Two-Year-Old ZXMOTO Is Taking On KTM and Honda at Dakar and MXGP in 2027

ZXMOTO founder Zhang Xue announced in a video on August 27 that ZXMOTO will contest both the MXGP world motocross championship and the Dakar Rally in 2027.

The team has already signed riders and crew and is openly courting sponsors, with the video closing on a blunt slogan about taking on the international factory brands head-on.

In the 2026 WorldSSP championship, French rider Valentin Debise has already taken six race wins aboard ZXMOTO's self-developed 820RR-RS, sitting second in the riders' standings while ZXMOTO ranks third among manufacturers, breaking a decades-long European and Japanese lock on the class.

The Portimao double win in March was the first WorldSBK victory ever for a Chinese motorcycle brand.

ZXMOTO signed Austrian rider Tobias Ebster for the Dakar program back on August 10, adding a rider who won the Original by Motul class on his 2024 Dakar debut and finished runner-up in Rally2 as a privateer in 2025.

Next year he rides ZXMOTO's new 450Rally, a 449cc single making about 60 hp, with Joyride Race Service handling logistics and a shakedown planned at the MXGP Shanghai round this September.

Zhang previously led the KOVE team to become the first Chinese squad to get every rider to the Dakar finish, and he has openly said MotoGP is ZXMOTO's ultimate target.

Still, entries into Dakar and MXGP do not come cheap, with a factory-spec campaign starting in the seven figures annually, while ZXMOTO is barely two years old and recalled 286 street bikes earlier this year over a backwards O-ring, so race wins and production quality control clearly have not synced up yet.

The timing works in ZXMOTO's favor, at least, since off-road racing's old king KTM is retrenching amid a financial crisis and leaving exactly the kind of vacancy a challenger dreams about. Whether ZXMOTO can fill it, next year's desert will provide the first answer.