Gucci has entered Formula One as title partner of Alpine Formula One Team, the first time a luxury fashion house has assumed that role at the sport’s highest level. The agreement, announced in Paris on 27 May 2026, will take effect from the start of the 2027 FIA Formula One World Championship, at which point the squad will race under the name Gucci Racing Alpine Formula One Team and compete in Gucci’s colours.

The partnership brings with it a new commercial and experiential vehicle, Gucci Racing, structured around the values of performance, precision, and discipline at the crossroads of luxury and sport. The platform carries its own visual identity, featuring the house’s iconic interlocking G set alongside the Gucci Racing wordmark, and will be activated across content, product, and exclusive client experiences over the course of the collaboration.

The sport reaches more than 1.5 billion people each season, drawing an audience that has grown younger and more diverse in recent years, across the key global markets in which the Italian house operates. Few commercial platforms offer comparable frequency and breadth of visibility, with Alpine’s current position in the championship, sitting fifth in the constructors’ standings with its best-ever points total at this stage of a season.

“This partnership with Alpine Formula One Team writes a new chapter: Gucci becomes the first luxury fashion house to serve as Title Partner in Formula One. That reflects our ambition for the brand and the role we want Gucci to play on this stage. Formula One represents today a unique convergence of performance, culture, and global reach, and Alpine Formula One Team is the right partner to bring this vision to life. Gucci Racing is more than a presence on the grid: it is an expression of who we are and where we want to take the brand. And there is much more to come. We are grateful to Alpine and the entire Renault Group for sharing this ambition with us.”

Francesca Bellettini, President and Chief Executive Officer, Gucci

History forged in competition

Alpine’s roots in motorsport stretch back to 1955, when Jean Redele founded the brand on a conviction that racing and road cars could share the same DNA. That heritage was deepened by the Renault Group’s long involvement in Formula One as a manufacturer, a relationship dating to 1977, when Renault became a founding presence in the championship as a constructor. The Enstone factory in Oxfordshire, which has housed the team since 1992 through its previous identities as Benetton Formula, Renault F1 Team, and Lotus F1 Team, carries seven world championships across drivers’ and constructors’ titles, including those won by Michael Schumacher in 1994 and 1995, and Fernando Alonso in 2005 and 2006.

The 2026 season sees the team’s 1,000-strong workforce at Enstone developing and racing the Alpine A526 across a 24-race calendar. Grand Prix winner Pierre Gasly and rising talent Franco Colapinto share driving duties, operating under the direction of Executive Advisor Flavio Briatore and Managing Director Steve Nielsen. Alpine’s trajectory this season has been among the most discussed in the paddock, and it is that momentum, as much as the team’s heritage, that made the partnership viable from Gucci’s perspective.

“Partnering with a prestigious brand of Gucci’s calibre in Formula One as title partner of Alpine Formula One Team is something I am incredibly proud of. Not only that, but I am also excited about the possibilities the partnership with Gucci brings and the great things we can achieve together at a global level.

Flavio Briatore, Executive Advisor, Alpine Formula One Team

Reach, relevance & return

Francesca Bellettini, President and Chief Executive Officer of Gucci, described the announcement as the opening of a new chapter. The house becomes the first of its kind in the sport, a status that Bellettini framed not as a commercial calculation alone but as a statement of intent about where Gucci aims to be positioned culturally over the coming years. The partnership, she noted, reflects the brand’s appetite for renewed energy and global influence.

Luca de Meo, Chief Executive Officer of Kering, the parent group that counts Gucci among its portfolio of luxury houses, positioned Formula One as a content platform as much as a sporting one. With an audience exceeding 1.5 billion per season and a demographic shift towards younger and increasingly female viewers, he argued the sport offers luxury brands a rare opportunity to build long-term desirability and measurable brand value simultaneously. Kering’s engagement with Renault Group through this collaboration adds a further corporate dimension to what is, at its surface, a sporting arrangement.

Francois Provost, Chief Executive Officer of Renault Group, welcomed the partnership as a means of building awareness and influence for Alpine across markets and generations. For the group, which entered Formula One as a manufacturer nearly five decades ago, the association with a house of Gucci’s standing adds a new layer to the team’s identity and its commercial appeal, particularly as the sport continues to attract investment from outside the traditional automotive world.

Form meets fashion

Flavio Briatore, Executive Advisor of Alpine Formula One Team and a figure with a longer association with the Enstone operation than almost any other, was candid about what the arrangement means for the team. He pointed to the factory’s history of approaching the sport differently, including a prior moment when fashion and Formula One intersected on the podium, as a precedent for what Gucci Racing could achieve. His acknowledgment of the improved on-track performance underlines that the partnership is not purely cosmetic.

Briatore credited Luca de Meo and Francesca Bellettini directly for the trust and effort that brought the collaboration to fruition. The alignment between a team in upward momentum and a house in the process of asserting a bolder global identity gives the partnership a structural coherence that goes beyond the novelty of its announcement. Both parties arrive with something to prove, and the grid in 2027 will be the arena in which that ambition is tested.

“Formula One has evolved far beyond sport to become one of the world’s most powerful premium content platforms, reaching over 1.5 billion people each season and inspiring a rapidly expanding, younger and increasingly female audience. As a space of creativity, pursuit of excellence and human achievement, we see it as a unique platform for a luxury brand to push boundaries, spark meaningful connections and build long-term value and brand desirability, while delivering measurable and lasting impact.”

Luca de Meo, Chief Executive Officer, Kering

Gucci Racing platform is designed to operate across multiple territories, including trackside presence, branded content, product collaborations, and high-end client experiences that place Gucci at the centre of the Formula One world rather than on its periphery. The intention, as stated at the announcement, is to build a distinctive and high-impact platform over time, with the 2027 season the first point of expression.