NASCAR to keep playoff format for 2025 season, explore possible changes for ’26
NASCAR officials signaled Monday during a competition briefing that the sanctioning body will consider making changes to its playoff format for the 2026 season.
No changes are imminent for the 2025 campaign, which is set to begin with the exhibition Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium on Sunday (8 p.m. ET, FOX, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). However, the structure of the postseason could take on another shape in 2026.
“I don’t think we want to get in the habit of making small little tweaks every season to the playoffs,” John Probst, NASCAR’s executive vice president, chief racing development officer, said. “Where we landed was for 2025 not making any changes to the playoffs. Throughout the course of this year, we will get a working group together with some media folks, OEMs, Goodyear, drivers. … We probably talked to most of the folks one-on-one about, where are we at? What are we thinking?
“Basically, we look at that as a workstream for a group of our stakeholders this year, to look at it holistically.”
Discussions arose throughout the 2024 postseason regarding eligible contenders for the championship, with eventual champion Joey Logano defending the format following his triumph at Phoenix Raceway in November.
“The playoffs were meant to create those moments, which I feel like they did,” Probst said. “And on the other hand, there’s the fan feedback — which we hear loud and clear — on this particular driver should have been here, or that particular driver won this many races, so he should have been automatically in and all of that.”
Probst said officials heard from three schools of thought — one that loves the playoffs, one that hates them and one fell in the middle — enjoying the playoffs, wanting to fix them, but an overriding uncertainty of what there is to fix.
“We just didn’t get to a point where we felt like we have to do it,” Probst said. “But we hear the fans loud and clear and are looking at it actively.”
No definitive change has been suggested, nor are any alterations guaranteed for the 2026 season. But the sanctioning body will look to gather an industry-wide committee to determine what changes could be made, if any, ahead of the 2026 season, seeking opinions from drivers, teams, manufacturers, media and officials.
In a November state-of-the-sport address, NASCAR president Steve Phelps said: “We are always looking if there are opportunities for us to tweak something.”
“We’re not going to go away from playoffs,” added Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR’s chief operations officer. “We’ll absolutely look at what form the playoffs take in the offseason. You always learn. … But playoffs in and of itself, as Steve said, you cannot argue with the quality of racing that the playoffs have delivered. You can talk about the format if we do some different things, but absolutely we’re going to stick with it.”
The current 16-driver, four-round elimination format that determines the NASCAR Cup Series champion has been in place since 2014. The last significant change to the format came in 2017 with the introduction of stage racing and playoff points. Playoff points accrued for race wins and stage victories — plus those awarded to the top 10 drivers at the conclusion of the regular season — provide additional cushion to championship contenders through each of the first three rounds of the playoffs.
The four drivers left competing for the title in the season finale engage in a winner-take-all event, with the highest-finishing driver of the quartet earning the championship. The Xfinity Series and Craftsman Truck Series have used a similar format since 2016.
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