NASCAR released its much-anticipated 2025 schedule on Thursday, which showcases another year with new race tracks joining the circuit. Though NASCAR already announced the new additions of Bowman Gray Stadium and Mexico City, the 2025 calendar is still full of change.

As was announced a couple of weeks ago, the annual preseason exhibition race known as “The Clash” is leaving Los Angeles, California and is headed to Winston-Salem, North Carolina to be run at the historic Bowman Gray Stadium on Sunday, February 2.

The regular season will kick off two weeks later with the 67th running of the Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway. 

The next big addition to the schedule was announced earlier this week, and that is the NASCAR Cup Series running a points-paying race internationally for the first time since 1958. NASCAR will run on a slightly modified version of the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City, the same track where Formula 1 races annually.

The Cup Series will be joined in Mexico City by the Xfinity Series, which raced at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez from 2005 to 2008, as well as the NASCAR Mexico Series. The Cup race will take place on June 15.

NASCAR’s trip to Mexico comes at the expense of one of the two Richmond Raceway race weekends. Though Richmond has held two dates for decades, attendance at the Virginia short track has waned in the last decade. Richmond’s only race date in 2025 will now be on Saturday, August 16.

Speaking of Richmond, one of its two race dates took place on Easter Sunday in 2024, which marked the third year in a row that the Cup Series had raced on that holiday. In 2025, Easter weekend will be the only off weekend of the season for the Cup Series. 

Richmond’s lone race date on August 16 is one of four races that will be held on Saturday night in 2025. While the Cup Series schedule once saw double-digit Saturday night races each year, in recent years there’s been just two, including in 2024, which saw just the summer race at Daytona and the annual Bristol Night race in September be contested on Saturday night. In 2025, Atlanta’s second race will run on Saturday, June 28, Richmond on Saturday, August 16, Daytona’s regular season finale will be one week later on August 23, and Bristol’s Night Race will end the first round of the playoffs on Saturday, September 13.

NASCAR also made big changes to its playoffs schedule for 2025. Darlington’s Southern 500 will return to being the first race of the playoffs after serving as the regular season finale in 2024. Gateway will be the second race of the first round on September 7. New Hampshire Motor Speedway will return to the playoffs after a handful of years out of it on September 13 as the first race of the second round. And Talladega’s annual playoff race moves from the second round to the third round. 

To make room for those races, Atlanta, Watkins Glen, and Homestead are all having their races moved out of the playoffs.

Other changes on the schedule include Dover moving from April to July 20, and Iowa moving from June to August 3. Michigan will also see its one race moved to June 8 and away from August where it has been plagued by rain the last handful of years. 

Meanwhile, the biggest change to the Xfinity Series and Craftsman Truck Series schedules is that both divisions will be returning to The Rock in Rockingham, North Carolina on Easter weekend on Friday and Saturday. The Truck Series will also visit Lime Rock Park, the Connecticut road course, on June 27-28. 

You can see the entire 2025 NASCAR Cup Series schedule below.

While the Cup schedule has now been released, the 2025 calendars released, the regional series are expected soon. The 2025 schedules for the ARCA Menards Series, ARCA Menards Series East and West, and the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour are expected to be released in the coming months. 

2025 NASCAR Cup Series Schedule