2026 World Ducati Week set every attendance record the event has ever produced. The Centenary edition at Misano drew 118,036 attendees over three days from 94 countries across all five continents — the biggest and most international World Ducati Week 2026 has ever run, marking 100 years since the Borgo Panigale manufacturer’s founding.
The Lenovo Race of Champions and a Night of Ducati Legends
The fourth edition of the Lenovo Race of Champions put 16 riders from Ducati MotoGP, WorldSBK, WorldSSP, and national championships on the same grid, each aboard an identical, custom-liveried Panigale V4 Tricolore. Nicolò Bulega converted Saturday’s pole into a clean win, ahead of Alberto Surra and Lorenzo Baldassarri. The race landed in the same year Ducati marked its 100th MotoGP victory — a milestone stacked on a milestone.
Saturday evening produced the rarest gathering in the event’s history: Casey Stoner, Troy Bayliss, Carl Fogarty, and Loris Capirossi — four of Ducati racing’s most significant names — took the stage alongside the riders currently writing the brand’s history, including Francesco Bagnaia, Marc Márquez, Álex Márquez, Fabio Di Giannantonio, and Bulega. In total, 36 riders lined up with their motorcycles on the circuit for the ceremony, hosted by Italian presenter Francesco Pannofino, before a drone and fireworks show closed the night with a choreography built around the brand’s full century.
Friday’s parade, led by Ducati CEO Claudio Domenicali and Misano Mayor Fabrizio Piccioni, stretched 18 kilometers along the Romagna Riviera from the Misano World Circuit to Samsara Beach in Riccione. Domenicali described the scene himself: by the time the front of the parade reached Riccione, the last motorcycles were still pulling out of the circuit — an unbroken red line of Ducatis the length of a small city.
New Records, New Machines: The Desmo450 SM and 2026 World Ducati Week by the Numbers
Amid the 2026 World Ducati Week celebration, Ducati used World Ducati Week 2026 to introduce genuinely new hardware. The Desmo450 SM had its world première — Ducati’s first-ever Supermotard, a new category entry for the brand. The Superleggera V4 Centenario and the 100 Collection, both built specifically around the anniversary, drew heavy crowds in the Ducati World area, while the Desmo450 MX starred in freestyle motocross performances from Massimo Bianconcini, Corey Creed, and Diego Manenti.
The digital numbers matched the scale on the ground: 2 million page views, more than 20 million social media impressions, 220,000 FantaWDW sessions, and 700,000-plus viewers for the Lenovo Race of Champions livestream. On the historical side, the Heritage Village’s “100 Years, 100 Stories, One Legend” exhibition and Heritage Contest honored the past directly — Piero Guerrini took first place with his 1999 Ducati 996 SPS Factory Replica. A total of 275 Ducati Official Clubs attended from across the globe, and 240 children took part in Ducati First Experience riding sessions, their first contact with two wheels.
2026 World Ducati Week closed having done what a Centenary event needs to do: honor everything that came before while putting genuinely new machinery — the Desmo450 SM chief among it — in front of the people who’ll define the next hundred years. A hundred years in, Ducati just posted its biggest number yet. What it does with the next hundred starts now.
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