Three rounds in, and the 2026 MotoGP season has already flipped the script completely. The reigning world champion is 36 points off the lead, has not stood on a GP podium once, and recently summarised his own situation as: “The bike is critical, but so am I.” The championship leader is a rider many casual fans are still Googling. And the manufacturer on top of the standings is Aprilia, a company that spent most of the last decade being politely described as a “works-in-progress.”
If you have not been watching MotoGP yet this season, you have missed a lot. Here is what is going on, why it matters, and why the Spanish GP at Jerez on April 24-26 is the perfect moment to tune in. Here is how to watch MotoGP in 2026 from anywhere.
Aprilia: the manufacturer nobody saw coming
Marco Bezzecchi has won all three grands prix this season. Thailand. Brazil. The United States. Three starts, three wins. His team-mate Jorge Martin sits second in the championship, four points behind, having collected multiple sprint wins and podiums along the way. Aprilia, a manufacturer that was still figuring out how to make a competitive MotoGP bike as recently as four years ago, currently has a stranglehold on the top two championship positions that Ducati would recognise from its own recent highlight reel.
Bezzecchi was one of those riders who spent 2025 quietly posting results and collecting podiums while everyone talked about Marc Marquez. It turns out he was paying attention. The Aprilia RS-GP is the best bike on the grid right now, and Bezzecchi is extracting every last tenth from it with an efficiency that is making the rest of the paddock uncomfortable.
The fun subplot: Aprilia is essentially running a title fight against itself. Martin won the championship in 2024, knows the circuit demands, and is not remotely interested in being a support act for his team-mate. Massimo Rivola, Aprilia’s CEO, has already had to publicly confirm the team will not ask Martin to give up his title fight. The Aprilia garage this year is going to be fascinating to watch.
Bezzecchi leads. Martin is four points behind. Both ride for Aprilia. We are going to watch this get complicated very quickly.
Marc Marquez: “the bike is critical, but so am I”
Marc Marquez won the 2025 MotoGP world championship on a Ducati. He spent most of the off-season recovering from shoulder surgery. He then arrived at the 2026 season opener and has, by his own admission, not been himself.
No GP podium in three rounds. A retirement in Thailand (technical). A crash in the COTA Sprint. Thirty-six points off the championship lead. His own Ducati team has been diplomatically pointed about it, with one senior figure saying publicly: “We cannot wait for Marquez to always solve our problems.” The man himself, in a moment of candour that immediately became a paddock meme, said of his situation: “The bike is critical, but so am I.”
This is the tension at the heart of the 2026 season. Is this a slow start that Marquez will correct as his shoulder heals and his form returns? Or has the sport moved on while he was in the operating theatre? He has done the impossible comeback before – most famously returning from a career-threatening arm injury to win a championship two years later. The betting on “Marquez figures it out eventually” is a historically reasonable position. The counter-argument is that Aprilia right now looks very, very quick.
Marquez at his best is unplayable. The question for 2026 is what “his best” looks like after another surgery and a three-race deficit. The next few rounds will tell us a lot.
Ducati: from domination to “what is happening”
For the last several seasons, the question in MotoGP was not whether Ducati would win, but which of their riders would. They flooded the grid with their bikes, signed the best riders, and won consistently. In 2026, they are yet to stand on a GP podium. After three rounds.
Francesco Bagnaia, two-time world champion, sits ninth in the standings with 25 points and has openly admitted he cannot explain why he is slow. His relationship with the front tyre is broken in a way neither he nor the team fully understands yet. Alex Marquez – Marc’s younger brother, who also rides a Ducati satellite bike – recently described his own 2026 experience as: “I am just trying to survive.” Not exactly the confidence-inspiring team debrief quote you want going into round four.
To be clear, Ducati still have the resources, the engineers, and the institutional knowledge to fix this. But watching the most dominant manufacturer of the last three years scramble for answers while Aprilia rides off into the distance is genuinely one of the most entertaining things happening in motorsport right now.
Pedro Acosta: the best seat in the house, for now
Pedro Acosta is third in the championship with 60 points, and he is doing it on a KTM RC16 that is, by most analyses, the third-best bike on the grid at best. The 21-year-old Spaniard is extracting results through sheer aggression and intelligence, as he has done at every level of his career since arriving in the world championship and immediately making everyone else look like they were riding in slow motion.
The interesting wrinkle: this is almost certainly Acosta’s last season at KTM. Reports of a Ducati switch for 2027 have been circling since last year, with paddock watchers noting that a Suppo quote suggesting “Acosta at Ducati could extend Marc Marquez’s career” was perhaps the most diplomatically loaded sentence of the season so far.
Acosta has not won a premier-class grand prix yet. He wants one badly. He has 19 rounds left to do it on a KTM, after which he is almost certainly moving to the best bike on the grid. Watch him in the meantime: he is box-office every single lap he is on track.
Honda and Yamaha: a point! An actual point!
The story of Honda and Yamaha in recent MotoGP seasons has been one of gradual, grinding, occasionally painful recovery. Both manufacturers dominated the sport for decades, and both found the jump to the current generation of MotoGP machinery deeply humbling.
In 2026, there are green shoots. At COTA, Toprak Razgatlioglu – who joined Yamaha with the brief of dragging them back to the front – scored a point. Fifteenth place. One point. The Yamaha garage celebrated in a way that perhaps suggested some perspective had been gained about what constitutes a good result.
Honda are in a similar position. A proud manufacturer, a heritage-heavy programme, and a grid position that is currently some distance from what their history would suggest they deserve. The rebuilds take time. Whether that time is measured in months or years is the question the next few rounds will start to answer.
In the meantime, watching Toprak Razgatlioglu – genuinely one of the most spectacular riders on two wheels anywhere in the world – try to nurse a Yamaha into the points is worth the price of admission on its own.
What to watch for: Jerez, April 24-26
Unlike Formula 1, MotoGP is not sitting through a five-week break right now. The Spanish Grand Prix at Jerez is just around the corner, and it is one of the best rounds on the calendar. The circuit is fast, technical, and brutally revealing of any weaknesses in either the bike or the rider. Marc Marquez loves Jerez. Bezzecchi has been untouchable so far. Acosta is desperate for his first win and is racing in his home country.
If Ducati has found any fixes during the gap between Texas and Spain, Jerez is where they will show up. If Aprilia is as good there as they have been everywhere else, the championship picture will start to look very familiar by Sunday evening.
Either way, it is going to be worth watching. Get yourself set up before the weekend.
How to watch MotoGP live in 2026, from anywhere
All championship standings correct as of the United States Grand Prix at COTA (April 2026). Next race: Spanish Grand Prix, Jerez, April 24-26 2026.