All We Know About Jorge Martin Already Wanting Out of Aprilia
Jorge Martin wants to exit Aprilia just one race into his contract. Here’s everything we know about the clause, the injury complications, and what might happen next.
The new season is coming ever closer, and teams have started to reveal their 2026 MotoGP launch dates.
As they prepare to unveil their updated liveries and rider line-ups and start the upcoming campaign on the right foot, fans can get an early look at the 2026 bikes and the new stars joining the grid, including rookies Toprak Razgatlıoğlu and Diogo Moreira.
Discover all confirmed team presentation dates and locations in our handy team-by-team overview, showing exactly when and where each team will reveal their bike before the pre-season tests begin with the shakedown in Sepang from 29th to 31st of January.
Ducati Lenovo Team
The Ducati factory team was the first to announce its team presentation date for 2026. Marc Marquez and Francesco Bagnaia’s bikes will be unveiled on January 19, less than two weeks before the shakedown test in Sepang.
The location honors what is becoming a Ducati tradition: for the fourth consecutive year, the Italian ski resort of Madonna di Campiglio – now long-term partner of MotoGP’s benchmark team – has been chosen once again to kick off Ducati’s 2026 season.
After a season in 2025 that slightly dented their dominance, Ducati enters 2026 as the clear favorite, determined to defend their number one spot against an uprising Aprilia.
Having shown that he’s miles clear of the rest of the field, Marc Marquez will once again be the standout contender for what could become the Spaniard’s tenth title.
On the other side of the garage, following a challenging year that saw him finish a disappointing fifth in the standings, Francesco Bagnaia will aim to return to his championship-winning form in 2026.
BK8 News Gresini Racing
At the other end of the globe from Ducati’s snowy Italian launch, Gresini Racing will reveal its 2026 MotoGP team in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on the evening of January 31, just after the Sepang shakedown test.
The customer team enters the new season with high expectations after a breakthrough 2025, when Alex Marquez secured three grand prix victories to finish as championship runner-up, while rookie Fermin Aldeguer claimed a race win and earned the Rookie of the Year title.
For 2026, Gresini will enter a new phase of the team’s cooperation with bike supplier Ducati. Building on his incredible 2025 season, Alex Marquez will race a factory-spec Ducati GP26 – a first for the Gresini Racing team – while Aldeguer will remain on a satellite-spec Desmosedici alongside only VR46’s Franco Morbidelli.
Pertamina Enduro VR46 Racing Team
VR46 Racing will unveil its 2026 MotoGP project on January 14 in Rome, a day after the Prima Pramac Yamaha team hosts its event in Siena.
Announcing the launch date with the slogan ‘Black And Light’ on the team’s social media has already fuelled speculation that VR46 is preparing a shift in its visual identity, moving away from the familiar yellow-white palette of the past two years toward a new black-yellow scheme for the upcoming 2026 season.
Franco Morbidelli and Fabio Di Giannantonio remain with the outfit for 2026, the latter enjoying another year of full factory Ducati support on the latest-spec GP26, while Morbidelli will run a one-year-old GP25 package.
Both riders delivered the occasional highlight in 2025, racking up 13 podium finishes, but inconsistency prevented VR46 from mounting any sustained challenge against the Ducati factory team and Gresini Racing.
With rumors surrounding a possible switch of supplier hanging tight and MotoGP’s 2027 regulation overhaul reshuffling the order, 2026 might well be VR46’s last season on Ducati machinery.
Monster Energy Yamaha
Yamaha will kick off its 2026 MotoGP campaign with a season launch in Jakarta, Indonesia, scheduled for mid-January.
The factory team will unveil its new bike on January 21 during the Yamaha Indonesia Motor Manufacturing Dealer Meeting, a significant moment for the brand as it prepares to race a V4-powered bike for the first time in the modern era after ending its long-running inline-four programme.
The year ahead carries quite substantial weight for Yamaha as it works to bring the MotoGP project back to former glory, and prepare the V4 for MotoGP’s 2027 regulation change to 850cc.
Fabio Quartararo, who stood out during the 2025 season with several podium finishes and a top-10 championship result, will attend the Jakarta event alongside teammate Alex Rins to reveal the 2026 livery.
Attention will then quickly turn to on-track running, with Yamaha beginning its testing programme later in the month at MotoGP’s Sepang shakedown test.
Prima Pramac Yamaha
The Pramac Yamaha MotoGP team has scheduled its presentation for January 13 in Siena. The event, held at the Accademia Musicale della Chigiana, will mark Toprak Razgatlioglu’s first official appearance in team colours as he transitions from WorldSBK to MotoGP.
Having completed his initial tests on an unbranded M1 due to prior commitments with BMW, the Siena event will formally introduce him alongside new teammate and fellow stoppie connoisseur Jack Miller.
The launch also kicks off Pramac’s second year with Yamaha machinery after a challenging 2025 campaign that yielded just one top-five finish, dropping the Italian outfit from Teams’ World Champion in 2024 all the way to last in the standings.
With Razgatlioglu, fresh off winning his third World Superbikes Champion title, joining Miller to push development of Yamaha’s new V4 project, expectations for progress have shifted upward.
Pramac will also reveal its Moto2 line-up, consisting of Izan Guevara and Alberto Ferrandez, and livery during the event.
Aprilia Racing
Set to unveil its new bike in Milan, Aprilia Racing has confirmed that the team will launch its 2026 MotoGP season on January 15, adding to an increasingly busy schedule with the factory Ducati team, Gresini Racing, and Pramac Yamaha all revealing their bikes the same week.
The Noale manufacturer heads into the new campaign after a turbulent but ultimately historic 2025, which delivered the best results in Aprilia’s premier-class history despite constant disruption on one side of the garage.
A headline signing brought 2024 World Champion Jorge Martin into the team; however, a heavy pre-season testing crash and a subsequent training incident quickly unraveled his season, ruling him out of the opening rounds.
Further injuries limited Martin’s campaign and kicked off a mid-season contractual dispute with Aprilia.
Supposedly having gotten a “very lucrative” offer from Honda, the Spaniard and his management team tried to execute a performance clause to leave the Noale outfit after just one season.
However, realizing their effort stood on a weak legal foundation – the cited poor performance largely stemming from Martin’s absence due to injury – he ultimately committed to seeing out his deal.
Even so, Aprilia emerged as a genuine race-winning force, claiming four grand prix victories, three of them courtesy of Marco Bezzecchi.
With momentum established and the RS-GP genuinely looking like the first real contender to the almighty Ducati, Aprilia launches 2026 with a clear goal in mind:
“We are no longer satisfied with winning one or two races per year. We have everything we need to win [the title]. That is our goal; that must be our goal!”
“We have the riders, and we will have Jorge back. We just need proper, good preparation for the season. I really think Aprilia can be very strong next year.”
“Of course, we don’t know how the others are working, but I have no doubt that Jorge [Martin] and Marco will be fighting for the world championship next year.”
