The 2027 South African Safari Rally will send competitors across the border into Botswana for the first time in the event's history, with two of its five stages forming a genuine marathon stage away from the mainbivouac at Sun City.
The announcement builds on the undeniable success of the rally's maiden edition in 2025, and sets the tone for what promises to be an even bigger second instalment of South Africa's round of the FIA-FIM World Rally-Raid Championship (W2RC),scheduled for 14 to 19 June 2027 as Round 3 of the five-round series.
The marathon stage is where the Safari Rally will show its true character. Crews will leave the comforts of the Sun City bivouac behind and race deep into the Botswana bush, arriving at a smallersatellite camp with none of the usual technical support waiting for them. There, under open African skies, they will pitch camp for the night, carry out their own repairs by torchlight, and rely on nothing but their own resourcefulness before racing back acrossthe border to Sun City on the following stage. It is a format with deep roots in rally-raid tradition, one that strips the sport back to its essentials: driver, machine, and the vastness of the terrain around them.
While this will be the first time the South African Safari Rally itself has crossed into a second country, Botswana is anything but unfamiliar territory for South African rally-raid competitors.The SARRC has raced across its sweeping savannah and demanding bushveld for close to two decades, most notably through the Toyota 1,000 Desert Race, long one of the most iconic fixtures on the local calendar. That history gives organisers, teams, and crewsalike an intimate working knowledge of the terrain they will return to in 2027.
The news has been met with genuine excitement in Botswana, a country whose passion for motorsport runs deep, and the prospect of hosting two stages of a W2RC round is expected to draw strong localinterest and support from a public eager to see the world's best rally-raid crews race through their own backyard.
It follows a debut year that exceeded expectations on every front. The inaugural 2025 South African Safari Rally, based at Sun City, attracted one of the strongest and most diverse fields of theentire championship season, bringing together Ultimate, Challenger, SSV, RallyGP, Rally2, and Quad crews in a format unique to the FIA-FIM World Rally-Raid Championship. The car field alone featured Nasser Al-Attiyah, Sébastien Loeb, Carlos Sainz, Nani Roma,and Giniel de Villiers alongside a new generation of contenders including Henk Lategan, Lucas Moraes, Seth Quintero, and Saood Variawa, while factory motorcycle teams from KTM, Honda, Hero, and Sherco lined up riders such as Daniel Sanders, Ross Branch, RickyBrabec, Skyler Howes, José Ignacio Cornejo, and South Africa's own Bradley Cox. Home fans were rewarded when Henk Lategan and Brett Cummings won a thrilling FIA Ultimate battle that went down to the final stage, while Daniel Sanders took overall honours inRallyGP. Competitors praised the event's flowing bushveld tracks, open savannah, technical mountain sections, and its own marathon stage, along with the efficiency of the centralised Sun City bivouac, cementing the rally's reputation as one of the standoutrounds of the championship in its very first year.
“This is going to be a true African adventure,” said Archie Rutherford, CEO of the South African Safari Rally. “Competitors will race from South Africa into Botswana for the marathon stage, spend a night in the bush with no support, and then race back across the border to finish at Sun City, something you won’t experience on a normal round of the World Rally-RaidChampionship. We’re inviting every competitor, every team and every rally-raid fan from around the world to come and experience Africa with us in 2027.”
Further details on the 2027 route, including individual stage locations on both sides of the border, will be announced in due course.