The 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season opened up with four consecutive races shown live on Fox, rather than Fox Sports 1 (FS1).
Those races included the preseason Cook Out Clash exhibition race at Bowman Gray Stadium and the regular season's first three points races, including the Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway and the races at EchoPark Speedway (Atlanta Motor Speedway) and Circuit of the Americas (COTA).
But all five races contested since then, from the early March race at Phoenix Raceway to this past weekend's race at Bristol Motor Speedway, have been shown live on FS1.
NASCAR Cup race at Kansas not being shown on FS1
This weekend, however, Fox is set to return to the Cup Series schedule for the first time in 49 days. Sunday's AdventHealth 400 is set to be shown live on Fox from Kansas Speedway, and it is the first of two races set to be shown live on main Fox instead of FS1. Next weekend's Jack Link's 500 at Talladega Superspeedway is also set to be shown on Fox.
However, beyond the Talladega race, there will be no more Cup Series races on Fox in 2026, although Fox's portion of the broadcast schedule is still set to feature three additional races.
Those races include the points races at Texas Motor Speedway at Watkins Glen International, as well as the exhibition All-Star Race at Dover Motor Speedway. They are set to be shown live on FS1.
All things considered, Fox is responsible for 14 of 38 total races under the current media rights agreement, which went into effect ahead of the 2025 season. That number is down from 18 under the previous agreement, and unlike under the previous deal, the majority of those 14 races, eight to be exact, are on FS1.
A similar shift occurred at NBC. NBC's season-ending portion of the calendar dropped from 20 races to 14, and instead of the races continuing to be split up evenly between NBC and USA Network, NBC simply lost six races; USA Network remained responsible for 10.
Notably, Fox's races feature the same individuals in the broadcast booth, whether they're shown live on Fox or FS1. The same can be said for NBC's races, whether they're shown live on NBC or USA Network.
Amazon Prime Video and TNT Sports, the two partners that were added as a result of the seven-year, $7.7 billion agreement, are each responsible for five races in between Fox's and NBC's portions of the broadcast calendar. The same individuals were in the broadcast booth for all 10 races in 2025, and that is set to be the case again in 2026.
Full booth information for all of NASCAR's broadcast partners can be found here.
Fox's live coverage of Sunday's AdventHealth 400 is set to begin at 2:00 p.m. ET. Start a free trial of FuboTV and catch all of the action from Kansas Speedway!
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