They’re gone from the 2026 calendar, cancelled by a conflict none of us wanted. Now that the desert nights are quiet, let’s remember what made these circuits genuinely special.
Be honest. When Bahrain and Saudi Arabia were announced as April cancellations, a few F1 fans shrugged. Both circuits had their critics, as Bahrain was sometimes labelled processional, Jeddah as too chaotic, and both as too new to carry the nostalgic weight of a Monza or a Spa. And yet here we are, heading into a five-week silence, and a lot of us are realising we actually miss them.
Start with Bahrain. The circuit at Sakhir opened in 2004 and made history as the first Formula 1 race ever held in the Middle East. It’s a proper, purpose-built racing track carved out of the desert. Not a street circuit, not a converted parking lot, but a real venue designed for speed and spectacle. Hermann Tilke’s layout flows through long straights and heavy braking zones that consistently produce genuine overtaking, and the surface itself is exceptional: made from a specific type of aggregate shipped all the way from a quarry in Shropshire, England, of all places.
But the real magic of Bahrain is nocturnal. In 2014, to mark a decade of hosting F1, the circuit installed floodlights and went full night race. Under artificial light, with the desert air cool and the grandstands buzzing, Sakhir becomes atmospheric in a way that’s genuinely hard to describe. The red dust haze softening the floodlights. The silence of the surrounding desert somehow amplifying the noise inside the circuit. If you’ve watched a Bahrain GP at 3am your time and found yourself unable to go to bed, you know exactly what it does to you.
Bahrain has given us the Duel in the Desert in 2014. It gave us the race where Romain Grosjean’s car split in two and he walked out of fire. These things happen at circuits that matter.
Jeddah is a completely different animal. The Corniche circuit is a 6.1-kilometer street track built in eight months, which is borderline insane, that hugs the Red Sea coastline and gives drivers 27 corners of ultra-fast, wall-lined, barely-any-runoff chaos. It is not a comfortable place to drive. Drivers have called it Monaco-esque in terms of how close the barriers feel, but at speeds that Monaco never approaches. When it works, a Jeddah race is like watching someone defuse a bomb at 300km/h.
Neither track is perfect. Bahrain has had years where the racing was flat. Jeddah has had years where the red flags piled up and the safety car felt like a regular participant. But “imperfect” and “unmissable” aren’t mutually exclusive in Formula 1. Some of the sport’s most memorable moments happened at tracks that weren’t universally beloved on the week before the race.
The hope is that F1 returns to both as soon as circumstances allow. Bahrain’s circuit and the Saudi promoters have both said they’re ready to welcome the paddock back whenever it’s safe to do so. Until then, April feels a little quieter and a little less luminous than it should. The desert hasn’t gone anywhere. Neither have the floodlights. They’ll be there when F1 comes back.
