Formula 1 heads to Montreal this week for the fifth round of the 2026 season, with qualifying for the Canadian Grand Prix set for Saturday, May 23, at 1600 local time at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve. The session comes after Sprint Qualifying on Friday and the Sprint itself earlier on Saturday, giving fans a packed weekend at one of the sport’s most familiar stops.
Free Practice 1 begins Friday, May 22, at 1230 local time, followed by Sprint Qualifying at 1630. The Sprint starts Saturday at 1200, then qualifying decides the grid for Sunday’s 70-lap race, which gets underway at 1600 on May 24. For anyone searching for f1 qualifying time today, the key slot is the Saturday afternoon session that can reshape the front of the field before the Grand Prix.
Coverage from every session will be available live on F1 TV Pro in selected countries, with streaming supported on Apple TV, Chromecast Generation 2 and above, Android TV, Google TV, Amazon Fire TV and Roku. F1 TV Premium also offers 4K Ultra HD/HDR viewing on up to six devices, while live timing will run on F1.com and the F1 app across every session during the weekend. That means viewers who want the full picture can follow not just the lap times, but the way the entire order develops from practice through to Sunday.
The Montreal race comes back to a track with deep history. Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve sits on Notre Dame Island in the middle of the St Lawrence River, where roads used for Expo 67 and the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics were turned into a race circuit. The venue first hosted a Grand Prix in 1978, when it was known as Circuit Ile Notre-Dame, and it has long been a place where the championship can shift in a single afternoon.
George Russell gave Mercedes its first victory of 2025 at the track in Montreal, edging Max Verstappen and Kimi Antonelli. This year, the backdrop is slightly different, with McLaren having closed the gap to Mercedes in Miami after Lando Norris won the Sprint and Oscar Piastri joined him on the podium in the Sunday race. That recent form adds a sharper edge to qualifying, because the teams arrive in Canada with less room to hide in a weekend that compresses speed, strategy and recovery time into just three days.
The weather may also matter. Montreal is currently expected to be temperate and cloudy, with temperatures reaching the low twenties, and light rain is possible on Saturday and Sunday. That kind of forecast can turn qualifying into more than a simple fight for pole, especially when the session comes after a sprint and before a 70-lap race on a circuit that has a history of punishing mistakes.
By the time qualifying ends on Saturday evening, the grid will already tell a story about who handled the pressure best in Montreal and who has work left for Sunday. At a track where recent winners have often had to earn it the hard way, the fastest lap may matter as much for what it reveals about the championship fight as for where it places a car on the front row.
