Las Vegas Grand Prix 2026: A Visitor's Guide to F1 Weekend (November 19–21)

Practice runs at 4:30 and 8 p.m. on Thursday, November 19; qualifying is 8 p.m. Friday, November 20; the race starts at 8 p.m. Saturday, November 21, all Pacific time. As of September 2, 2026, the cheapest tickets still on sale are Thursday single-days: T-Mobile general admission from $81 and a West Harmon grandstand seat from $102, taxes and fees included. The $50 Flamingo Zone tickets sold out in August 2026. In 2025 the circuit roads, Las Vegas Boulevard between Sands Avenue and Harmon Avenue included, closed to traffic from 1 p.m. on session days, the pedestrian bridges stayed open for crossing but not for watching, and a Review-Journal survey a week before the race put Strip hotels at an average of $194 a night, with 16 of them above $500. Formula 1 signed a 10-year extension in June 2026, so the race stays on the Strip through 2037.

The 2026 session schedule, in Las Vegas time

Every Formula 1 session runs after dark. Sunset comes before 5 p.m. in late November, and the organizer publishes the timetable in Pacific Standard Time. The race starts at 8 p.m., two hours earlier than the 2023 and 2024 editions, which leaves room for dinner.

• Thursday, November 19: Formula 1 Practice 1, 4:30–5:30 p.m.; F1 Academy practice, 6:00–6:40 p.m.; Formula 1 Practice 2, 8:00–9:00 p.m.; F1 Academy qualifying, 9:30–10:00 p.m.
• Friday, November 20: Formula 1 Practice 3, 4:30–5:30 p.m.; F1 Academy reverse-grid race, 6:15–6:50 p.m.; Formula 1 Qualifying, 8:00–9:00 p.m.
• Saturday, November 21: F1 Academy feature race, 4:20–4:55 p.m.; the Grand Prix, 50 laps, lights out at 8:00 p.m.

F1 Academy, the all-female single-seater series, races here too, so the gaps between Formula 1 sessions have racing in them. Bring a real jacket. Desert nights in late November cool off fast, and every grandstand is open-air.

Where the track goes, hotel by hotel

The start line sits on Harmon Avenue at Koval Lane, in front of the permanent pit building that spends the rest of the year as Grand Prix Plaza. From there the lap runs counter-clockwise: a tight left at Turn 1, only 367 feet from pole position, the fast Turns 2–4 sequence that spits the cars onto the Koval straight, a hard 65 mph right-hander at Turn 5, then the long left sweep around Sphere through Turns 6 to 9, two fast kinks on Sands Avenue, and a left onto Las Vegas Boulevard at Turn 12. That corner feeds the reason the race exists, about 1.2 miles straight down the Strip past the Venetian, Caesars Palace, Flamingo, Bellagio and the Cosmopolitan, into a 60 mph left at Turn 14 by Planet Hollywood and a right-left chicane that turn the cars east onto Harmon, then a flat-out left at Turn 17 back onto the pit straight. Seventeen turns and 6.2 kilometers; the organizer quotes top speeds above 215 mph, and Alex Albon touched 229 mph in the 2024 race. The corners where positions actually change are on Koval, around Sphere and under braking for Turn 14, and the first two are out of sight from the Boulevard hotels.

Tickets: what each zone gets you

The same grandstand seat costs $102 on Thursday and $809 on Saturday. West Harmon Grandstand at Turn 17 lists single days at $102 for practice, $203 for qualifying and $809 for the race. If you want to stand a fence away from a Formula 1 car at full noise, Thursday does it for the price of a show ticket. Prices below are as listed on September 2, 2026, taxes and fees included, and they move.

General admission

Standing room, first-come viewing platforms, big screens and a fan zone with food and drink for sale. The Flamingo Zone by Caesars Rewards, the $50 single-day and $492 three-day entry point, is sold out on both. What remains is T-Mobile General Admission in the T-Mobile Zone at Sphere: single days from $81, three days from $809, with sightlines onto the Sphere section of the lap, Turns 6 through 9, and access to the T-Mobile Stage, where Two Friends headline Thursday, Disclosure Friday and Sean Paul Saturday. General admission anywhere on this circuit means watching most of a session on a screen while the cars pass as a streak of light at the edge of it.

Grandstands

• Heineken Grandstands, Turn 4, Koval Zone by Heineken: single days from $102; the three-day is sold out. The exit of the Turns 2–4 sequence, where the cars come off 77 mph and open up for the Koval straight; the first DRS zone starts in front of you.
• Turn 3 Grandstand, Koval Zone: from $147 single-day, $1,507 for three days, watching the cars through Turns 3 and 4 before they accelerate onto Koval.
• T-Mobile Grandstands, T-Mobile Zone at Sphere: from $145 single-day, $1,445 for three, around the Sphere curves, the twistiest stretch of the lap.
• Heineken Silver Main Grandstand, East Harmon Zone: from $206 single-day, $2,051 for three, facing the pit lane and the starting grid. The seat for the start, the pit stops and the podium.
• Lewis Hamilton Grandstand Package, West Harmon Zone at Turn 17: $1,012 for three days with an assigned seat and a merchandise item, right where the pit lane entrance peels off.

A grandstand ticket buys the seat and the zone. Food and drink are extra: through 2024 some grandstand and general-admission tickets included food and soft drinks, and the organizer dropped that in 2025 to bring prices down. Single-day hospitality exists for the first time in 2026, from $382 at Club Paris on the Boulevard, food and drink included. Children under 24 months are free on a lap; anyone under 18 needs an adult with them. Single-day tickets don't qualify for payment plans. Event details live on our Las Vegas Grand Prix page.

Seeing cars without a ticket: what's left

The pedestrian bridges are out. The organizers cover the bridges over the track with view-blocking material for race week (the 2025 covers came off on November 24), and a Clark County ordinance from 2024 bans stopping on any pedestrian bridge over the Boulevard or within 20 feet of its stairs and escalators. The bridges stay open for crossing. At street level the west sidewalk from Caesars Palace down to the Cosmopolitan runs behind fencing with a black sheer covering: you feel the vibration and smell the exhaust, and you see slivers. Even the F1 Arcade's third-floor terrace over the Boulevard wasn't promised a view of the 2025 race; the organizers screen what they can.

The free options sit a block or more from the fence. In 2025 the Encore Players Lounge at Wynn ran the Red Bull Pit Stop Challenge next to a collection of Michael Schumacher's helmets and race suits and a 1997 Ferrari. The Williams Racing fan zone took over the Brooklyn Bridge at New York-New York, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., with show cars and simulators, and the Cosmopolitan displayed the Haas car with a driver meet-and-greet. Henderson hosted the official free watch party on Water Street Plaza on race night at 7 p.m. F1 Arcade in the Forum Shops sold a $295 watch party with bottomless drinks and unlimited simulator time. The 2026 versions get announced in November. Grand Prix Plaza itself, the year-round karting and F1 X attraction at Harmon and Koval, closes for the season after October 4 so the building can turn back into the pit complex; it isn't a race-week option.

Getting around: closures, the Monorail, where to sleep

Build-out for 2026 began on the night of September 2 with an overnight lane reduction on Koval Lane at Rochelle Avenue to install a pedestrian bridge over Koval, and Harmon Avenue between Las Vegas Boulevard and Koval drops to one lane each way overnight, 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., from September 7 to 18 while crews install track lighting. The temporary Flamingo Road vehicle bridge over Koval goes up October 11–16 and closes that intersection for the week; during sessions it carries approved traffic only, and pedestrians aren't allowed on it. The organizer says it keeps track work to overnight hours, and the new 10-year deal adds permanent race infrastructure on the Boulevard to shorten future build-outs.

The 2025 race-week pattern, from Clark County's schedule: Koval Lane closed around the clock from Rochelle Avenue to Harmon Avenue from Saturday, November 15 to Monday, November 24. On the three session days the circuit roads closed to local traffic at 1 p.m. and reopened between midnight and 3 a.m.; everything was open again at 2 a.m. on the Sunday. The Deuce and routes 202, 203 and CX ran detours from November 18 to 24, and the Bellagio bus stop was closed all week. During sessions the Boulevard between Sands and Harmon is a racetrack; you cross it on the pedestrian bridges, and only there. The hour-by-hour 2026 schedule posts on the organizer's transportation site and by text alert in the weeks before the race.

The Las Vegas Monorail is the one piece of transit the track doesn't touch. It runs behind the east-side resorts from MGM Grand to Sahara, seven stations, and in 2025 it ran nonstop from 7 a.m. on Tuesday, November 18 to 3 a.m. on Monday, November 24. The 2026 hours post closer to race week; assume the same shape. Three stations sit inside the loop: Harrah's/The LINQ, the closest to the Sphere zone, then Flamingo/Caesars Palace and Horseshoe/Paris for the Koval side. Rideshare pickup zones shift and the walk to them gets long. The cleanest fix is to sleep on the side of the circuit your ticket is on and walk; our getting-around guide and the walking-the-Strip guide have the distances. Grand Prix Plaza is about half a mile from MGM Grand and a mile from Bellagio.

The hotel-price reality

Hotel prices for race week came down in 2025. A Review-Journal survey of 161 hotels on November 11, 2025 put the average at $194 a night for Wednesday, November 19 through Saturday, November 22, with 16 hotels above $500 a night and 43 under $100, and the paper called it cheaper than the two previous races. The top of the list was Wynn Las Vegas and Encore at $1,095 a night, then the Venetian at $751, the Four Seasons at $750, Palazzo at $749, Bellagio at $588, Caesars Palace and the Cosmopolitan at $559 and Fontainebleau at $508. Downtown averaged $107. Those are nightly rates before resort fees, which add roughly $45–55 a night on the Strip; our resort-fee guide has the list by hotel.

The same survey priced Thanksgiving week, the following Wednesday to Saturday, at an average of $127 a night, with Bellagio at $251, the Venetian at $191 and MGM Grand at $93. The week after the race, the same rooms cost about a third as much. Five locals and downtown properties had already sold out for race weekend by the survey date, so the cheap end goes first. For a race trip on a budget, the pairing is a sub-$100 room away from the circuit and a Thursday general-admission ticket at $81. For anyone not here for the race, November 19–21 is the week to skip; Thanksgiving falls on Thursday, November 26.

Same weekend: Backstreet Boys at Sphere, Marc Anthony, the Golden Knights

Sphere sits inside the circuit, and on race night it hosts the event's first official post-race show: the Backstreet Boys play the F1 Afterparty on Saturday, November 21, announced on July 9, 2026. You can't buy it on its own. Access is sold as an add-on to a race ticket, any three-day ticket or a Saturday single-day, from $116 at launch, or inside packages that start at $925 with a three-day T-Mobile general-admission ticket. The group's regular Sphere run closed on August 29 and resumes over the holidays, December 26 through January 2, so if the Afterparty is the draw, plan the race ticket around it. Our Sphere guide covers seating and the dome effect, and the Backstreet Boys page has the residency dates.

Off the circuit, Marc Anthony plays his "Vegas… My Way!" residency at the BleauLive Theater inside Fontainebleau on Friday, November 20 and Saturday, November 21 at 10 p.m. Fontainebleau is at the north end of the Strip, outside the closures; the Friday show follows qualifying comfortably, while on Saturday you'd be leaving the circuit as the curtain goes up. The Golden Knights are home at T-Mobile Arena on Thursday, November 19 at 7 p.m., overlapping Practice 2.

Five plans that don't work

• The $809 Saturday single-day grandstand if seeing and hearing the cars is the goal. Thursday's two practice sessions put the same cars past the same seat for $102.
• Any viewing plan that involves a pedestrian bridge or the Boulevard sidewalk. Screens, fencing and an ordinance stand between you and the track.
• Driving into the resort corridor after 1 p.m. on session days. Detours change by the hour.
• Grand Prix Plaza's karting and F1 X during race week. The attraction closes for the season after October 4.
• A Strip-view room as a substitute for a ticket. Height gives you the light show; it doesn't give you the corners, the pit lane or the screens.