Spa Six Hours

The Ardennes in late September are damp, foggy and unpredictable, which is exactly how Spa-Francorchamps prefers it. The 7 km circuit near Stavelot has been shortened, resurfaced and modernised over the decades, but Eau Rouge and Raidillon still sort drivers into two categories, and the elevation changes remain unlike anything else in Europe.

The 2026 edition runs from 25 to 27 September and returns the meeting to its traditional Friday-to-Sunday format after a longer schedule in recent years. It is the 33rd running, with grids covering pre-war sports cars, single-seaters, GTs and touring cars from the fifties and sixties, and later prototypes. The headline act stays the same: the Spa Six Hours endurance race for pre-1966 machinery, several hundred cars strong across the weekend.

The paddocks are open and working, meaning you stand next to mechanics rebuilding gearboxes between sessions rather than looking at cars behind rope. The endurance race starts Saturday afternoon and runs into the night, and the sight of GT40s and E-Types braking for Les Combes on period-correct lighting is the single best argument for staying past dinner. Skip Sunday if you must, not Saturday evening.

The best approach is from the German side: leave the autobahn at Aachen, cross into Belgium at Eupen and take the N68 over the High Fens plateau toward Malmedy. It is open moorland with long sightlines, usually shrouded in exactly the same fog that will decide the race.