The 24 Hours of Le Mans is the one race where the winner is not the fastest car over a lap but the one that covers the most distance in a full day and night. It has run since 1923, it still starts in mid-June, and it still uses public roads in western France. If you only follow one motorsport event a year, this is a strong candidate.

How it started

The first race ran on May 26 and 27, 1923, and was originally planned as a three-year event tied to the Rudge-Whitworth Triennial Cup. It outlived that plan by a century. The course is the Circuit de la Sarthe, which measures 13.626 km (8.467 miles) and mixes a permanent track with public roads that are closed for race week.

The race traditionally starts at 4:00 p.m. local time in mid-June, so drivers go through one full night before the finish.

The moments that shaped it

The darkest day was 1955. A crash sent a car into the crowd and killed at least 81 spectators and the driver Pierre Levegh. The accident prompted safety changes across motorsport.

Ford then made Le Mans its target. The GT40 won four straight times from 1966 to 1969, a story people mostly know from the movies. If you want the road-car side of that era, our piece on the modern Ford GT picks up where that history left off. The traditional running "Le Mans start" was dropped in 1970 for safety reasons.

Two wins stand out for what they proved. Mazda won in 1991 and remains the only manufacturer to win with a rotary engine. Toyota won in 2018, only the second Japanese marque to do so.

The records worth knowing

• Most wins by a driver: Tom Kristensen, with nine.
• Most overall wins by a manufacturer: Porsche, with 19.
• Most wins by a team: Joest Racing, with 15.

The lead photo shows a Porsche 936 in the livery of car No. 4, which won in 1977. The win is a good example of why the race is more than a speed contest. Jacky Ickx’s own car broke early, so he was moved into the No. 4 entry, which was running 41st and 15 laps behind. According to Wikipedia, he drove an 11-hour stint through the night and the car finished 11 laps clear of second place. Porsche still has deep roots here: you can see its racing-to-road link in our air-cooled 911 buying guide.

The cars on the grid today

Three classes share the track at the same time, which is a big part of the spectacle because fast cars constantly lap slower ones.

• Hypercar: the top class, introduced in 2021, which gives manufacturers more freedom in design.
• LMP2: mid-tier prototypes.
• LMGT3: production-based sports cars, introduced in 2024.

The 2025 race, held June 14 and 15, was won by the No. 83 Ferrari 499P of AF Corse, driven by Phil Hanson, Robert Kubica and Yifei Ye. It covered 5,272.54 km in 387 laps and was Ferrari’s third consecutive win. The car was a privately entered one, not a factory entry. Cadillac took pole, the first American car to do so since 1967, and Aston Martin returned to the top class for the first time since 2011 with two Valkyries.

Older prototypes are collectible too. Our look at the Jaguar XJR-12 at auction shows what the Group C era is worth to collectors.

How to watch or attend

The official 24 Hours of Le Mans site lists the next edition, the 95th, for June 9 to 13, 2027. Tickets and hospitality packages are sold through the organizer’s ticketing portal at lemans.org/tickets; I could not confirm prices, so check there.

For watching from home, broadcasters vary by country and change from year to year, so check the official site for your region. A practical tip: do not try to watch all 24 hours. Catch the start at 4 p.m. local time, check in around dawn, and watch the last two hours, when the result is usually decided.

Fans of the sport often end up in watch collecting as well. Two good places to go next are the story of the Rolex Daytona ‘Le Mans’ and the TAG Heuer and Porsche motorsport tribute. More car stories are in our cars section.