BMW’s M3 Touring GT will race at the Nürburgring – M division's April Fools' joke brought to life
The M3 Touring race car started as a joke but BMW M has made it a reality. It’ll be racing at the 2026 Nürburgring 24hr
The Germans and their peculiar sense of humour are back with the BMW M3 Touring GT race car. Though it was first pictured in rendered images as a playful publicity stunt for April Fools’ day 2025, BMW M has decided to not only make the machine a reality but also take it racing at the 2026 Nürburgring 24 Hours – in GT3 spec, no less.
The idea of a racing version of the M3 Touring has been floating around since the debut of the road car in 2022. While the impetus to make it began as a joke, the overwhelming response BMW received for the car has pushed it to prepare a genuine racer. Development of the M3 Touring GT began properly in the summer of 2025, with the BMW Motorsport team taking just eight months in total to complete the car.
The BMW M4 GT3 Evo serves as its basis and is a proven winner, with some 80 race victories around the world to its name, including last year’s N24 and the 24 Hours of Dubai. The M3 Touring GT shares that car’s vast 2040mm width and P58 race version of M Division’s twin-turbo straight-six, good for 582bhp when not restricted.
Obviously the M3 Touring road car is longer than an M4 so the race car is too, by 200mm including the enormous rear wing. The wing also sits higher than that on the M4 GT3 Evo by 32mm, to clear the higher rear end of the Touring body and allow it to be positioned in clean airflow. The livery features some of the comments from the April fool's post last year, pining for the car to be made a reality.
The car will compete in the SPX class for special or experimental cars at the 2026 Nürburgring 24 Hours (16-17 May) with Jens Klingmann, Ugo de Wilde, Connor De Phillippi and Neil Verhagen at the wheel. It will get its competitive debut at the NLS (Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie, an endurance championship held at the Nürburgring Grand Prix and Nordschleife circuits) at the Nürburgring on 21 March.
