“Whatever happens, we’ve got a story”: MotoGP’s Gavin Emmett on the 2026 season and new game

MotoGP returned to the Goiânia circuit in Brazil this year for the first time since 1989. As veteran broadcaster Gavin Emmett was taking a trackside walk with his TNT team on the Friday afternoon of the race weekend, a young kid walked up to him.

“And he goes, ‘are you the guy who does the voice for the game?’” says Emmett. “It made me laugh, because it’s like – we’re in Brazil. We haven’t been here [in Goiânia] since the Eighties and we were wondering what sort of culture there was. And yet, there’s this kid, asking for an autograph. Obviously I had the mickey taken out of me afterwards.”

It shows you how important the Milestone MotoGP games are to Dorna and new owner Liberty Media’s grand plans to grow the sport among a truly international audience. Emmett has been involved in MotoGP since the early Noughties, and has been the voice of both the official international broadcast feed and BT Sport/TNT Sport’s weekend coverage. The fact that a young fan recognised his dulcet northern tones primarily from the games says a lot.

And it’s not just important to the fans. The series is an oddity in motorsport, because unlike the simulator-heavy world of F1, riders really do use the game to learn the tracks.

“ Genuinely,” says Emmett. “When I was in Brazil, I was walking the track with Joe Roberts, and he goes, ‘oh yeah, I've been playing it'. It happens all the time. At Balaton Park last year in Hungary I spoke to David Alonso, who basically said, ‘without a doubt'. And you’re gonna do that, aren’t you?

“The quality of the 3D renders that they’ve got is phenomenal. It’s uber realistic. And we don't have a simulator culture like Formula One. The Moto trainers, those simulators are alright, but racers aren't using them. They're doing what Pedro Acosta does. Going around a tiny little grubby little race track in Murcia on a beaten up old KTM 800. But you still need to learn the racetracks, and the only place that you can do that is in the MotoGP game.”

MotoGP 26, out now on PC and consoles, is the thirteenth game Emmett has lent his voice talents to: “I recorded in London when we did the first ones. It took two or three days to get through all the script lines.”

Post-Covid, more recording has taken place at home in Leeds, which Emmett tells us bears a surprisingly close resemblance to his actual commentary booth on race day.

“A lot of people think that we are sat up at the top of the grandstand, looking down on the front, straight over the finish line.

“But actually, we are in a windowless booth. We are in a portacabin, that’s essentially what it is. We don't have any windows. We just have a screen. And it’s hot, we have blankets all around for soundproofing. So it's not too dissimilar to being in a soundproof booth, whether it be in London or in Leeds.”

MotoGP 26 rings in several notable changes, which can be categorised as ‘how and why you get thrown off the bike and launched to the moon this time out’. Rider-based handling revises the physics model to put you in more immediate, direct, leather-soiling control of the prototype, while new career mode options like the chance to pick a real rider instead of a custom creation and race road bikes in your downtime give the old formula some more mileage. But arguably the best thing this year’s game has going for it is the actual season it’s depicting.

2026 should, by rights, already be dominated by Marc Marquez by now. His first season at the factory Ducati team in 2025 represented a marriage of elite rider and elite machinery that created an utterly – tediously, even – dominant display. This year was billed to be a repeat of the same. Instead, Marquez has yet to win on a Sunday. It’s the Aprilias of Marco Bezzecchi and the newly rebuilt Martinator, Jorge Martin, who look the strongest. The top Ducati? Why, Fabio Di Giannantonio, obviously.

“Whatever happens from this moment,” Emmett says, “we’ve got a story. If it’s Martin’s Lazarus-like comeback, if it’s Bezzecchi, the dropped man at Ducati, turning up at Aprilia and taking the championship.

“If it’s Marc Marquez, coming back after yet another injury and winning the championship, that’s great. Pedro Acosta being Mr Consistent on the KTM… Whatever happens, we’ve got a championship on our hands.”

Like the MotoGP games themselves, which delight in tiny details and whose anorak-grade enthusiasm is infectious, Emmett is passionate about his sport. You get the sense that he’d have been in that recording booth for six days instead of three, if they’d asked him, and he still wouldn’t have run out of things to talk about.

“ I know we're lucky to be in a position to talk about it and to tell the story of the sport. I hope it comes across.” Don’t worry Gavin, it does. Anyway – aren’t you the guy who does the voice for the game?