Australian Open: January 12th - February 1st
While the 2026 season will already be a few weeks old come the start of the Australian Open, the first Grand Slam of the year truly feels like the official beginning of the new tennis campaign.
And what a tournament it is going to be, setting up the rest of the year in superb fashion with so many tantalising storylines.
Carlos Alcaraz and Iga Swiatek are both a title away in Melbourne from completing the career Grand Slam. Should the former manage to get his hands on the crown, he would become the youngest man to achieve this feat in the Open Era.
Will Jannik Sinner be able to stop him, though? The Italian is the two-time defending champion at the Australian Open, and has already forged an all-time great rivalry with the Spaniard. The duo dominated tennis in 2025, splitting the four majors between each other.
With Sinner a French Open victory away from completing the Grand Slam himself, he will want to prevent Alcaraz from doing it in Australia, so he can achieve it first.
The duo faced off six times last season, with Alcaraz winning four times to Sinner’s two victories. Who can make an early statement?
Meanwhile, Madison Keys will be defending her title after she won her maiden Grand Slam here last year. Will Aryna Sabalenka reclaim her throne after the two-time champion lost in the final to the American last year, or can Elena Rybakina or Amanda Anisimova - who ended 2025 in great form - get their hands on the trophy?
It is going to be a fantastic fortnight of action in Melbourne, and hopefully, it will be a sign of things to come for a superb 2026!
Tolga Akdeniz
Winter Olympics: February 6th - 22nd
After two Winter Olympics in Asia, the IOC’s second biggest event heads back to Europe, where Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo will host the 2026 Winter Olympics and Paralympics from February 6th.
It may not have the same lustre as its summer sister, but the Winter Olympics always throw up stories for the ages, propelling athletes into the world’s public consciousness.
All eyes will be on Mikaela Shiffrin - the skier with the most World Cup wins in history - as she goes for a fourth successive Games with a medal. In the sometimes unpredictable world of downhill racing, she has been consistently superb and will head to Cortina as a favourite for more silverware.
New to the Winter Olympics programme is ski mountaineering - or skimo - a combination of uphill hiking and downhill racing, which will provide some intrigue, but it will be the traditional sports like ice hockey, bobsleigh and snowboarding that will capture the imagination for two weeks of fun in the snow and on the ice.
Whether this is your rare foray into winter sports, or if you are a seasoned campaigner, the variety on show will give everyone some great entertainment.
Josh Donaldson
Super Bowl LX: February 8th
The Super Bowl is always one of the standout events on the sporting calendar. However, the 2026 edition has extra intrigue and excitement attached to it because of the nature of how the NFL is unfolding this season. What that leaves is a void, but one that no team has taken with any real conviction so far.
The Denver Broncos, Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots have the best records, and all three franchises possess dangerous offences.
It might have taken a while for Denver Broncos quarterback Bo Nix to click with his offence, but in a recent victory against the Green Bay Packers, Nix shone and produced one of the performances of the season.
All the talk will be focused on the big names like the Los Angeles Rams, Patriots and Eagles, but the Broncos might just sneak up on everyone by making a shock Super Bowl.
Talking of surprises, don’t rule out the Chicago Bears either. Ben Johnson’s side have made a habit out of winning from the jaws of defeat, and their young quarterback, Caleb Williams, is really starting to live up to his nickname as the ‘iceman’.
Whoever makes it to the showpiece event in February, it promises to be a box-office finale to this unpredictably thrilling season.
Harry Dunnett
World Baseball Classic: March 5th - 17th
One of the best times in baseball is returning. Yet, it felt like just yesterday we saw Japan’s Shohei Ohtani strike out USA’s Mike Trout to win the championship in one of the greatest, bone-chilling moments in the sport’s history.
Now, Team USA will be looking to take revenge on a Japanese team looking to reclaim their WBC throne. Recently, both Cy Young Award winners, Paul Skenes of the Pittsburgh Pirates and Tarik Skubal of the Detroit Tigers, announced that they will be on Team USA this time around - proving that the Americans are going to be an absolute force to be reckoned with.
Since the World Baseball Classic began in 2006, Japan has won three of the five WBC Championships (2006, 2009, 2023), with the Dominican Republic, another juggernaut, winning the one in 2013 and the USA in 2017.
Team Japan will be spearheaded by the reigning back-to-back National League MVP in Ohtani, alongside 2025 World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who put on one of the greatest pitching displays in Major League Baseball Postseason history.
Could we see a rematch of the 2023 World Baseball Classic? Or will we see someone play spoiler? It’s gearing up to be one of the most anticipated WBC to date.
Eric Himmelheber
New era of Formula 1 - March 8th
There are always changes between Formula 1 seasons, but sometimes those changes are so big that they mark the start of a brand new era in the sport, and that's the case for 2026.
Long-awaited new regulations will be introduced that will completely change every part of the cars, from the power units to the chassis. In an effort to improve wheel-to-wheel racing, the vehicles will be smaller and lighter, while DRS won't be present for the first time since 2011, with it being replaced by Overtake Mode, which will give drivers extra electrical power when they're within a second of the car in front.
The new season will also mark the arrival of three of the biggest car brands in the world, with Audi taking over Sauber, Ford partnering with Red Bull, and Cadillac entering a brand-new team, giving us the biggest grid in 10 years.
All of this means that there are going to be some big shakeups in the pecking order, and it's widely believed that Mercedes will start the season on top thanks to their power unit. As a result, we'll have two drivers fighting for the title for the first time ever in the form of George Russell and Kimi Antonelli.
Also boasting Mercedes engines, the McLaren duo of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri are sure to be in the mix too, but who else is at the front of the field is anybody's guess - will Red Bull's new partnership with Ford give Max Verstappen a good enough engine? Will Ferrari finally sort itself out? And perhaps most intriguingly of all, will design genius Adrian Newey work his magic again at Aston Martin and give Fernando Alonso one last chance to fight for the title?
If even just one of those scenarios comes to pass, we're set to get the best season in a long time. Roll on March!
Finley Crebolder
FIFA World Cup: June 11th - July 19th
It doesn’t get any bigger than the FIFA World Cup, and guess what? The World Cup has gotten even bigger! Next summer, the world football showpiece event will be staged in North America across the USA, Canada, and Mexico in an expanded 48-team format.
It will be the first World Cup since 2002 to be held in multiple countries, with 16 cities hosting matches from Mexico City in the south to Seattle up north, across to Toronto, and down to Miami in the south. The final will be held in the massive MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, just a stone’s throw from the hulking buildings of the Big Apple.
It’s all very exciting, but not everyone is a fan of the new model, with the expanded tournament meaning that the group stages may be weakened in comparison to the previous 32-team format. Add to that the fact that teams can progress by finishing third in the group, and you have reasons to think the tournament might take a while to really heat up. Being summer, it will be hot in other ways, though!
Having said that, the expansion has allowed for more fringe nations than ever to participate, with Cape Verde, Uzbekistan, Curacao, and Jordan all clinching berths at the finals for the first time. You can’t not love that, and whatever the group stages hold, the four rounds of knockouts before the decider will guarantee quality and plenty of drama.
The favourites will be some of the usual suspects: holders Argentina, Spain, France, England, and Brazil. However, there is a real sense that the big dogs of world football are not as strong as they should be, and the chasing pack of nations could pounce. Watch out for the likes of Morocco, Japan, and the red-hot Norwegians to make a real splash.
And what of the hosts? Well, all three will fancy their chances of progressing out of their groups, and they really ought to. Beyond that, things will get a lot trickier, but raucous home support could propel any of them deep into the tournament.
Love or hate the changes, you can bet when it all kicks off in June, every stadium will be packed, and the whole world will be following with bated breath. You simply will get swept up in it!
Pat Dempsey
Nations Championship: July 4th - November 29th
World Rugby welcomes a brand-new international men’s rugby union tournament in 2026, with the inaugural edition of the Nations Championship set to take place across the summer and autumn Test windows.
The biennial 12-team event will consist of the current Six Nations (France, Ireland, England, Wales, Scotland and Italy) as the northern hemisphere representatives, while the SANZAAR teams (New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Argentina), as well as two invited nations, Fiji and Japan, will compete on behalf of the southern hemisphere.
Divided into a ‘European Conference’ and a ‘SANZAAR and Pacific Conference’, each team will take on the six nations in the opposing conference before the two first-placed nations in each conference are pitted against one another in a grand finale at Twickenham to decide the overall champion.
The new-look tournament has been designed to “drive a deeper meaning and narrative” to international rugby ahead of the 2027 Men’s Rugby World Cup in Australia, with organisers guaranteeing it will generate tens of millions more pounds for the nations taking part.
While it has also attracted its fair share of criticism, the event - which will be held every year not to feature a World Cup or Lions tour - certainly breathes new life into Test rugby, and will be an exciting addition to the 2026 calendar!
Danny Clark