Ducati paired Marc Marquez with his 22-year-old heir for 2027. The price was Pecco Bagnaia, who leaves for Aprilia..
Ducati confirmed on June 24 that Pedro Acosta will ride its factory bike in 2027 and 2028, a signing motogp.com announced less than two hours after the team made its split with Pecco Bagnaia official. Acosta is 22. He has won the Moto3 and Moto2 titles and was the 2024 Rookie of the Year, and he has yet to win a premier-class grand prix.
The pairing sets a 33-year-old seven-time premier-class champion alongside the 22-year-old most often named as his eventual successor, and Ducati barely dressed it as anything else. Gigi Dall'Igna, the factory's general manager, said the team had "wanted to add a young and fast rider to the Desmosedici GP development project" after Marquez's confirmation, and called Acosta "the ideal candidate for the future of the team."
Acosta arrives with a junior record that explains the urgency. He took the Red Bull Rookies Cup, then the Moto3 title in 2021 and the Moto2 title in 2023, and since reaching MotoGP in 2024 he has overshadowed more experienced KTM stablemates on a bike that has rarely given him the machinery to do it. Ducati is buying that now, before KTM can build a project around him.
The freeze, and what broke it
MotoGP's 2027 rider market had been frozen for months by a contract that has nothing to do with riding. The series and its manufacturers spent the spring settling a long-term commercial agreement, the "Concorde-esque" framework The Race reported as agreed only last week, and until it cleared no factory would commit riders to a regulation era whose economics were still being written. Marquez, re-signed through 2028 days earlier, was the first name released.
A second reset arrives with the new rules. Engine capacity drops from 1000cc to 850cc for 2027, the control tyre switches to Pirelli, the front fairing narrows and the fuel allowance shrinks, a package the factories have spent this season testing. Marquez is the most valuable name in the paddock, so until his seat was fixed, no team beneath Ducati could sensibly finalise its own, which is why the champion was released first.
Bagnaia, discarded by the team he carried
Bagnaia has been in Ducati's system since 2019, its first champion since Casey Stoner in 2007 and a back-to-back title winner in 2022 and 2023. He finished fifth in 2025, 257 points behind Marquez, and sits behind him again this season. The factory he carried to the front of the grid has built its next two years around the man who beat him and a 22-year-old who has yet to win a race.
Aprilia answered on June 25. It signed Bagnaia to a four-year deal running through 2030, pairing him with Marco Bezzecchi and becoming the second factory squad to lock its 2027 and 2028 line-up. "Michele Colaninno and I share the same vision of supporting Italy, which is why we both thought of Marco and Pecco together," said Aprilia boss Massimo Rivola, who added that the team would "first try to beat him."
Bezzecchi leads the 2026 championship on 180 points, and Bagnaia brings two titles of his own, so Aprilia enters the 850cc era with the grid's current number one and a proven champion, both Italian and both on multi-year terms.
Acosta will have to learn an 850cc Ducati nobody has raced. Bagnaia hands Aprilia a two-time champion whose feedback shaped the bike that won the last two Ducati titles, the development reference a manufacturer wants most when the rulebook resets. Ducati made the bolder bet, on ceiling. Aprilia may have made the safer one, on data.
What is still open
Two of the five factory line-ups are now locked, and three are not. The expected sequence, reported by The Race but not yet signed, has Jorge Martin leaving Aprilia for Yamaha to replace the Honda-bound Fabio Quartararo, with Ai Ogura promoted from Trackhouse to ride alongside him. KTM is understood to have committed to Fabio Di Giannantonio and Alex Marquez, which leaves Brad Binder's future as the open question at the manufacturer Acosta is leaving. Each satellite seat below them, including the Trackhouse ride Ogura would vacate, waits on those works moves to clear.
The next confirmations are expected at Assen this weekend, where Bezzecchi returns from a one-race ban still leading on 180 points, Martin sits second on 172, and Marquez is fourth and 40 back on a freshly extended deal. The market that waited months on a single commercial signature now resolves in a matter of days.