McLaren have unveiled their new livery for the 2026 season in a live event broadcast from the Bahrain International Circuit.
The Woking based team headed to the track early to showcase their striking livery, maintaining their papaya colour palette that adorned last season’s championship-winning MCL39.
Their unchanged driver line-up of reigning World Champion Lando Norris and teammate Oscar Piastri spoke alongside Team Principal Andrea Stella and CEO Zak Brown at the launch event, while Chief Marketing Officer Lou McEwen and Chief Designer Rob Marshall showcased the new livery.
McLaren have historically carried over a successful championship-winning livery through to the following campaign and this year is no different after the Teams’ and Drivers’ Championship successes last year.
Alongside the familiar papaya the design continues to have anthracite and small hints of teal.
This design also carries over onto the drivers’ overalls for the season, with Norris and Piastri donning an all-papaya fronted fire suit.
We’re delighted to present our 2026 challenger’s livery from our second home, Bahrain. The iconic papaya continues on the MCL40 as we keep our tradition of carrying championship-winning liveries through to the next season. Racing performance is also at the forefront of design when exploring creative routes, and we’ve balanced creative direction with aero considerations to create this striking 2026 competitor. Thank you to all our committed shareholders and partners, without whom we simply wouldn’t be able to go racing, to our fans for their continued support, and to our team of people who have worked tirelessly to get us to this point in the exciting new era of Formula 1. We’re all excited to see it hit the track.
Zak Brown on the new car.
It’s fantastic to reveal the livery for our 2026 challenger, the MCL40, as we reach an important milestone in our team’s incredible work and dedication before we begin racing this year. 2026 marks a new challenge as we take on a new era of Formula 1 regulations. We also go into the season as an independent challenger facing five top manufacturers who all want to beat us. While we have the benefit of the lessons learned from our success in the past few years, the whole grid is restarting from zero and our past achievements count for nothing. Our objective is to hit the ground running, and we have the best combination of team, driver pairing, collaboration with Mercedes HPP, partners, and fans to be able to do this. We will continue to focus on creating the conditions to succeed as we approach our biggest challenge to date. It should be a fantastic season of racing for the fans, and we’re excited to get going.
Team Principal, Andrea Stella.
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