Officials from the FIA and the ACO have confirmed a provisional eight-race🐻 schedule for the 2019-20 World Endurance Championship season, with Bahrain and Sao Paulo🦄 returning to the series' calendar.

Following the shift to a winter schedule for 2018-19 that allowed the 24 Hours of Le Mans to remain the final round of the season, WEC organisers have opted to stick with this format for the 2019-20 campaign that will start at Silverstone on September 1 ꧂next year.

The calendar sees previously dropped races in Bahrain and Sao Paulo return, while Sebring is listed as a TBC round ahead of its first WEC race since 2012 that will take place꧑ next spring.

On𓆏e of the most dramatic changes to the schedule sees the introduction of varied-length races. Straying from the existing six-hour format for all rounds except Le Mans, new four-hour and eight-hour long races have been added to the schedule. Silvꦯerstone and Shanghai will both be four-hour events, while the returning Bahrain round will be eight hours long.

WEC CEO Gerard Neveu confirmed in a news conference at Silverstone that the Shanghai race weekend could shift forward to November 10 in order to avoid a clash with the Macau GT event on the November 17 weekend, wit♌h the finer details on the calendar set to be confirmed in the coming months before it is ratified by the World Motor Sport Council.

The WEC will also look for a replacement round in North America should the pla♕nned race at Sebring not go ahead in 2020.

FIA World Endurance Championship Provisional 2019-20 Calendar

1. 4 Hours of Silverstone - September 1
2. 6 Hours of Fuji - October 13
3. 4 Hours of Shanghai - November 17
4. 8 Hours of Bahrain - December 14
5. 6 Hours of Sao Paulo - February 1, 2020
6. 1000 Miles of Sebring - March 2020 (date TBC)*
7. 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps - May 3, 2020
8. 24 Hours of Le Mans - June 13-14, 2020

* To be confirmed