WRC Promoter has announced the rights to make the official World Rally Championship video game has gone back to Nacon.
The license begins with “an-all new WRC journey coming 2027” and lasts until 2032.
Nacon and developer KT Racing have released the official WRC games every year since WRC 5 in 2015 up to 2022, when the licensing deal ended. Codemasters, pre-EA acquisition, picked up the WRC license for a 5-year deal until 2027 which resulted in the release of EA Sports WRC.
However, EA announced it has ended development of EA Sports WRC after one game and a few DLCs covering the 2023 and 2024 WRC seasons, not long before a big round of layoffs which affected various studios including Codemasters‘ Southam office, the home base that made the famous Colin McRae Rally series, later known as the Dirt series.
It’s unclear yet which developer is attached to make Nacon’s new WRC game. KT Racing has been busy with reviving the Test Drive Unlimited series with Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown (with mixed results) and is taking a jab in creating a track-based motorsport game with the Endurance Motorsport Series.
2027 is still far off, so Nacon and whatever team assigned to work on the next rally game with the official WRC license has enough runway to get it done.