Land Rover going all-in on DAKAR for perfect on-brand marketing. Unlike Jaguar.

Land Rover will be Dakar’s official partner from 2025, with plans to run a works team for the 2026 Dakar Rally with the Defender.

The Defender has been a huge success for Land Rover, with big sales and a big waiting list, and now it’s going to try and prove that despite its sales success being built on ‘Chelsea Tractor’ sales it really is a tough as nails as it heads for the Dakar Rally.

It’s such a perfect bit of on-brand marketing – in contrast to Jaguar’s recent efforts – it’s surprising it hasn’t happened before, but Land Rover isn’t just playing with Dakar by being an official partner and delivering vehicles for VIP transport in 2025 – and half a dozen ‘recce’ vehicles – it’ll also be competing as a works team in 2026.

Perhaps Land Rover has been inspired to go the Dakar route now it owns Bowler, and although the image (above) JLR has released with this announcement features a regular Defender, we can probably expect it to look, and perform, more like a Bowler effort.

James Barclay, JLR Motorsport MD, said:

Anyone who loves motorsport will have a passion for Dakar. It’s the Everest of motorsport and an event where success is dependent as much on human determination in the toughest of conditions as it is ultimate test for vehicle and engineering capability. Bringing the world’s most capable and iconic 4×4 to the world’s most iconic rally?raid is a perfect fit.

Our first time ever with a factory entry into the Dakar means we are right at the beginning of our journey. We are conscious of how much we have to learn and achieve before taking the start in 2026, but we are already well under way and looking forward to the adventure. We will share more details of this exciting programme at the Dakar rally in 2025.