iRacing’s Season 3 2026 launched June 9 and is already four weeks old. On June 30, iRacing eSports Competition Manager Travis Sollenberger opened an official forum thread and asked members to submit their track preferences for Season 4. The submission window has closed, but the process itself is worth understanding. iRacing builds its season schedule with genuine community input every quarter. iRacers who know how to participate have a direct line to the people making the calendar.
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➡️ iRacing Season 3 2026 Full Release Notes
🏁 iRacing Seasons and Builds
iRacing divides the year into four seasons, each running approximately 12 weeks. Each quarterly build brings new cars, tracks, and features. These updates deploy in the first or second week of March, June, September, and December. Season 4 typically lands early in September. Based on recent years, September 8 or 9, 2026 is the most likely window for this year’s Season 4 launch. That means Sollenberger’s June 30 thread opened about ten weeks before the build, which is the standard planning lead time.
How the iRacing Season Schedule Gets Built
Road and IMSA series schedules involve direct community input that oval and dirt series don’t receive in quite the same way. Each quarter, Sollenberger posts a thread on the official iRacing Forums. He asks members to submit their track preferences for the upcoming season. For IMSA Sports Car Series road submissions, Sollenberger provides an Excel template. This lets iRacers propose complete 12-week schedules rather than individual track requests. Those structured submissions give the scheduling team something more actionable than a raw list of favorites.
Sollenberger has a broader role than schedule building alone. Beyond the schedule thread, he runs Race Control for many of iRacing’s World Championship Series and partnership events. He also builds the Time Attacks each season. The community-facing schedule thread is one visible piece of a larger quarterly coordination effort that touches multiple departments. The road series input process is the most transparent part of how the staff makes those decisions. It gives iRacers the most direct line to the people finalizing next season’s lineup.
Submissions go directly to Sollenberger’s email by the posted deadline. The Season 4 thread generated substantial community activity within days of posting. What happens to those submissions afterward is an internal process. Still, community input genuinely influences which tracks appear on the final calendar each quarter.
What Actually Shapes the Final Schedule
Community input is one signal among several, not a direct mandate. The scheduling team weighs preferences against a range of practical constraints that aren’t always visible from the outside. License agreements determine which tracks can appear in which series at all. Real-world race calendars influence the timing of certain venues. Series rules restrict how tracks can be used, particularly in IMSA events where circuit homologation and category rules apply.
Track variety is also a deliberate editorial consideration. A well-constructed iRacing season schedule avoids clustering similar circuits back-to-back. It distributes high-speed, technical, and mixed-character tracks across the 12-week run. Street circuits, purpose-built facilities, and historic venues all need representation in the right proportions. iRacing also typically avoids placing a track in the same slot it occupied the previous season. That gives the rotation a fresh feel even when familiar tracks return. Consequently, the aggregate of hundreds of community submissions shapes what goes on the table. Many individual requests don’t survive the final cut, but the collective signal matters.
Tracks that appear frequently in submissions across multiple seasons tend to work their way into rotations eventually. Tracks that disappear from the calendar for several seasons sometimes return because sustained community interest builds a case for them. The feedback loop isn’t immediate, but it’s real and cumulative.
When Season 4 2026 Launches
Based on iRacing’s consistent quarterly build schedule, Season 4 2026 will deploy in the first or second week of September. The pattern has been reliable: September 9, 2025; September 4, 2024; September 6, 2023; September 7, 2022. Although exact dates shift slightly year to year, the target window stays consistent. A September 8 or 9, 2026 launch aligns with where the historical pattern points.
The Season 4 build brings updated series schedules alongside new cars, tracks, and sim features. Before the build deploys, Week 13 runs as a transitional period between seasons. During Week 13, tracks rotate daily rather than weekly, and most series run without affecting iRating or Safety Rating. Some iRacers use it to explore incoming content before the official season races begin. Others wait for the full schedule to drop and plan from there.
Since Season 3 launched June 9, the announcement window for Season 4 content opens sometime in August. iRacing typically releases new cars and tracks first, with series schedules following as part of the full build notes. iRacers who want early visibility into next season’s calendar should follow the official iRacing Forums. iRacing’s social channels also carry build announcements in the weeks before the September date.
How to Have a Say in Future Season Schedules
The submission window for Season 4 2026 has closed. However, the broader feedback loop at iRacing doesn’t stop between seasons. The official iRacing Forums are the primary channel for series-specific schedule feedback. The road racing sections see regular staff engagement. iRacers who want to influence future calendars get more traction from specific, reasoned track requests than broad wishlist threads. The scheduling team finds structured submissions far more actionable.
Each season’s community thread repeats the same process. The Season 4 submissions will feed into Season 1 2027 planning as well. Additionally, patterns that show up consistently across multiple submission cycles carry more weight than one-off requests. If a track belongs on the calendar, making that case in the appropriate forum section each quarter is the most direct path to getting it there.
Season 3 still has about eight weeks to run. The current season’s track rotation is locked. Season 4 is already taking shape based on the input collected at the end of June. Whether your preferred circuits make the cut or not, that’s how iRacing decides its season schedule every quarter.
