And The Winning National Championship Air Racing Host City Is…

The decision is in, and the winning contender to host the National Championship Air Races is ... Roswell, New Mexico. The Reno Air Racing Association (perhaps they chose Roswell partly so they wouldn’t have to change their ‘RARA’ acronym?) announced late yesterday (May 23) that the first air races will take place in Roswell in September 2025. The competition will continue to include seven classes of air racing (still no word of an official extraterrestrial class), static displays, military demonstrations and more.

The site will be the Roswell Air Center airport (KROW), a former military airfield about five miles outside of town. The 5,000-acre airport is widely known as a storage facility (aka “boneyard”) for retired airliners and other aircraft—notable among them, Elvis Presley’s Lockheed JetStar, finally sold at auction in 2017 after more than 30 years at KROW. Among the reasons for choosing Roswell over the other two finalists, Casper, Wyoming, and Pueblo, Colorado, was the range of side attractions nearby, such as the Mescalero Sand Dunes, the Walker Aviation Museum located onsite at KROW, the Spring River Zoo, Carlsbad Caverns and of course the city of Roswell itself, famous for its connection to the history of investigating unidentified flying objects. An annual UFO Festival is held in Roswell in early July.

After a long history of racing in Reno dating back to 1964, there will be no National Championship races this year, but the Nevada city will host a 60^th anniversary celebration and airshow in October, including a full slate of military display teams and individual performers. Fred Telling, CEO and chairman of the board of the RARA, said of the association’s ultimate decision, “While Roswell was chosen, we are truly grateful for the overwhelming support, dedication, and enthusiasm shown by all the communities who submitted their bids to host our event. We’re thrilled to bring our honored tradition of racing [to Roswell] and are confident that they have both the enthusiasm and resources to expand the future of our races for many generations to come.”