Harley-Davidson Shifts Focus to FIM Bagger World Cup
NXTbets Pro | Published On: October 2, 2026
The company shifts
The company announced it would shut down its factory MotoAmerica King of the Baggers team and end official team support in the class after the 2026 season, redirecting its main racing effort to the FIM Harley-Davidson Bagger World Cup in 2027. The company said the new series would become its premier racing platform and would be built with MotoGP, IRTA and FIM. It also said the World Cup would grow with more teams, riders and races, with events held at selected international circuits. The change marked a clear break in the company’s factory-racing plan. The brand was moving away from a domestic factory-backed bagger program and placing its top-tier focus on a global series that carried its own name. That move gave the company a dedicated place at the center of the project rather than a supporting role in an established championship. The company framed the decision as a shift in how it wanted to race, build motorcycles and connect performance development to competition. The shift changed the role of factory racing. Instead of serving as the lead program in King of the Baggers, that knowledge would feed the new World Cup and the company’s broader performance business.
Premier Racing
The company said its new strategy split racing into two tracks, Premier Racing and Grassroots Racing. Premier Racing would sit at the top of the company’s competition structure, with the FIM Harley-Davidson Bagger World Cup as the centerpiece. Grassroots Racing would form the other side of the plan, with the company creating a separate program built to offer accessible competition across multiple disciplines and experience levels. That split gave the brand a wider racing footprint than a single factory team could provide. Premier Racing kept the company tied to elite international competition. Grassroots Racing would open the door to a different kind of participation, one aimed at riders and events at more entry points. The company said the same technical knowledge that once powered its factory program would support the World Cup, motorcycle development and Screamin’ Eagle and other performance parts. That made the race effort more than a branding exercise. It linked the track, the product line and the development pipeline in one structure. The company was using the change to organize racing around two goals at once, high-level competition at the front and broader access at the base. The result was a system that reached beyond one team or one class and gave the company a defined role in both top-tier and entry-level racing.
King of the Baggers
The company’s factory team had a strong record in King of the Baggers. The company said its factory racing team won three of six national championships in the class and that Kyle Wyman became the category’s most successful rider with 27 wins. Those numbers gave the factory program a firm place in the series’ history before the shift to the new World Cup took hold. Wyman’s win total stood out as the clearest individual mark from the company’s time in the class, while the championship haul showed the team competed at the top level throughout its run. The company did not frame the move as an exit from racing. It framed it as a reordering of priorities. Technical knowledge from factory racing would support the next stage of the company’s competition effort. The World Cup would carry the brand name and serve as the main racing home going forward, while the grassroots program would widen the base behind it. That gave the company a new structure, one rooted in the work done in King of the Baggers but built for a different scope. The factory team would close, the support would change and the brand’s racing identity would shift with it.
