Following announcements from FIM and EnduroGP, electric motorcycles look set to also be permitted in the Hard Enduro World Championship for the 2026 season.  

If it feels like teh world has turned partially electric to you this week, it does to us too. We haven’t, it’s just the news is coming thick and fast from both the FIM, the world championships and the manufacturers themselves and we figure y’all want to know what’s going on.

Enduro21 dug into the regulations for electric motorcycles, aka “electric powered vehicles” (EPVs), in EnduroGP to understand how the different categories would work in terms of power output. More on that here: Electric Bikes To Race 2026 FIM EnduroGP World Championship

And what would you know but sitting right next to the 2026 FIM regulations for EnduroGP are a set of regs for the Hard Enduro World Championship too.

It won’t come as a surprise to fans of grand master flash himself, Graham Jarvis, whose plan was to race Hard Enduro on his new Jarv-E electric bike and who has now been confirmed as entering the full series.

It isn’t a secret sicne Stark team riders Eddie Karlsson and Toby Martyn have been out training on the hard enduro bikes and Stark Racing Director Sebastien Tortelli hinted as much in an interview with Enduro21: 5 minutes with…Stark Racing Director Sebastien Tortelli Talks SuperEnduro, EnduroGP, Hard Enduro & GNCC

Expect official news

Nothing is confirmed from any manufacturer but in our interview with Tortelli he says “we will be racing four out of five world championships this season”.

The former MXGP champion wasn’t able to spill the beans on the plans for the racing team’s activity in 2026 but we asked if Eddie Karlsson and Toby Martyn would do some Hard Enduro races this year and his reply said all we needed to know: “Yeah, we will announce it as some point soon but these guys are not going to sit around on the bench they're going to be racing until next winter, there's more world championships on the horizon.”

Open class rules in HEWC

A quick scan through the Fim regs reveals the regulations are more open than we see in the EnduroGP, where different racing categories (E1, E2, E3) will mean power output is restricted and set at scrutineering.

In hard enduro the regulations are open and as such there are no weight or power limits imposed on the electric bikes.