Nicolo Bulega (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati) is your 2026 MOTUL FIM Superbike World Champion. It has been a wild, utterly dominant run that re-wrote the history books. Yet the journey here was anything but simple for the Italian.
Back in his junior single-seater and Moto3 days, Bulega carried the heavy label of the next Valentino Rossi while running the #46 in what is now the Moto3 Junior World Championship in 2014 as a one-off appearance, and winning the title in 2015. He debuted in the Moto3 World Championship that same year before a full-time 2016 campaign yielded two podiums and one pole on his way to seventh in the standings. A twelfth-place finish with one pole followed in 2017, and he slipped to 26th in 2018. A step up to Moto2 with the Sky Racing Team VR46 squad brought a best finish of 17th in the intermediate class in 2019, followed by a switch to the Gresini Moto2 squad for 2020. By the end of 2021, after another 26th-place finish in the standings, his Grand Prix paddock career was done.
Facing what he candidly called his "last possibility to be a professional rider," Bulega moved into WorldSSP for 2022 with the Aruba.it Racing WorldSSP Team as Ducati returned to the category. The #11 took nine podiums in 2022, then exploded in 2023 with 16 victories and 21 podiums to claim the World Championship. That breakthrough earned him a promotion to WorldSBK for 2024 within the same factory structure.
He hit the ground running by winning Race 1 at Phillip Island in his very first WorldSBK outing. While Toprak Razgatlioglu took 18 wins that season, Bulega grabbed six. He followed up in 2025 by doubling his win tally to 14, fighting for the crown until the final race before losing out to El Turco. With Razgatlioglu moving to MotoGP, Bulega entered 2026 as the favourite alongside a new model of the Panigale V4 R.
The results were staggering. Across the first eight rounds, Bulega collected 23 wins, including 21 in a row. Combined with four consecutive wins at the tail end of 2025, he set a new all-time win streak record of 25. He also strung together ten consecutive poles when adding Jerez 2025 before being beaten at Cremona, and swept every possible podium this year. Highlights included destroying the field by 11 seconds in Race 2 at Phillip Island, fighting off teammate Iker Lecuona in the Netherlands, and breaking Razgatlioglu's previous record of 13 consecutive wins by taking his 14th straight victory in Race 1 at Balaton Park.
Bulega now stands as only the second Italian World Superbike Champion, joining Max Biaggi—who won twice in 2010 and 2012 on Italian machinery for Aprilia. The #11 is also the first rider ever to secure both the WorldSSP and WorldSBK titles.
