Kyle Larson will be the cover driver of the upcoming video game NASCAR 26. NASCAR announced the news on Thursday night and shared that the game will be released in September.
It’s fitting that Larson will be on the cover of the upcoming video game since he’s the reigning NASCAR Cup Series champion. In 418 Cup Series races, Larson has earned 32 victories and 213 top-10 finishes. Along with winning the Cup Series title last year, Larson won the Cup Series Regular Season and Cup Series championships in 2021.
The news of Larson being on the cover of NASCAR 26 comes after NASCAR 25 was released last October. iRacing Studios developed both games, and the 2025 version was the first NASCAR-licensed video game for consoles (such as PlayStation 5 and Xbox X/S) in four years.
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“It’s this crazy, full-circle deal,” iRacing’s director of production Matt Lewis said at the time of NASCAR 25’s release, per NASCAR.com. “And the cool part for me is I remember playing ‘NASCAR 2003,’ and we’re like, ‘Man if we could ever take like the multiplayer and the physics and the authenticity of what Papyrus did and combine it with what EA Sports was doing in career mode and then combine that with the dynamic of ‘Dirt to Daytona’ and progressing through racing series to become a champion … that would be the best game on earth. Fast forward 20 years, and here we are. We are finally doing it.”
“It really is a dream team,” Nick Rend, vice president for Interactive and Emerging Platforms at NASCAR, said. “iRacing has taken the foundation of their legendary sim and paired it with console veterans who know how to design careers, progression loops, user experiences and live-service systems. This is a group of people who know both the sport and the genre.”
More details about NASCAR 26 will be released soon. When the game debuts in September, Larson will likely be competing in the NASCAR Cup Series Chase for the championship. Currently, Larson is sixth in the standings and 210 points behind the leader, Tyler Reddick. .
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