Moto2, 22nd as a rookie last year was a grim return for a rider who'd made such an impression in Moto3. And 17th this year was grimmer still, even if a late-season purple patch included a podium inherited thanks to Aspar team-mate Jake Dixon's lap-counting mistake.
Compromised from the outset by a bad injury but also dogged by speculation that the requisite effort wasn't quite there, Guevara's Moto2 stint so far has tanked his stock pretty spectacularly. But in a post-Fabio Quartararo world it is very difficult to give up on a rider who once looked that good, and the new Pramac Yamaha Moto2 operation picking him up as a reclamation project gives him an obvious route into the premier class if he can crack Moto2 after all.
Time's on his side - even after all this he's ended up the 16th-youngest podium finisher of the Moto2 era.
Simon Patterson: The reality is that he’s got one chance now, and really only one chance, to find a path to the premier class and that comes from the rather competitive package that he’s been offered for 2025. It's proof that people in the paddock still see plenty of unlocked talent in him. He needs to build on the momentum from his strong end to 2024 and show that he can fight for podiums on a regular basis.
Aron Canet
Spain, age 25
2024: 2nd in Moto2
2025: Moto2 with Fantic
Canet should probably be in MotoGP.
He will be approaching 26 by the next time premier-class outfits with 2026 openings are seriously evaluating their future line-ups, and any of those outfits will find it very easy to talk themselves out of Canet by pointing to the fact late-bloomer MotoGP signings haven't been really working out.
It's not about the age so much as about experience - riders with a similar or higher amount of Moto2 mileage to Canet who did get the nod to MotoGP in recent years include Tom Luthi, Remy Gardner, Augusto Fernandez, Alex Marquez and Luca Marini. The latter two have by and large worked out, but there's little precedent for a Moto2 journeyman turning into a MotoGP superstar.
There's also little precedent, though, for a rider like Canet, who has the seventh-most starts in the Moto2 era but has also averaged exactly 10 points per start - in the all-time top 10 for starts, only champions Johann Zarco and Tito Rabat have taken more from their average race.
He was already good in Moto3. He was then best known for consistently flubbing his lines in the chase for a first Moto2 win before this year - but racked up four of them to conclusively erase that particular doubt. And there's a very realistic chance he ends next season as Moto2's all-time pole leader.
This is probably about as good a lower-class career as you can possibly have without guaranteeing yourself a MotoGP ride. Someone could yet be tempted.
Simon Patterson: The problem is, though, that there’ll always be a younger Spaniard with a similar level of performance fighting against him, and in a paddock obsessed with the next young thing they’ll always get the nod over Canet. It’s one of the odd cases of a Spanish passport actively working against him, too, because if he were German, American or British then his path to MotoGP would look a lot more straightforward.
Angel Piqueras
Spain, age 18
2024: 8th in Moto3
2025: Moto3 with MT Helmets - MSi
The best Moto3 rookie of 2024, Piqueras overcame a double long lap to take a first win at Misano that was both masterful and overboard aggressive in equal measure.
The evidence is already good that his Junior Moto3/Rookies Cup double in 2023 was no happenstance, and the fact MT-MSi has been reported to have gone to considerable expense to extract him from his Leopard deal shows he has truly impressed.
Simon Patterson: We saw plenty of evidence in 2024 that despite being the hottest property for 2025, Piqueras still has an awful lot of learning to do. That was evidenced nicely by frequent trips to see race control and while he might have a ton of talent, he’s going to need to temper some of his more aggressive tendencies if he’s going to prove to the world that he’s the complete package rather than someone quite loose who can make it work on a Moto3 machine.
Sergio Garcia
Spain, age 21
2024: 4th in Moto2
2025: Moto2 with MT Helmets - MSi
Garcia's 2024 season has been defined by an almost-unthinkable second-half collapse that coincided with - or, depending on who you believe, was caused by - a last-second MotoGP rejection.
He looked to have one hand on the trophy when team-mate and main rival Ai Ogura fractured his hand at the Red Bull Ring, but instead put up an atrocious 31 points from then on (compared to 160 before), capitulating meekly in the title fight.
Form looked to have abandoned him virtually overnight, and it's not the first time a credible Garcia title tilt ran out of steam halfway through (see also Moto3 2022, albeit to a much lesser extent).
But even if Pramac Yamaha turned him down for '25 and won't be sweating it too much on the basis of the subsequent results, Garcia retains a strong lower-class track record and, aged 21, is still very young by Moto2 standards - he was its second-youngest race winner this season behind only Fermin Aldeguer.
Simon Patterson: Garcia's season featured the sort of inconsistency that you can’t display if you want to convince MotoGP teams that you can be relied upon. He obviously needs a more solid season in 2025.
Alonso Lopez
Spain, age 22
2024: 6th in Moto2
2025: Moto2 with Speed Up/Boscoscuro
For much of his time in Moto2 Alonso Lopez has been simply the second part of the Aldeguer-Lopez double act at Speed Up/Boscoscuro - older than Aldeguer, less hyped than Aldeguer, and with a mediocre track record in Moto3 while Aldeguer avoided the series entirely.
But Lopez's mid-season intermediate-class arrival in 2022 and immediate transformation into a frontrunner, potentially even the rider of the season, still ranks as a better sustained stretch of Moto2 form than the best of Aldeguer's, and it was enough for him to be credibly reported for quite some time as being of interest to Yamaha.
That interest hasn't materialised in a Pramac call-up for 2025, but Lopez is still just 22 so there's enough time for Yamaha or someone else to buy in - especially if he makes even a slight step forward next year.
Simon Patterson: Lopez is undoubtedly very fast. However, he’s also both inconsistent and more than a little lairy (often to no real gain to him or those around him!). He needs to realise every now and then that settling for a position or two lower than he might want isn’t the end of the world.
Collin Veijer
Netherlands, age 19
2024: 3rd in Moto3
2025: Moto2 with KTM Ajo
The best prospect from Northwestern Europe in recent memory, Veijer largely lived up to the optimism set in by his rookie Moto3 campaign with a credible 2024 follow-up - even if Alonso had made everyone including him rather ordinary.
KTM clearly doesn't think he's too ordinary at all - Veijer won't have received a call-up to the works Ajo outfit in Moto2 this early into his grand prix racing career otherwise. And there's a lot of hope he will truly blossom in the intermediate-class given he is listed as being 178cm, a prohibitive height for Moto3.
Simon Patterson: Veijer is in the right team for a Moto2 graduation that many believe will unlock him - and that’s both a blessing and a hindrance given that he’ll have all the support he needs but no room for excuses.
Diogo Moreira
Brazil, age 20
2024: 14th in Moto2
2025: Moto2 with Italtrans
A projected Moto3 title tilt expected by some - including, memorably, Maverick Vinales - never materialised, but Moreira's stock has already leapfrogged that of many of his more Moto3-successful peers.
The Brazilian was a relatively narrow rookie of the year winner in Moto2 in 2024, but the 13-point gap to nearest rookie rival Senna Agius undersold the impression made.
The one-lap pace dazzled consistently. Agius placed in the first three rows twice, Moreira's fellow Moto3 graduate Deniz Oncu also did it twice, and Jaume Masia and Ayumu Sasaki, who stepped up to the intermediate class after duking it out for the Moto3 title, never came particularly closed to once qualifying in that top nine. Moreira? 11 times.
It meant he'd find himself going backwards an awful lot through the season, but by the end - certainly in the Barcelona finale, which yielded a podium with a last-corner overtake on champion Ogura - it looked like the race pace caught up.
Simon Patterson: Moreira’s path to MotoGP is pretty straightforward at this point. He needs to improve, and even then only slightly, on his impressive rookie results in 2024, and he needs to maintain that level until the right chance to step up appears. Which it should - given the desire to have South Americans on the grid.
Tony Arbolino
Italy, age 24
2024: 10th in Moto2
2025: Moto2 with Pramac Yamaha
There's still some confidence within the paddock that Arbolino will find himself in MotoGP sooner or later - he was already on the verge once before the rider market turned the other way (largely thanks to Marc Marquez's Honda exit), he's good friends with Quartararo and he's now going to ride for a MotoGP manufacturer-affiliated Moto2 team.
But is he just a Canet-level Moto2 performer without a Canet-level upside? And, more importantly, did his relatively anonymous run to 10th this season create too much doubt?
The answer to that second question - and the way he starts next season -will probably determine whether he ever gets a premier-class shot.
Simon Patterson: When he’s fast, he's very fast, and he's got a great personality to go with it. But his inconsistency has been his downfall so far, and that’s something he needs to fix.
Deniz Oncu
Turkey, age 21
2024: 20th in Moto2
2025: Moto2 with KTM Ajo
Considering Oncu suffered a truly awful-sounding injury in a training accident mid-season - and considering that injury was followed by some of the best weekends of his season, including a remarkable run to third at Aragon - he still has to feature pretty high on long-time benefactor KTM's list of its top talents.
There will, too, be a natural interest in getting the Turkish rider into the premier class and capitalising on the interest that will generate - as long as he becomes even a semi-regular frontrunner in Moto2.
Simon Patterson: Oncu’s biggest enemy will be himself. In theory, his path to a MotoGP ride should be fairly straightforward given his personality, his talent and his passport - but he’s been quite self-destructive in the past with both his injuries and his actions. He needs to dial that down - then the rest should take care of itself.
