Dodge is coming back to the NASCAR Cup Series in 2027, and Kaulig Racing will be the team that brings the brand to the grid with a two-car effort in the Dodge Charger beginning at the Daytona 500. AJ Allmendinger and Ty Dillon are expected to fill the seats.
The announcement, made Monday at the SEMA Show in Las Vegas, gives the Cup Series a fourth manufacturer again alongside Chevrolet, Ford and Toyota. For Dodge, it is a return to the sport’s top tier after leaving after the 2012 season, the same month it celebrated its last Cup title with Brad Keselowski and Penske Racing.
That history matters because Dodge’s last championship came with Keselowski in 2012, more than three decades after Richard Petty’s sixth of seven titles in 1975. The brand’s comeback now arrives in a Cup Series that runs a 36-race schedule from mid-February to early November, and it lands at a point when manufacturers still matter as much as driver talent in shaping the sport’s identity.
The timing is also notable because Dodge had been expected to return in 2028, not 2027. Normally, it would have taken two years to get ready for the Cup Series, but Dodge bypassed part of the timeline by partnering with Earnhardt Childress Racing to build Dodge-spec powerplants alongside Chevrolet operations, a shortcut that helped move the project ahead faster than planned.
That is the real test of this return. Dodge is not just re-entering NASCAR; it is trying to do it a year early, with a new engine path, a two-car program and a familiar name in Kaulig Racing carrying the brand into its first Daytona 500 back in the Cup Series. What happens next is simple and consequential: Dodge now has to turn an announced comeback into race-ready speed, and do it before the next season opens.
