While it’s not for another three years and the 2025 edition barely a few weeks in the books, there’s plenty of reason to look forward to the 2028 Peking to Paris Motor Challenge.

2028 is the ten-year anniversary of the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge under current organizer HERO-ERA, who specializes in historic rallies. To celebrate, HERO-ERA has created a route that is much longer than any previous iteration, including the original Peking–Paris from 1907.

The 2028 race will run for 42 days and stretch roughly 17,500 kilometers. By comparison, the 2025 edition was 37 days long with a distance of 14,988 km. The 1907 race was 14,994 km long. The bump mainly comes via the inclusion of Mongolia, which is no stranger to rallies as a current host country for the Silk Way Rally, on the route for the first time since 2019.

Racing begins at the Great Wall of China, just outside Beijing. It then heads north into Mongolia then back into the PRC as the race goes east. It then crosses Kazakhstan and hits the Caspian Sea for a water crossing into Azerbaijan. The Georgian capital of Tbilisi is next followed by Turkey to head into the heart of Europe. Montenegro and Italy will welcome the race before it ends at its final destination in Paris.

The 1907 Peking to Paris also started in Beijing, then Romanized as Peking, before crossing into present-day Mongolia (at the time, the country was under Qing control). Most of the Asian section is in what was then the Russian Empire, including stops in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

HERO-ERA proclaims:

The challenge of competition in the deserts of China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan will become a case of both human and mechanical survival as sand and heat saps your energy and pushes historic cars to their limits.

If competitors survive the deserts, the next stage of the adventure will take them across the tough tracks of Eastern Europe, but for those who may think it is nearly over, they will be wrong.

The arduous route with its strong competition element will continue with tests and regularities in the mountains and hillsides of Europe as the endurance element keeps biting, even when France is in sight! There will still be elements of competition left to be endured, as part of the ‘sting in the P2P tail,’ so for those rally cars that are struggling, they will need nursing with all the competitors’ powers of endurance – if they want to cross the finish line in Paris.

Tony Sutton and Andrew Lawson won the 2025 race overall in a 1939 Chevrolet Master Coupe. The Pioneer class was topped by the unrestored 1920 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost of Michael Power and Nigel Parsons.