Is The F1 In Melbourne Every Year?

Article reviewed and updated by Jack Renn, July 2026.

• Melbourne has hosted the Australian Grand Prix at the Albert Park circuit every year since 1996 with only two exceptions, both caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. A contract extension signed in 2022 keeps the race in Melbourne through to 2035.
• Albert Park is statistically the hardest circuit in F1 for pit stop strategy. The undercut succeeds just 38% of the time across five seasons of timing data, the lowest rate of any circuit on the calendar, making qualifying position the single most valuable asset on race day.
• Despite being an annual fixture, Melbourne almost never produces a clean, uninterrupted race. Across the 2022 to 2026 seasons, only 2024 generated enough green-flag pit stops for a full statistical sample.

Is F1 In Melbourne Every Year?

F1 races in Melbourne every year. The Australian Grand Prix has been held at the Albert Park circuit annually since 1996, with only two exceptions. The 2020 race was cancelled hours before the first practice session after a positive COVID-19 test within the McLaren team, and the 2021 event was cancelled outright due to ongoing travel restrictions in Australia. Every other year from 1996 to the present, Melbourne has hosted the race.

A contract extension signed in 2022 guarantees Melbourne’s place on the F1 calendar through to 2035. The deal followed the 2022 race, which drew a record four-day attendance of 419,000 and generated an estimated $171 million for Victoria’s economy. Melbourne reclaimed the season-opening slot in 2025 after serving as the third round of the championship from 2022 to 2024, and opened the 2026 season as well.

How Melbourne Became a Permanent F1 Host

The Australian Grand Prix was held in Adelaide from 1985 to 1995, serving as the season finale for most of those years. The transfer from Adelaide to Melbourne in 1996 moved the race to Albert Park and shifted it from the end of the season to the beginning. Where Adelaide closed out each championship, Melbourne introduced each new generation of F1 cars to the public at the start of the year.

The move to Albert Park gave the Australian Grand Prix a different identity. Adelaide’s circuit ran through city streets in the east parklands, while Albert Park is a temporary layout around a lake in an inner-city park. The early-season scheduling also changed the race’s role on the calendar. Rather than deciding championships in the final round, Melbourne became the weekend where teams revealed their true pace for the first time after pre-season testing.

What Racing at Albert Park Is Actually Like

Albert Park’s smooth parkland surface and low-abrasion layout make it one of the gentlest circuits on tyres anywhere in Formula 1. Across five seasons of measured timing data from 2022 to 2026, tyre degradation at Melbourne runs at an era median of just 0.034 seconds per lap, with the hard compound dropping only 0.025 seconds per lap across 87 measured stints. Tyres last long and lose pace slowly, which means fresh rubber after a pit stop gains almost nothing over the worn set it replaced.

That gentle degradation makes the undercut almost worthless at Albert Park. The classic strategy of pitting early to gain time on fresh tyres while a rival stays out on older rubber succeeds just 38% of the time in Melbourne, the lowest rate of any circuit in the dataset. The median undercut attempt actually loses 0.79 seconds rather than gaining anything. Melbourne and Qatar are the only two circuits in F1 where the median undercut goes backwards, and Melbourne is the more emphatic of the pair. The worst measured attempt was Kevin Magnussen on Lance Stroll in 2024, which cost 4.05 seconds.

The cost of a pit stop at Albert Park is cheap by F1 standards at 20.73 seconds for the era median, well below the sport-wide average of roughly 22.5 seconds. But a cheap toll on a worthless weapon still produces a loss. The result is that track position dominates at Albert Park, which is why qualifying on Saturday effectively writes half of Sunday’s result.

Why Clean Races Are Rare at Albert Park

Even as an annual fixture on the calendar, Melbourne almost never produces a clean, representative race. Across the five measured seasons from 2022 to 2026, the statistical filters designed to isolate green-flag racing keep coming back nearly empty.

Only 2024 produced a proper sample of undisturbed pit stops, with 30 stops surviving the filters. The 2022 race managed 11. The 2023 Australian Grand Prix generated just two usable stops from an afternoon that featured three red flags and multiple safety car periods. The 2025 race was wet enough to be excluded from the dataset entirely. And the 2026 race saw its pit windows run so heavily under safety car conditions that only nine stops qualified as clean data.

That four-out-of-five disruption rate adds another dimension to Melbourne’s annual presence on the calendar: the race runs every year, but a textbook version of it almost never does.

Albert Park FAQs

Sources

• Melbourne takes pole position with F1 deal to 2035 – Victorian Government
• Australian Grand Prix cancelled for second successive year due to coronavirus – Sky Sports
• 2020 Australian Grand Prix – Wikipedia
• 2025 Australian Grand Prix – Wikipedia

More F1 Reading

• What City Is The Australian Grand Prix In?
• Has Max Verstappen Ever Won The Australian Grand Prix?
• How Many Different Venues Has the Australian Grand Prix Been Held At?
• Where Is The Australian Grand Prix Held?

Written by

Jarrod Partridge

Jarrod Partridge is the Co-Founder of F1 Chronicle and an FIA accredited journalist with over 30 years of experience following Formula 1. A member of the AIPS International Sports Press Association, Jarrod has covered F1 races at circuits around the world, bringing first-hand insight to every race report, driver profile, and technical analysis he writes.

More articles by Jarrod Partridge →