Dodge is coming back to NASCAR. After 14 years away from the sport’s top level, the manufacturer will return to the NASCAR Cup Series in 2027, joining forces with Kaulig Racing in a two-car effort that will put a fourth manufacturer on the grid alongside Chevrolet, Ford and Toyota.
The announcement came Monday at the 2026 Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) Show in Las Vegas, ending months of speculation and delivering something NASCAR executives have wanted for years: another manufacturer competing for attention, sponsorship dollars and, presumably, trophies.
Though the latter will be a tall order.
Dodge will make its return with the Daytona 500 on February 21, 2027, marking its first Cup Series appearance since the 2012 season. That year ended rather nicely for the manufacturer, with Brad Keselowski winning the championship behind the wheel of the No. 2 Penske Dodge Charger. Keselowski also delivered Dodge its most recent Cup Series victory, winning at Dover Motor Speedway that fall.
Now, 14 years later, Dodge is back. And apparently, it doesn’t intend to spend much time easing into things.
“Everyone said it was impossible to get back in one year. We said, ‘watch this,'” said Tim Kuniskis, head of Stellantis North America’s American Brands, SRT Performance and Direct Connection division. “Sure, we could spend three years planning, testing and perfecting … or we could do all three in real time, on the track. It’s going to be exponentially harder this way. But slow has never been part of Dodge DNA. LFG.”
That last part is certainly on brand. Dodge has never been particularly interested in doing things quietly.
The manufacturer originally planned to return to the Cup Series in 2028, but accelerated those plans by a year. A partnership with Earnhardt Childress Racing will help make that possible, with the company building Dodge-spec engines alongside its existing Chevrolet engine program.
Chevrolet, Ford and Toyota supported the arrangement, recognizing the value of having another manufacturer competing in NASCAR’s top division.
For NASCAR, the return is a significant achievement. The series has operated with three manufacturers since Dodge departed following the 2012 season. Toyota was the last new manufacturer to enter Cup competition, making its debut in 2007.
Adding another manufacturer to race with Ford, Chevrolet and Toyota has long been a priority for NASCAR executives.
NASCAR CEO Steve O’Donnell welcomed the announcement, calling Dodge’s return a significant milestone for the sport.
“This commitment speaks to Dodge’s belief in our sport and gives fans another reason to be excited about what’s ahead,” O’Donnell said. “The partnership between NASCAR, Tim Kuniskis and the entire team at Stellantis has been nothing short of phenomenal.”
John Probst, NASCAR’s president of event management, also acknowledged that getting Dodge back into the fold was something the sanctioning body had pursued for years.
“It’s something that we’ve talked about for a long time, and sometimes we talk about it so much and it didn’t happen that you almost feel like you lose credibility at some point,” Probst told NASCAR.com. “But it’s certainly a proud moment for us, for our industry to welcome Dodge back.”
There is plenty of history behind that welcome. Dodge’s latest Cup Series tenure ran from 2001 through 2012, producing 57 victories. Its overall history in the sport stretches back to 1953, when it scored its first NASCAR Cup Series win.
But while the announcement is undoubtedly good news for NASCAR, Dodge faces a rather substantial challenge once the engines fire in February. Getting a manufacturer back into the sport is one thing. Getting it competitive against organizations that have spent the past 14 years developing cars, engines and relationships is another.
And there is already a little evidence of just how difficult that might be.
Stellantis returned to NASCAR competition in 2026 through its Ram brand, partnering with Kaulig Racing in the Craftsman Truck Series. The organization fielded five full-time trucks, bringing in a collection of familiar names that included three-time Cup Series champion Tony Stewart, Jamie McMurray and Ryan Newman.
The return generated plenty of attention, but the results have been considerably less spectacular.
Through the first 24 races of the 2026 season, Kaulig Racing’s Ram program has yet to win. Justin Haley delivered its best finish, a fourth-place run at Bristol Motor Speedway, and has recorded six top-10 finishes. The team has shown flashes of potential, including Haley leading 20 laps in the season opener at Daytona before running out of fuel on the final restart. But flashes of potential and trips to Victory Lane are two very different things.
That’s not necessarily a reason to panic. A new manufacturer program requires time, development and a considerable amount of trial and error. Still, the Truck Series experience offers a reminder that simply putting a familiar badge on the hood doesn’t automatically make a team competitive. Ford, Chevrolet and Toyota aren’t exactly sitting around waiting for Dodge to catch up.
And the Cup Series is an altogether different animal.
Kaulig Racing will serve as the anchor organization for both Dodge and Ram, establishing what Stellantis describes as a factory-backed presence at the track. Dodge SRT Racing will oversee the manufacturer’s North American motorsports efforts, including NASCAR and NHRA competition.
The process of approving Dodge’s new Cup Series body has already progressed through the wind tunnel testing phase. Probst said the next step involves examining actual production panels, which are expected to arrive in mid-November.
Probst explained that Dodge went through the same approval process as an existing manufacturer introducing a new model. The difference was that NASCAR had no previous Dodge template to work from.
The process generally involves approximately 18 months of computational fluid dynamics and wind tunnel testing before the production panels are evaluated to ensure they remain within NASCAR’s performance parameters.
In other words, there is considerably more to this than simply putting a Charger badge on a Next Gen car and calling it a day.
Kaulig Racing will announce its 2027 driver lineup during NASCAR Championship Weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway. The manufacturer will reveal its new Cup Series race car December 4 at the 2026 Snowball Derby at Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola, Florida. That reveal will be streamed live on FloRacing and the NASCAR Channel.
Dodge also plans to stage an event called The Dodge Sno-Brawl, featuring celebrity drivers competing head-to-head in equally prepared Dodge Charger late-model stock cars. Additional details will be announced later.
For NASCAR, having Dodge back is a victory before the first green flag even waves. More manufacturers mean more competition for fans, more marketing opportunities and another major American automotive brand with a reason to invest in the sport.
For Dodge, however, the real work is just beginning.
The last time the manufacturer left NASCAR, it did so with a championship trophy and a victory at Dover. That’s a pretty good way to exit a party. Returning 14 years later means walking back into a room where everyone else has continued the conversation, developed new relationships and learned a few new tricks.
Dodge has the history, the name recognition and apparently enough confidence to compress a three-year development plan into one.
Now it needs the speed.
Because the other three manufacturers aren’t going to make room simply because Dodge has decided to come home.
Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, and a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.
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