28 September 2026 – The 2026 Superbike World Championship title belongs to Nicolò Bulega. The Aruba.it Racing – Ducati rider clinched it aboard the Panigale V4 R at the Cremona circuit at the end of Race 2, with two rounds of the championship still to go.

At 26, Bulega is the first Italian to win the Superbike World Championship with Ducati. He brings the riders’ title back to Italy 14 years after Max Biaggi, champion in 2012. It crowns a dominant season in which he rewrote the WorldSBK record books: between the end of 2025 and 2026 he strung together 25 consecutive wins, the longest winning streak in the history of the championship.

His is a story of talent, hardship and the ability to start over. As a teenager he was considered one of the brightest prospects in Italian motorcycling, so much so that he was tipped as Valentino Rossi’s possible heir. After difficult years in Moto2, in 2022 Aruba decided to bet on him, entrusting him with the Panigale V2 of the Aruba.it Racing WorldSSP Team. That was the start of his comeback: Supersport world champion in 2023, Superbike runner-up in 2024 and 2025, and now today’s title.

Cremona marks an all-Italian success. Aruba.it Racing – Ducati, the team that officially represents the Borgo Panigale manufacturer in the Superbike World Championship, is the result of the partnership between Aruba and Ducati. Aruba.it is much more than the brand on the livery: since 2015 it has been an integral part of the racing project, and today it directly manages a group of around 30 professionals, including technicians, engineers, mechanics and coordination staff. Season after season, they are the ones who built the environment in which Bulega regained his confidence and was able to express his full talent.

Ducati Corse holds full technical direction: thanks to the development of the Panigale V4 R and the shared effort on track, 2026 has already brought the Manufacturers’ title for Ducati and the Teams’ title for Aruba.it Racing – Ducati.

In 2027 Bulega will contest his first full MotoGP season with the Pertamina Enduro VR46 Racing Team, returning to the VR46 colours of his early days. In 2015 he made his Grand Prix debut as a wildcard at the Valencia Grand Prix with the Sky Racing Team VR46, the team he would go on to race with in Moto3 from 2016 to 2018 and in Moto2 in 2019. Twelve years after that debut, he arrives in MotoGP as a mature rider rather than a young prospect, shaped by victories and setbacks along a different road from the one many had imagined for him. A different road, and an extraordinary one.

Italy that races. Italy that wins.