Team budgets will rise to $215 million.

      In 2021, Formula 1 introduced limits on team budgets to level the playing field and move away from the concept that only the wealthiest teams achieve success. In 2025 each team's spending cannot exceed $135 million, but next year that figure will be adjusted upward.

      There are several reasons for raising the budget cap — both the rise in global inflation and the switch to a new regulatory package. In 2026 each team will be able to spend $215 million.

      Moreover, the factory Audi team, which will formally debut in Formula 1 but is effectively a rebranded Sauber, will face an even higher budget cap because salaries in Switzerland, where the team's base is located, are roughly 35–45% higher than in the United Kingdom and Italy, where the other Formula 1 teams are based.

      Next season there will also remain exceptions within the budget cap — driver salaries and the salaries of the team's three highest‑paid employees are not counted toward the cap.

      FIA Director of Financial Regulation Federico Lodi explained what guided the federation in raising the spending limit.

      “We made some adjustments when setting the spending limit based on the accumulated effect of global inflation since 2021,” Lodi explains. “The current spending limits are being adjusted to include the accumulated effect of global inflation since 2021, as well as the effect of costs that are currently outside the limits.

      Overall, this is not about increasing the capital available to teams as such, but about changing the method of calculation, which was the main reason for the decision to introduce a higher level of spending limit.

      This will not mean teams will increase their spending, because they are already incurring these costs. We are simply bringing these costs into the cap, so the cap has to be higher.

      Developing the financial regulations is quite a complex task, because whereas before we were dealing with ten teams, now we have eleven, with different opinions and priorities.

      To be honest, if we could have developed the financial regulations without regard to the teams, they would probably have looked somewhat different, but it was obvious that we needed consensus with the teams. So we had to make concessions, and we settled on 20–25 exceptions rather than 5–6, as we would have preferred.

      The task was difficult, but we needed the support of all the teams for our proposal. So we had to do a lot of work behind the scenes to discuss everything and convince the teams, and that took time.”