Jack Miller joins Yamaha WorldSBK for 2027 and 2028
Jack Miller will remain with Yamaha following the conclusion of his MotoGP career, with the Australian confirmed to join the factory Yamaha WorldSBK effort for the 2027 and 2028 seasons.
The 31-year-old will partner Andrea Locatelli aboard the Yamaha YZF-R1, extending a relationship with the Japanese manufacturer that began when Miller joined Prima Pramac Yamaha in MotoGP for 2025.
It also confirms the destination we suggested was increasingly likely when Yamaha confirmed Miller’s MotoGP departure in August.
A big signing for WorldSBK as well as Yamaha
For Yamaha, securing a four-time MotoGP race winner with more than a decade of premier-class experience is clearly significant. For WorldSBK, Miller’s arrival might be even more important.
Interest in the championship has appeared to wane somewhat in recent years, and many of the personalities that made WorldSBK such compelling viewing in earlier eras have either retired or moved on.
Miller brings something different. He is a proven Grand Prix winner, but perhaps more importantly for WorldSBK, he remains enormously popular with traditional motorcycle enthusiasts. He clearly enjoys racing motorcycles rather than appearing overly concerned with where a particular championship sits in the perceived hierarchy of the sport.
We have seen the effect firsthand in Australia. When Miller turned up at The Bend to contest the 2021 ASBK finale, he didn’t simply add another fast rider to the Superbike grid.
Miller spent time with spectators, generated mainstream attention and brought people to an ASBK event who otherwise might not have been there. That is precisely the sort of crossover appeal WorldSBK could benefit from. Yamaha clearly sees that value too.
Niccolò Canepa – Road Racing Sporting Manager, Yamaha Motor Europe
“We are hugely excited to welcome Jack Miller to Yamaha’s WorldSBK project in 2027, and personally I am very happy to have him join our team. The opportunity to bring a rider of his experience and talent into our official team was too good to miss, and we are already looking forward to the first tests.
“His Grand Prix experience, particularly his knowledge of Michelin tyres, will be extremely valuable for us. He has already achieved strong results with the R1 at Suzuka, so we are excited to see what he can do on the WorldSBK-spec bike and what he can contribute to the R1’s continued development.
“Beyond the technical side, Jack’s personality and international profile will also be a great asset in strengthening Yamaha’s presence and bringing even more attention to the WorldSBK Championship. We are very much looking forward to starting this new chapter together.”
Miller already knows the Yamaha R1
Miller will not arrive completely cold when he first throws a leg over a WorldSBK-specification R1.
Yamaha drafted the Australian into its factory Suzuka 8 Hours line-up in 2025 alongside Katsuyuki Nakasuga and, importantly, his future WorldSBK team-mate Andrea Locatelli. The trio finished second. Yamaha retained the same combination for 2026 and they again finished runner-up.
The EWC R1 is obviously a substantially different proposition from its WorldSBK sibling, but Miller already knows the basic character of the machine, knows Locatelli and has experience working inside Yamaha’s production-based racing structure.
Can Miller help breathe new life into the R1?
That experience could prove valuable because Miller isn’t stepping onto the dominant motorcycle in WorldSBK. The current R1 traces its architecture back more than a decade. Yamaha has continued to develop the WorldSBK machine and has taken advantage of the championship’s concession framework, but the R1 has increasingly struggled to consistently fight at the sharp end.
Yamaha has now gone several seasons without mounting a sustained challenge to Ducati’s dominance. That is despite WorldSBK’s balancing mechanisms evolving considerably during that period, with restrictions applied to dominant machinery and concessions available to manufacturers struggling to remain competitive.
Ducati has nevertheless continued to set the benchmark while Yamaha has made relatively little progress towards consistently challenging at the front. There is no escaping the fact that Miller is therefore taking on a considerable challenge. But development work is hardly foreign to him.
His final two MotoGP seasons with Prima Pramac Yamaha have coincided with one of the most significant technical programmes Yamaha has undertaken in decades, including development of its new V4 MotoGP project.
Yamaha repeatedly praised Miller’s technical understanding and feedback during that process. That experience may prove every bit as important in WorldSBK as his outright speed.
A new tyre changes the equation
Another major variable is arriving at exactly the same time as Miller. WorldSBK switches from Pirelli to Michelin for 2027.
Pirelli has been the championship’s control tyre supplier since 2004, so the change represents one of the most significant technical resets WorldSBK has undergone in more than two decades.
Michelin takes over across the WorldSBK paddock under a five-year agreement running from 2027 through 2031. For Miller, that could provide a valuable head start.
He has spent the Michelin era of his MotoGP career working on the French manufacturer’s rubber, and Yamaha specifically highlighted that experience when announcing his WorldSBK deal.
That doesn’t mean a MotoGP Michelin and a WorldSBK Michelin will behave identically, far from it, but Miller understands the manufacturer’s construction philosophies, feedback language and the demands involved in extracting performance from its racing tyres.
And there is an amusing Australian footnote to all this. Miller was already racing a Michelin-shod Ducati when he made his 2021 ASBK cameo at The Bend.
Jack Miller
“I am really excited to announce that I’m heading over to WorldSBK together with Yamaha, extending our partnership together. I have really enjoyed working with the brand these past few years in MotoGP and I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to see what we can do on the R1.
“I have had a small taste of the bike at Suzuka the last couple of years, and while the WorldSBK-spec bike is a bit different I am really looking forward to this next chapter in my career and hopefully we can do something really strong over there.”
A WorldSBK debut at Phillip Island
Then there is the location of Miller’s WorldSBK debut. It could hardly have been scripted better. The 2027 WorldSBK season is set to begin at Phillip Island, putting Miller in front of an Australian crowd for his first World Superbike race. But the significance goes well beyond an Australian making his WorldSBK debut at home.
The 2027 Phillip Island meeting will mark the end of an extraordinary chapter in Australian motorcycle racing history. Phillip Island first hosted WorldSBK in 1990, and the Victorian circuit has since become one of the venues most closely associated with the championship.
The 2027 event will be Phillip Island’s final WorldSBK round before Australia’s championship event moves to South Australia from 2028. For generations of Australian race fans, Phillip Island and World Superbikes have been almost inseparable. The circuit has hosted some of the championship’s most memorable racing and witnessed Australian greats including Troy Corser and Troy Bayliss at the height of their powers.
Now the final WorldSBK meeting on that hallowed ground will also mark the beginning of Jack Miller’s WorldSBK career. If ever there was an Australian WorldSBK round capable of becoming a genuine destination event, that is it.
Then Miller and WorldSBK head to The Bend
From 2028, the Australian WorldSBK round moves to The Bend in South Australia. That will give Miller another unusual homecoming, because the circuit is already an important part of his Australian racing story. His headline-making 2021 appearance was followed by another ASBK cameo at The Bend in 2022. That time Miller arrived with a Ducati Superbike that had effectively never turned a wheel in anger before the meeting. Despite that, he rapidly worked his way towards the front.
Miller qualified second for the 2022 ASBK finale, just 0.161 seconds behind eventual Australian Superbike Champion Mike Jones.
Miller went on to lead the second Superbike race, underlining how quickly he could adapt to a production-based machine in a domestic Superbike environment. Thus the Australian chapter of Miller’s new career has a neat symmetry to it. WorldSBK 2027 begins with Miller making his championship debut at the final WorldSBK event staged at Phillip Island. A year later, the championship’s Australian round moves to The Bend – the same circuit where Miller has already demonstrated just how much attention his presence can bring to a Superbike paddock.
A very different second act
WorldSBK represents a major change after 15 years in the Grand Prix paddock.
Miller arrived in the 125 cc World Championship as a teenager, fought Alex Marquez for the 2014 Moto3 World Championship, made the extraordinary jump directly from Moto3 to MotoGP and went on to spend 12 seasons in the premier class. He won four MotoGP Grands Prix and stood on the podium 23 times, with fourth in the 2021 World Championship his best season-ending result.
His remarkable journey included that breakthrough wet-weather victory at Assen in 2016, factory Ducati victories at Jerez and Le Mans in 2021, and perhaps his most complete MotoGP performance at Motegi in 2022. We revisited that journey in considerably more detail when Miller’s departure from Yamaha’s MotoGP programme was announced.
WorldSBK now presents a very different challenge. The motorcycles are different, the race-weekend format is different, and Miller will be adapting to a championship populated by riders who have spent years learning how to extract everything from production-based Superbikes. Nor is the R1 currently the obvious motorcycle on which to take the fight to Ducati. But Miller has rarely taken the conventional route through his career.
And for a WorldSBK Championship that could use another injection of personality, attention and star power, his arrival might prove every bit as valuable to the series as it is to Yamaha. The fact that Australian fans get to witness the beginning of that chapter at Phillip Island’s WorldSBK farewell only makes 2027 more enticing.
