Image: Octopi Media.

Monster Energy SMX World Championship organizers have revealed that free practice sessions will be removed from the 2026 Supercross schedule, with that time instead dedicated to track maintenance and rebuilding.

Two 12-minute qualifying sessions per class will remain, while the track team focuses on preserving the integrity of rhythm lanes and whoop sections for the night shows.

Reduced traffic through these sections is expected to limit breakdown and improve consistency, according to Mike Muye, director of operations at SMX, at today’s official series media sessions in Anaheim.

“We made the decision to remove free practices [for 2026],” explained Muye. “We’ll be running two qualifying sessions at 12 minutes each, and then use the majority of that extra time for track maintenance and rebuilding portions of the rhythm lanes and those types of things.

“Whoops are always challenging just because of the time that it takes to build them, but hopefully with the reduced amount of traffic over the whoops, they won’t break down as much.”

The move is part of a broader strategy to develop safe, raceable tracks that test the skillsets of the riders. Muye said that variations in whoop and dragonback sections will continue to be trialled, with circuits featuring nine to eleven whoops being monitored and adjusted based on rider feedback.

“Nine whoops is… I think I sat here last year kind of explaining that we really wanted to see what it looked like when we run with nine, and then develop some data points,” he continued. “I think last year we introduced two or three tracks where we had 10 whoops, and this year we’ll introduce similar with 10 and 11 and see where we’re at from there.

“I don’t think that there are any parameters that we’re trying to stay in at this point. Really, we’re trying to develop raceable tracks, safe tracks, and get the feedback from the riders and continuously grow from there.”