Nobody in MotoGP wants to be left without a chair when the music stops.
And while the 2027 rider market isn’t closed yet, the contract soundtrack is rapidly approaching its coda.
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With seats on next year’s grid filling up fast, unofficially at least – Japanese sophomore Ai Ogura’s move from Aprilia to Yamaha is the latest agreed yet unannounced contract to enter the news cycle this week – a host of established MotoGP names remain unsigned and scrambling to extend their premier-class tenures.
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When – not if – the Motorcycle Sports Manufacturers’ Association (MSMA), which represents MotoGP’s five brands, and promoters MSEG (MotoGP Sports Entertainment Group) agree to a new deal to run the series from 2027-31, a raft of contracts agreed in the pre-season but not yet confirmed – Fabio Quartararo to Honda, Jorge Martin to Yamaha, Francesco Bagnaia to Aprilia and Pedro Acosta to Ducati – will finally be announced to the world.
PIT TALK PODCAST: The 2027 MotoGP rider market silly season is in full swing … but waits on one crucial announcement to unlock an impasse. Who is moving where, and why? Listen to Pit Talk below.
Further down the grid, there’s a group of seven riders who, between them, have amassed 23 premier-class Grand Prix wins, one MotoGP championship, five world championships in all and a combined 57 seasons in the top flight all awaiting their fate ahead of MotoGP’s change to an 850cc regulation reboot next year.
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It’s a rider cluster with deals that end at the conclusion of the 2026 season, but not all seven have equal prospects to continue.
Who’s under pressure, what are their best chances of staying, and who might be staring at 2026 being their final MotoGP lap?
In order of their championship positions after three rounds, here’s a septet of names waiting for the phone to ring …
LUCA MARINI (HONDA, 10TH IN WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP)
2026: 23 points, best Grand Prix result 9th (USA), best sprint result 5th (USA), best qualifying 9th (USA)
MotoGP career: 6th season, 97 races, 0 wins, 2 podiums, 2 poles
Season so far: Honda sits fourth of the five MotoGP manufacturers in the pecking order after three rounds, but that’s no fault of Marini, who has scored almost as many points as stablemates Johann Zarco (13), Diogo Moreira (9) and Joan Mir (3) combined. The 28-year-old is never going to be as explosive as Mir or as mercurial as Zarco, but he’ll also dependably score decent points when others falter, as his top-10 showings in all three sessions that mattered in Austin last time out demonstrated.
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Prospects: Good, but with a caveat. With the Tech3 team owned by ex-F1 team boss Guenther Steiner poised to switch from KTM to Honda machinery next year, having six Hondas on the 2027 grid should all-but confirm Marini’s signature, given the Italian’s technical input for a Honda project that is rising from the basement, but still has work to do.
The case to stay: Honda won’t find a better development rider for a new regulation set anywhere else.
The case to go: He’s the only one of this group of seven without a MotoGP win, and looks to have hit his pace ceiling.
ENEA BASTIANINI (KTM, 11TH)
2026: 22 points, best Grand Prix result 6th (USA), best sprint result 3rd (USA), best qualifying 12th (USA)
MotoGP career: 6th season, 93 races, 7 wins, 19 podiums, 2 poles
Season so far: Can’t qualify, can race … sometimes. Bastianini is what he is by this stage of his MotoGP career, a rider consistently unable to wring a single-lap scorcher out of his machinery in qualifying, but one capable of scything through the pack like he did in the Texas sprint race, where he was promoted to the podium after Acosta’s tyre pressure penalty. Mediocre Saturdays don’t led to strong Sundays as much as they did when ‘The Beast’ was a factory Ducati rider, and at 28, there’s little sign of him evolving.
Prospects: After a blah one-and-a-bit seasons at KTM, surprisingly good. With Gresini Ducati likely to move on from both Alex Marquez (to KTM) and Fermin Aldeguer (to VR46 Ducati) next year, and with Moto2 front-runner Dani Holgado set for one of those seats, Gresini are keen to renew ties with an Italian rider who thrives as an underdog, as Bastianini did with Gresini in 2022 when he won four Grands Prix and finished a surprise third in the championship.
The case to stay: He’s good for a podium or two per season that you didn’t see coming.
The case to go: He’ll have several races per season where you’ll forget he’s on the grid …
BRAD BINDER (KTM, 12TH)
2026: 17 points, best Grand Prix result 7th (Thailand), best sprint result 6th (Thailand), best qualifying 11th (Thailand)
MotoGP career: 7th season, 116 races, 2 wins, 11 podiums, 0 poles
Season so far: Unfortunately for the South African veteran, 2026 has been an extension of 2025 rather than a return to the four prior seasons, where he was inside the top six in the standings from 2021-24. Comparisons to teammate Acosta aren’t flattering – Binder has been outqualified 25 times in a row by a rider who, remarkably, has never been beaten by a teammate in qualifying in his MotoGP career – and in modern-day MotoGP, muted one-lap pace is harder than ever to overcome in a brutal midfield pack that has tripwires at every turn.
Prospects: Given Binder has ridden for KTM since his Moto3 days in 2015, it’s likely a case of the Austrian brand or bust for the 30-year-old, which looks set to replace the Ducati-bound Acosta with last year’s championship runner-up Alex Marquez next season. Maverick Vinales – on a KTM with Tech3 this season – looms as Binder’s biggest obstacle. If Vinales can get fit and stay fit – a big ‘if’ given the Spaniard’s continued struggles with a left shoulder injury over the past eight months – Binder’s time might be running out.
The case to stay: He’s part of the KTM furniture, a rugged racer and has a passport that isn’t Italian or Spanish, which can only help to thicken MotoGP’s global appeal in the Liberty Media era.
The case to go: 2025 showed signs of decline, which 2026 has only underlined.
FRANCO MORBIDELLI (DUCATI, 13TH)
2026: 14 points, best Grand Prix result 8th (Thailand), best sprint result 13th (USA), best qualifying 9th (Thailand)
MotoGP career: 9th season, 145 races, 3 wins, 8 podiums, 2 poles
Season so far: Morbidelli fans, cover your eyes. After the Valentino Rossi protégé enjoyed a relatively successful homecoming season with VR46 last year partnered with Fabio Di Giannantonio, 2026 has been underwhelming in the extreme. As ‘Diggia’ has, unexpectedly, emerged as Ducati’s early-season feel-good story, Morbidelli has been consistently nowhere, only avoiding being the lowest-scoring Ducati rider after three rounds because Aldeguer missed the season-opener in Thailand with injury. Rossi’s team gave the 31-year-old a lifeline after an injury-affected 2024 alongside that year’s world champion Jorge Martin at the-then Pramac Ducati team, but loyalty has its limits.
Prospects: With Aldeguer already coming in at VR46 next year and one of Morbidelli or Di Giannantonio needing to make way, it’s not looking good.
The case to stay: Di Giannantonio uses his increasing market value to land a gig elsewhere, creating a vacancy by default.
The case to go: The stopwatch doesn’t lie …
ALEX RINS (YAMAHA, 18TH)
2026: 3 points, best Grand Prix result 14th (Brazil), best sprint result 13th (Brazil), best qualifying 17th (Brazil)
MotoGP career: 10th season, 148 races, 6 wins, 18 podiums, 0 poles
Season so far: Sadly for a rider as classy as Rins, it’s been a continuation of the second part of his career, which has a clear line from the 2023 Italian Grand Prix where he badly broke his right leg. Yamaha’s brand-new V4-engined machine has struggled mightily – with three paltry points, Rins is Yamaha’s second-leading rider in the standings – and while factory teammate Quartararo makes his disgust about Yamaha’s lack of progress very obvious, a more muted Rins seems like a rider who has reluctantly accepted the inevitable.
Prospects: With Ogura now set to join Martin in an all-new factory Yamaha line-up for 2027 and little interest elsewhere, landing a full-time race ride in MotoGP looks like a long shot.
The case to stay: The prospect of rekindling what he was before Mugello in 2023.
The case to go: His results since Mugello 2023, a cruel crash with lingering consequences.
JOAN MIR (HONDA, 19TH)
2026: 3 points, best Grand Prix result N/A, best sprint result 7th (Thailand), best qualifying 5th (USA)
MotoGP career: 8th season, 124 races, 1 win, 15 podiums, 0 poles, 1 world championship (2020)
Season so far: Rapid. And reckless. Mir has completed 38 laps in Grands Prix so far in 2026, all but one of them inside the points … and has three points total to his name after failing to finish all three long-form Sunday races. Mir has more DNFs (four, in six starts across sprints and Grands Prix) than anyone, which comes after he failed to finish an eye-watering 19 times from 42 combined starts last year. You can say a lot of things about the 28-year-old – and many do – but you can’t call him slow …
Prospects: The pace is too evident to ignore, and his willingness to push to the limits of his machinery is admirable, if wasteful. Even with Honda expanding to six bikes next year, Mir’s time there looks more likely to end every time what’s left of his crashed bike gets swept into a skip. But with Trackhouse Aprilia needing a rider after Ogura’s surprise switch to Yamaha – and with Davide Brivio, Mir’s team boss at Suzuki when he won the MotoGP title in a weird, covid-curtailed season in 2020, in charge at Trackhouse – the Spaniard should land on his feet.
The case to stay: The speed is still there.
The case to go: The speed is still there, but …
JACK MILLER (YAMAHA, 21ST)
2026: 0 points, best Grand Prix result 16th (USA), best sprint result 14th (USA), best qualifying 18th (Brazil, USA)
MotoGP career: 12th season, 201 races, 4 wins, 23 podiums, 2 poles
Season so far: “We’re just at that standstill point” was Miller’s assessment after his pointless – statistically, if not figuratively – run in 2026 extended to three rounds in Austin, another weekend where Yamaha’s deficit to the rest of the pack was made painfully obvious. Only Vinales – who missed Texas with injury – sits behind Miller in the full-time rider standings, which doesn’t sound promising for the most experienced rider on this list, one who became just the 10th rider ever to get to 200 premier-class starts in round two in Brazil. But there’s more to the 31-year-old being stuck on zero points than meets the eye …
Prospects: Good. Miller’s value to Yamaha is as much – arguably more – about his experience with V4-engined machines at Honda, Ducati and KTM before coming to Yamaha, and he’s been a key player behind the scenes for the Japanese manufacturer, praised by Pramac Yamaha team director Gino Borsoi for his efforts. Yamaha will have two new riders in its factory team next year, and Miller’s teammate Toprak Razgatlioglu has adjusted well after coming across from World Superbikes, but nonetheless is a 29-year-old rookie. Why throw away 12 seasons of experience when the prospects of being even mildly competitive as a brand is still a speck on the horizon?
The case to stay: Continuity with two new riders joining Yamaha, and the benefits of having an Aussie on the grid with the move from Phillip Island to Adelaide for next year’s Australian Grand Prix. And with Quartararo out and Rins likely done, who else is going to test Yamaha’s new 850cc bike for next year?
The case to go: If there’s a compelling case to promote a young up-and-comer like Pramac’s Moto2 rider Izan Guevera to complete a house-clean of Yamaha’s rider stable in the space of 12 months.
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