Montreal

Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is a 4.361 km track with 14 corners, laid out on the roads of Île Notre-Dame, a man-made island in the St. Lawrence River in Montreal. It looks like a stop-start circuit: the lap is a series of long straights joined by tight chicanes and one hairpin, so drivers are either flat-out or braking hard. That puts a lot of stress on brakes and power units, and cars run low-downforce settings to keep speed on the straights.

The lap opens with the left-right Turn 1–2 sequence, known as the Senna S, and closes with a fast run to the last chicane by the Wall of Champions, at Turn 14. The Turn 10 hairpin is the best place to overtake. Track limits are strict, since the exits of many corners are lined by walls, and weather and safety cars have decided many races.

The circuit was designed by Roger Peart and opened in October 1978 as the Île Notre-Dame Circuit, replacing Mosport and Mont-Tremblant as the home of the Canadian Grand Prix. The first race, on 8 October 1978, was won by Gilles Villeneuve, who took his maiden F1 victory on home soil. After his death in 1982 the circuit was renamed in his honour.

The last chicane earned the nickname Wall of Champions in 1999, when three world champions (Damon Hill, Michael Schumacher and Jacques Villeneuve) crashed there in the same race. The pit-lane exit was moved in 2002 for safety and the chicane was adjusted in 2017. The 2011 race, interrupted for more than two hours by rain, lasted 4 hours 4 minutes and is the longest F1 race ever run; Jenson Button won it on the last lap after a series of collisions and stops. The race was not held in 1987, 2009, 2020 or 2021. Valtteri Bottas set the lap record of 1:13.078 in 2019.

In 2026 George Russell took pole with 1:12.578 but retired from the lead on lap 30 with a battery problem. Kimi Antonelli inherited the lead and won for Mercedes for a fourth successive victory, ahead of Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari) and Max Verstappen (Red Bull), who scored the team's first podium of the year. Extra formation laps reduced the race from 70 to 68 laps, and 360,000 fans attended.