Four weeks after hosting the finals of the Miami Open Tennis Tournament and seven weeks before the first of seven World Cup matches, Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium will this week host the first race of the restart of the 2026 season at the heart of the Formula 1 world.
Miami’s preparations for hosting its own fifth grand prix, one of F1’s most high-profile events since it joined the calendar four years ago, may have been unaffected by the cancellation of April’s Bahrain and Saudi Arabian GPs, but organizers are well aware that outside attention will inevitably be focused on this weekend’s return to racing.
“We started planning for 2026 in the summer of 2025, so we have no intention of changing our plans at all. So we are where we need to be, but I think the expectations for the race are definitely rising,” Miami Grand Prix president Katarina Nowak said in an interview with Sky Sports.
“And the energy and excitement of the Miami Grand Prix, I don’t think anyone saw news like that coming this season, given the fact that there were no races for four weeks. We obviously respect the decision because safety is the most important thing.”
“But we’ve gotten a lot of clues and hints from people in the industry that there’s a lot of excitement around Miami. Of course, we’re embracing that and we’re excited to continue to bring hopefully great events.”
Multipurpose Hard Rock Stadium and its surrounding Miami International Autodrome (Carlos Goldman/F1 Miami GP image)
The Sunshine State of Florida is now firmly established as the first of three venues for the US F1 season after Miami joined the calendar in 2022.
Hard Rock Stadium is the permanent home of the NFL’s Miami Dolphins and is located in Miami Gardens, about 25 miles north of the city’s vibrant downtown.
In Nowak’s words, the race management team “tries the impossible” of converting the 265-acre grounds into a Grand Prix venue each year, especially since the race comes just one month after the conclusion of the Miami Open, which hosts both ATP and WTA events.
This is what the Miami Open venue looks like from above
Around 250 structures have been installed in preparation for the F1 weekend, with the 3.36-mile-long, 19-corner temporary track itself running outside the stadium.
The 65,000-seater stadium on the pitch is unique in that it houses the F1 team’s hospitality unit inside, press conferences are held in the stadium’s changing rooms, and there is a permanent paddock building outside the stadium. It was a process of transitioning from one sporting event to another, which is now well established and has established itself prominently in the city of Miami’s diverse sporting calendar.
“Remember when the Miami Grand Prix started and the perfect storm of drive to survive really started due to the coronavirus,” Nowak said.
“Since then, the city has changed a lot and we continue to lean more and more into Miami every year. So we really feel that not only have we established ourselves within the F1 industry, but the city of Miami has also really continued to lean into what we’re doing.”
For 2026, that continues through the creation of a five-day free fan festival in Miami Beach, with various fan zones around the venue being redesigned to reflect the culture, food and entertainment of the city’s different neighborhoods.
And after their “fake” marina caused controversy in Miami’s first year, organizers are even bolder for 2026, creating a lifelike 50-foot-tall, 264-foot-long superyacht structure inside Turns Five-Nine as their new centerpiece hospitality experience.
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But ambitions for the event, which has attracted an event-record 275,000 participants in each of the past two years, do not stop there, given that F1 struck a huge deal last year to keep the race on the calendar until at least 2041. Nowak said the commitment allows him to “think big and think about where we want this to go.”
“A lot of what we’ve been talking about over the last few months has been how do we turn this into the next Super Bowl in the United States,” Nowak said.
“The Miami Grand Prix is already a world-class, global event, and turning it into another Super Bowl in the United States and going global is what we’re chasing now.
“And I think every year we continue to work on incorporating more programs into the weekend, so it’s something you can actually fly in on the Sunday or Monday of the week before because you have to come see the different events that are held Tuesday through Sunday.”
Miami Grand Prix Chairman Katarina Nowak has been involved in organizing the event since it was first held in 2022.
For Nowak, who was born in Austria and grew up in Miami, the 2026 race has special personal meaning as it is her first year in charge of an event she has been involved with since its inception.
Nowak was named as the successor to Tyler Epp, who joined the new US-owned Cadillac team last September, making her the youngest president of an F1 race at 28 years old, and the second woman to currently hold such a position, after Las Vegas Grand Prix chief Emily Prather.
“I have to say it’s been an interesting eight months,” said Nowak, who first joined the Miami Dolphins in 2019.
“It felt like a very natural fit because I was in the role of vice president of business operations, essentially second-in-command to the previous president. And Tyler remains a key mentor to me, showing me the ropes and making my transition very smooth because I got to see behind the scenes everything he had been working on for the past two years.”
“And I’m really grateful to (managing partner) Tom Garfinkel and (Miami Dolphins owner) Stephen Ross for making the decision to bring a 28-year-old young woman into motorsports and putting her in that role. I think there are a lot of people who probably would have made a different decision, so I couldn’t be more grateful and humbled by their decision.”
Nowak hasn’t yet given himself a chance to celebrate the prestigious position.
“It’s a little crazy to think about how much has happened in the last eight months, but I’ve been getting a lot of questions about whether we celebrated and how historic this is. I keep telling everyone, if we win the race, we’re going to celebrate on May 4th!”
Formula 1 resumes on Friday with the Miami Grand Prix, the second sprint weekend of the season, being broadcast live on Sky Sports F1. Stream Sky Sports now – cancel anytime with no contract
