WANGARATTA will play host to thousands of rev-heads in 2026, when the 23rd SSA National Production Sedan Title comes to the Wangaratta City Raceway across ANZAC Day weekend.

The local track won hosting rights for the massive event last week, following submissions from raceways across the country.

The multi-day event, currently set between Thursday, April 23 to Sunday, April 26, 2026, is one of the biggest races on the Speedway Sedans Australia calendar, bringing drivers and their support crews – and fans - from across the country to one track.

Wangaratta City Raceway president Kenneth Mankey said this event would be the biggest one the club had ever seen.

“This thing’s huge, this is a three-to-four-day event, this is the pinnacle of speedway sedan racing,” he said.

“To have this come to Wangaratta, it will fill the town – caravan parks, hotels, all the shops, everything, the town will be booming for that event.

“People come from all over the country, and they all chase that number one to have on their cars, so have ‘Australia 1’ written on their car, that’s what they’re fighting for.

“We’ll fill the joint for sure, I believe there’ll be 5000 spectators there per day over three days, and we’ll have over 100 cars in the pits.

“The families, supporters, sponsors, everyone who follows it all come to that venue.”

Club secretary Felicity Roycroft said if previous events were any indication, the economic impact of the event would be monumental.

“The last title they did, one of our fellow tracks did an economic impact statement, and they said it injected over $4 million into their region,” she said.

“That was in Queensland, Toowoomba, so a lot of people are going to travel from Queensland to Victoria, so we’re going to exceed that, it’s going to be huge for our region.”

The club is taking the opportunity ahead of them and running with it, with plans in place not only to host visitors for the three-day titles, but extend the festivities to a whole week.

While the exact details are yet to be ironed out, Roycroft said the club would love to show visitors the full range of what the region has to offer.

“We want to do a week-long event, we want to keep people down – we want to hold one big event at the end of the next week,” she said.

“Friday, Saturday, Sunday we’ve got one race meeting (with a day in reserve for weather issues), the Australian title, and we want to hold another race meeting in the middle of the week on a Wednesday, then another big race meeting to keep everyone there for the Saturday.

“That week, we’ll take them to wineries, we’ll take them to the Ned Kelly statue, we’ll take them to the gorge – we’ll do experiences and excursions for these people who are coming, show them our region, show them what we can do.”

The club is hard at work planning the SSA National Production Sedan Titles at Wangaratta City Raceway, some 554 days away.