If you thought the island’s only motorsport weekend was MotoGP in October, here’s a name worth learning: the Mandalika Festival of Speed is back for its third round of the year, running 14–16 August 2026 at the same circuit that hosts the Grand Prix. It’s smaller, it’s homegrown, and it’s very much worth knowing about if you’re on the island this week.
What the Mandalika Festival of Speed actually is
Unlike MotoGP, this isn’t an international event — it’s Indonesia’s own National Touring Car Race Championship (ITCR), run in four rounds across 2026: May, June, this August weekend, and a final round in October. It’s organised through a partnership between Indonesia’s Ministry of Creative Economy and event promoter MaxDecal, and the goal is less about spectacle and more about building up the country’s own racing talent, teams and automotive industry — a genuine development pipeline running on the same tarmac as the sport’s biggest global stage.
The scale gives a sense of how seriously it’s taken locally: the June round alone drew 107 drivers to the circuit, a proper turnout for what’s essentially a national championship weekend rather than a one-off exhibition.
Why this round of the Mandalika Festival of Speed matters
Timing is everything here. Landing in mid-August, this round sits in a strange sweet spot: race-day energy on the circuit, but nowhere near the room-rate chaos that hits the island every October. If you’ve been curious about seeing the Pertamina Mandalika International Circuit in action without the MotoGP-weekend price tag or crowd size, this is close to as good as it gets — a real national championship with genuine racing, in a town that hasn’t sold out every hotel bed for three months around it.
It also functions as a dress rehearsal of sorts. Between road repairs on the Bypass Mandalika corridor, hospitality coordination, and the general machinery of running a race weekend, every Festival of Speed round this year has effectively been organisers stress-testing the systems that need to work flawlessly come MotoGP in October. Locals watching the island’s events calendar closely will have noticed the same infrastructure fixes showing up in preparation updates for both.
Should you plan a trip around it?
If you’re already on Lombok this week, absolutely swing by — tickets and access are far more relaxed than a Grand Prix weekend, and watching national-level touring car racing on an ocean-side circuit is a genuinely good afternoon out. If you’re planning from further away specifically for this event, it’s a smaller draw than MotoGP and won’t justify reshuffling a whole itinerary around it — but it pairs nicely with a few relaxed days in the south, followed by a slower finish somewhere quieter. Plenty of visitors doing exactly that end up on the west coast’s beachfront strip in Mangsit, about ninety minutes from the circuit, where race-weekend energy gives way to sunset views and a pool that doesn’t come with a ticket queue.
What racing at Mandalika looks like on a normal weekend
Part of what makes the Mandalika Festival of Speed worth catching is simply seeing the circuit doing what it was built for, at a human scale. On MotoGP weekend, the grandstands are packed, hotel rates triple, and getting anywhere near the paddock takes planning. On a Festival of Speed weekend, you can turn up, buy a ticket without fighting a queue, and actually get close to the cars and drivers between sessions — a level of access that simply doesn’t exist once the international circus arrives in October.
The touring car format itself is also more approachable if motorsport isn’t usually your thing. These are production-based cars rather than purpose-built prototypes, closer in spirit to what’s parked in an Indonesian driveway than to a MotoGP bike, which makes the racing easier to follow and, for a lot of first-time spectators, more relatable than watching machines that bear no resemblance to anything on a public road.
The broader push behind all four rounds this year — developing local racing talent, supporting Indonesia’s automotive industry, building the creative economy around the sport — is a longer game than any single weekend. But if you’re on the island in mid-August with a free afternoon and any curiosity about motorsport at all, this is about as easy an introduction as Mandalika offers.
Frequently asked questions
When is the Mandalika Festival of Speed 2026?
The third of four rounds this year runs 14-16 August 2026 at the Pertamina Mandalika International Circuit, with a final round in October.
Is the Mandalika Festival of Speed the same as MotoGP?
No. It is Indonesia’s National Touring Car Race Championship (ITCR), a domestic event held at the same circuit, separate from the international MotoGP weekend in October.
Do I need to book accommodation far ahead for this event?
No — unlike MotoGP week, the Mandalika Festival of Speed draws a much smaller crowd and does not typically cause the island-wide hotel squeeze that race weekends bring.
Sources: Kementerian Pariwisata · Media Indonesia