The new circuit will be built near the new airport
When Formula 1 returns to Africa for the first time since Alain Prost won at Kyalami in 1993, it will do so at a circuit that is yet to be built.
The agreement announced on Tuesday is for 10 years, with the ‘Formula 1 African Grand Prix presented by Visit Rwanda’, joining the calendar in the “early 2030s”.
No specific date exists yet because the first race will take place only once the purpose-built circuit at Bugesera, south of Kigali, has been completed.
Formula 1 signing deals with venues that still don’t exist is nothing new, but there’s no clear precedent for Formula 1 announcing a brand-new race at a circuit that had not yet been built and without a fixed inaugural date.
The closest case in the Qiddiya circuit, which will host the Saudi Arabian GP once completed, but Jeddah has been hosting the country’s event for some time now.
It’s part of what makes the Rwanda deal extraordinary, particularly as F1 had been in discussions with South Africa to host a race at a venue that already exists like Kyalami.
South Africa hosted Formula 1 races between 1962 and 1993, and its sports minister had spent two years campaigning to bring the race back, saying a grand prix was coming in 2027. Instead, the deal has gone to a country with no circuit and no grand prix history.
The news doesn’t say so much about South Africa or Kyalami as it does about what Formula 1 now looks for in a grand prix host.
In December 2024, two African governments went public with their ambitions.
F1 last raced in Africa in 1993, when Prost won
Grand Prix Photo
President Paul Kagame formally announced Rwanda’s bid when Kigali hosted a gathering of the FIA. That same month, South Africa’s sports minister, Gayton McKenzie, introduced a 13-person bid steering committee, initially targeting a race as early as 2026 or 2027.
McKenzie met F1 boss Stefano Domenicali at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix to start the process, and Kagame was reported to be at the Singapore Grand Prix meeting the FIA and Liberty Media. Both countries got in the room.
What differed was the shape of the bids. South Africa’s process received three submissions, one from Kyalami and two from Cape Town. One of the Cape Town bidders criticised the process as opaque, while the minister had publicly signalled support for Kyalami.
The minister said the private backers would be named only if the bid succeeded. And the long-standing obstacle remained: earlier attempts to bring the race back had been stymied primarily by the huge cost.
Rwanda’s was a single state-led project with one destination and one counterparty.
That is a plausible reading of the reporting, not an explanation Formula 1 has given, but the release’s own language, about “the right partner”, a “long-term commitment” and a “clear vision”, reads like a description of a host that could answer every question with one voice.
The release is clear that this is more than a race. The circuit will be developed as part of a wider sports, tourism and infrastructure project led by the Rwanda Development Board, next to the new Kigali International Airport.
Kagame and Domenicali at the 2024 Singapore GP
Grand Prix Photo
Kagame says the aim “was never a single race weekend but a lasting benefit for our people”.
A digital image of the circuit was released with the announcement, crediting partners: Tilke, WurzDesign and Dar, the last a global consultancy that provides planning, engineering and project management for buildings, cities and civil infrastructure.
The credit doesn’t specify each firm’s role, but the presence of an infrastructure consultancy alongside two circuit designers fits the idea that the track is one piece of a larger development.
That changes what Formula 1 is in this arrangement. It is less a standalone headline event at an existing venue than the centrepiece of a national development programme.
The first race being tied to completion of the circuit, rather than to a fixed calendar year, shows how much of the timetable now sits with the host.
It also makes the deal harder to judge. A grand prix is a fixed event that either happens or doesn’t. A programme like this lives or dies on construction schedules, airport timelines and political continuity over a decade.
The commercial case rests on the claim that more than 100 million fans already follow Formula 1 across Africa, with almost 60% of those in key Sub-Saharan markets under 35.
The release doesn’t specify how those figures are counted but, even taken at face value, it describes an audience that is unlikely to find it easy to travel to Bugesera.
There is also no information on the source of the funding, and its text does not say who is building the circuit. AFP recently reported that Qatar is supporting the project, but that comes from an unnamed FIA source.
Rwanda, a nation with well-documented civil and political rights problems, has spent heavily on sport as a route to attention and investment, from the Visit Rwanda sponsorship deals with football clubs including Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain to hosting the 2025 UCI Road World Championships in Kigali.
The Cape Town bids lost out to Rwanda, but could Africa host two races?
Grand Prix Photo
Rights groups and critics accuse it of using sport to polish its international image while restricting dissent, allegations the government has rejected.
How the sport answers the criticism, and whether it chooses to, will be part of what this deal comes to mean.
South Africa’s sports minister took the result in good grace. “We are happy for Rwanda’s 2030 F1,” Gayton McKenzie wrote on Facebook before the official announcement.
“They have worked on it longer than SA and deserve it.”
McKenzie also made the case for a second race.
South Africa’s Prince George circuit hosted the dramatic 1962 F1 title showdown between Jim Clark and Graham Hill in late December. It’s time the World Championship returned to Africa, so why not make it a Christmas race weekend?
He noted some countries host two races a year, and “some react like a continent of 55 countries can only get one”. South Africa, he said, “will get F1, even before 2030”.
Formula 1’s release makes no mention of a second African round, and Domenicali’s framing is that the sport will now race on every inhabited continent.
A slot before 2030 would also have to be found on a calendar that is already full, and Kyalami would first need to clear the questions about cost and backing that have stopped every previous attempt.
Africa may well have room for two races, but nobody with the power to say so has said anything about it so far.
What the new deal does say is that heritage and an existing circuit are no longer enough on their own.
A country that arrived with a purpose-built plan, a state behind it and a counterparty who could speak for the whole project has won a decade-long commitment before a single metre of tarmac has been laid. For the countries lining up behind Rwanda, that may be the new standard.
