The key venues of 2018 FIM World Motocross Championship provisional calendar

The 2018 FIM World Motocross Championship provisional calendar has been revealed by Youthstream with fan and rider favourite, Argentina, getting the honour of the opening round for the 2018 MXGP schedule.

Along with the 2018 dates and venues for MXGP and MX2, the FIM Women’s Motocross World Championship races, the Veterans’ World Cup and the European Championships rounds are also revealed.

The MXGP season gets underway about one week later than in recent years and this time at the stunning Neuquen circuit in Argentina as Qatar gets binned. Both from a rider and fans point of view, Patagonia is a much better way to start the world championship and we’re already looking forward to this one.

From there the series will head to the new venue of Redsand in Spain.

The increasingly popular venue in Spain was due to hold a pre-season international event in January but was unlucky enough to be hit by unseasonably heavy rain, which led to the cancellation of all racing.

We’re stoked for this one and is a big coup for the Spanish venue.

MXGP will get another taste of Russia and Indonesia in 2018 but with different dates. A new venue of Palembang will host the GP in Indonesia and will move from early in the calendar to mid-series. Will this avoid the mud bath of 2017, our editor will hope not – he loved it.

Matterley Basin is back on the MXP calendar for early June after taking a year off to host the 2017 edition of the Motocross of Nations on October 1.

As announced this weekend, the famous Imola will play host to the final round of 2018’s World Motocross Championship and it’s one we can’t wait for. Youthstream is bigging this one up, and to be honest, we can’t blame them. This round sounds like a big deal and we can’t wait to see what goes down at this new-to-modern-motocross venue.

There are four flyaways on the 19 round series including the Monster Energy MXGP of USA at Gatorback Park. World Motocross comes to the USA again a month later with a yet to be named circuit hosting the 2018 Monster Energy FIM Motocross of Nations on October 7.

EMX300 will run again with Redsands hosting the first of five rounds for 2018. Interestingly, the Euro fighters will need to head to Russia once again, despite this year’s controversy but they also get a visit to England as Matterley Basin hosts round four. WMX and EMX250 also run at the Hampshire circuit – these Euro classes should be packed. The EMX300 series concludes in Italy at a to be announced venue on June 24.

What do you think of the venues? Has Youthstream overlooked your favourite? Are you happy with the opener in Argentina? Are you as stoked for the EMX300 two-strokes at Matterley Basin as we are? And which round are looking forward to the most – us, it’s Matterley. But outside of that, we could pick two or three we’re really pumped for.