Every racing campaign is unique - but the 2026 World Superbike season kicking off this weekend should be a particularly stark departure from what came before.

There's no shortage of addition, but initially it will be subtraction that will be felt most keenly. Three-time champion Toprak Razgatlioglu, whose title rivalry with Nicolo Bulega totally defined the last two years of competition, has headed off to chase his MotoGP dream. His decision has naturally transformed the landscape.

Information on what the post-Razgatlioglu World SBK looks like is a little more limited than many of the teams and riders would like, with bad weather having hounded pre-season testing to such an extent that many felt they were starting almost from scratch at Phillip Island - which has hosted the last test this week ahead of the season opener on the weekend.

But here's what we already know.

Phillip Island test results

1 Nicolo Bulega (Ducati) 1m28.630s
2 Sam Lowes (Ducati) +0.666s
3 Lorenzo Baldassarri (Ducati) +0.698s
4 Yari Montella (Ducati) +0.721s
5 Axel Bassani (Bimota) +0.743s
6 Alex Lowes (Bimota) +0.945s
7 Miguel Oliveira (BMW) +1.046s
8 Iker Lecuona (Ducati) +1.139s
9 Xavi Vierge (Yamaha) +1.182s
10 Garrett Gerloff (Kawasaki) +1.193s
11 Alvaro Bautista (Ducati) +1.231s
12 Danilo Petrucci (BMW) +1.276s
13 Tarran Mackenzie (Ducati) +1.327s
14 Alberto Surra (Ducati) +1.339s
15 Stefano Manzi (Yamaha) +1.480s
16 Andrea Locatelli (Yamaha) +1.575s
17 Remy Gardner (Yamaha) +1.639s
18 Ryan Vickers (Honda) +1.816s
19 Jake Dixon (Honda) +1.862s
20 Tetsuta Nagashima (Honda) +1.883s
21 Bahattin Sofuoglu (Yamaha) +2.110s
22 Mattia Rato (Yamaha) +3.342s

A MotoGP audition with records in sight

Runner-up to Razgatlioglu in 2024 as a rookie and again in 2025, Bulega has made no secret of his ambition to follow in his friend and rival's footsteps and secure a MotoGP future - an ambition aided by MotoGP's upcoming pivot from Michelin to Pirelli as tyre supplier (which Pirelli is right now for World SBK).

This has contributed to Ducati naming Bulega a MotoGP test rider in addition to his primary World SBK duties - and while what he does in testing will be important for his ambitions, World SBK is still the avenue to show off his competitive worth.

We won't sugarcoat it here. Bulega, despite never having won the World SBK title before, is the favourite to such an extent that the word 'overwhelming' doesn't do it justice. He is champion-elect without a wheel having been turned in anger - and the question being deliberated more than whether he'll win the title is whether he could go 36/36 wins.

Probably not? Probably not. But, a little unscientific experiment - remove Razgatlioglu from the results last year and you end up with a 32-win season from Bulega with a 5.788s average winning margin.

A few all-time records - say, most wins in a season (27, Alvaro Bautista in 2023) and most podiums in a season (32, Jonathan Rea in 2019) - are extremely in play. And testing has done little to dispel the notion.

An uncertain Ducati hierarchy

Bulega should consistently be the fastest Ducati rider. If he somehow isn't, this will be a very different season to what anyone imagines. But even if he is, odds are he will then move on to MotoGP next year - meaning there's an anticipation of a Ducati power vacuum.

And good individual results should be available to Panigales every weekend. Chief, of course, is Bulega's new team-mate Iker Lecuona and his chance of a lifetime.

Paired up with crew chief Andrea Oleari (who was at GRT Yamaha with Domi Aegerter last year), Lecuona comes off an occasionally-promising but extremely injury-laden four years at Honda, which itself followed a brief stint as a MotoGP rider.

Even at 26, he's still widely regarded as super-raw, a Supermoto rider as recently as a decade ago. His innate talent isn't really in question, but the toll of injuries (reflected in his changing position on the bike) is a real worry, and his new gig, while an incredible opportunity, is a high-pressure one.

While he learns the Panigale ropes, not helped by the rain-hit pre-season ("my pre-season started yesterday and finished today", he said after the Phillip Island test), there's every chance of an unfavourable initial comparison to Ducati's seasoned privateers - Bautista at Barni and Sam Lowes at Marc VDS.

Bautista, who had his 2027 option declined by the factory Ducati team, will have a point to prove and is still plainly competitive (amid his ongoing crusade against World SBK's rider weight rules he's felt unfairly targeted by), while Lowes was already a factory seat contender for this year, and is expected to be even stronger now that Marc VDS is getting more support from Ducati.

Both should target runner-up in the standings. But also interesting is Lorenzo Baldassarri - whose eclectic career has now taken him to Ducati privateer GoEleven as Andrea Iannone's replacement, and who looked strong in Phillip Island testing.

Iannone's own new team, Cainam ('Maniac' backwards), was part of the entry list but isn't thought to have progressed further towards a real entry onto the grid.

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BMW's big-name rebuild

Whichever way you slice it, losing Razgatlioglu would be 'franchise-altering' for any manufacturer, and so it will be for BMW - which had also tried to, and couldn't, keep hold of star crew chief Phil Marron.

It has gone big in trying to ensure it doesn't return to its pre-Razgatlioglu midfield wilderness, with a line-up of MotoGP race winners.

After a disappointing MotoGP exit, Miguel Oliveira switches paddocks with considerable expectations but a very tall order not to disappoint in Razgatlioglu's shadow.

At his best, Oliveira is an electric talent. In a sense he may well have the highest proven competitive peak of anyone on the grid - because there were MotoGP weekends in which he was clearly the very best in the world. 

The question is more whether he can put his MotoGP disillusion behind him and apply himself in World SBK, and whether a compromised pre-season will hamstring those efforts.

Marron's exit means BMW went out and got Andrew Pitt, the former MotoGP rider and World SBK race winner, as Oliveira's crew chief. On the other side of the garage, fellow new signing Danilo Petrucci pairs up with Markus Eschenbacher - who had some success but a particularly brutal 2025 with previous rider Michael van der Mark.

Petrucci has three Ducati privateer seasons under his belt in World SBK (and three wins), but too faces an uphill battle to begin with.

Oliveira was eighth in the Phillip Island test, with Petrucci just outside the top 10. But it's not the BMW's strongest track at all - "this bike is made to brake hard, turn and accelerate" in Petrucci's words, which is not what you do here - and Petrucci's target of some early top-10 returns seems reasonable for both.

What the others can hope for

Razgatlioglu's exit and the new BMW pair's compromised pre-season means there should be more opportunity for World SBK's relative have-nots, though in reality that window is always smaller than it looks.

Yamaha snatched a race win last year. Kawasaki has wins from early 2024, but its partner Bimota is yet to claim one for itself. Honda is winless since 2016.

Honda's streak in particular is a brutal mark, one it has looked to erase with upped investment - including the addition of the freshly-retired prodigal son Rea as a test rider.

Part of the issue for Honda has been that its previous works line-up of Lecuona and Xavi Vierge were barely ever fully fit together. But at Phillip Island it will have neither of its new line-up - Somkiat Chantra is recovering from a bad testing crash at Sepang, and Jake Dixon fractured his left wrist on the final day of the pre-season.

Once fit, they should be a capable line-up, with Dixon bringing strong pedigree from Moto2 and Chantra a better rider than his largely hopeless single season in MotoGP suggested.

Yamaha has its riders mostly fit but things look uneasy coming into Phillip Island. Andrea Locatelli, the only non-Razgatlioglu/Bulega World SBK race winner since September '24, has traditionally been productive in Australia but has looked off in testing, and potentially faces a transition period with new crew chief Giulio Nava (a two-time champion at Ducati with Bautista).

New team-mate Vierge has actually looked quite good but faces the same mileage issue as all the other off-season movers. On the privateer/satellite GRT team's end, Remy Gardner is still nursing a shoulder injury, while Stefano Manzi is a rookie (one for which hopes are high after he set himself apart in his time in World Supersport).

But if there's a non-Ducati manufacturer that looks readiest to win, right now it's clearly Bimota with its Kawasaki-powered KB998, its team run by long-time World SBK dominator (as Kawasaki's factory team) Provec.

The bike was already impressive last year but under-powered and more specifically draggy. But spearhead rider Alex Lowes and particularly his team-mate Axel Bassani have looked potent at Phillip Island.

"I've been quite surprised about the two Bimotas," said Petrucci. "Really-really fast. I could follow them for a few laps, both Axel and Alex, and they are really-really fast. Compared to last season, they're even fast on the straights." 

A year that can define the future

Chances are good that the racing in 2026 comes too early - or maybe too late for some - to take on Bulega. Yes, dominating on paper is one thing and dominating in reality is another, but there's a buffer for Bulega to lean on.

But there's a sea change over the horizon, and everyone will want to be in the best position possible for that.

Riders and teams must anticipate a power vacuum - and the impending tyre supplier swap between MotoGP and World Superbike for 2027 will change the landscape further. With World SBK awaiting a change to Michelin rubber, series regulars will have to work hard to safeguard their premium seats against the inevitable big-name MotoGP grid 'cuts' made more World SBK-attractive by their Michelin experience.

If this is indeed Bulega's last World SBK year, who will assert themselves as Ducati's best fallback plan? Will Yamaha or Honda look strong enough to attact a transformative big name? What's Bimota's ceiling? What's BMW's true level?

There's a ton at stake, even if the title race is Bulega's to dominate. And what if it's not?

With thanks to World SBK commentator Steve English for input