World Ducati
Week 2026:
Century Driven

In Misano’s Heritage Village, just a few steps separated the oldest machine in the exhibition from a motorbike that didn’t actually exist – it was merely a light projection, configurable at the touch of a finger on a Lenovo workstation. Between them lay a hundred years of technological history. It was precisely there, between the real metal and its virtual twin, that one could grasp what Ducati’s 100th anniversary actually means. For the old machines themselves had been ridden to Misano – by their owners, under their own power. An exhibit that refuses to be confined to a museum is in no way at odds with its digital descendant. It is its ancestor in the most literal sense: still on the move. And at the end of the weekend, this principle was set to be repeated once more – only this time in the sky above Misano.

Founded in Bologna in 1926 as a manufacturer of radio components, Ducati has reinvented itself – from a capacitor manufacturer to a racing team, from an Italian niche supplier to a global icon, now boasting 37 world championship titles, which were represented in person this weekend by current and former riders. In addition: 118,036 visitors from 94 countries and all five continents, organised into 275 Ducati Official Clubs – the largest and most international edition in the event’s history. On Friday, the traditional parade into an 18-kilometre-long red stream stretching from the racetrack to Samsara Beach in Riccione; so long, in fact, that the front of the procession had already reached the finish line whilst the last bikes had not even left the track yet.

It was a celebration of simultaneity that ran through the entire event: Casey Stoner, Troy Bayliss, Carl Fogarty and Loris Capirossi stood on the same stage on Saturday evening as Francesco Bagnaia, Marc Márquez, Álex Márquez, Fabio Di Giannantonio and Nicolò Bulega – 36 riders, legends and reigning champions together, in the very same year that Ducati is celebrating its 100th MotoGP victory. That is precisely why it was only fitting that the historic motorbikes in the Heritage Village were also ever-present, ready to ride. At the Ducati Heritage Contest, the winner was, unsurprisingly, a 1999 Ducati 996 SPS Factory Replica owned by Piero Guerrini – a motorbike that has to hold its own in everyday life to make new history.

In her research project ‘Zeitgeschichte sehen’ (Seeing Contemporary History), media studies scholar Sabine Möller has demonstrated just how much our understanding of the past has changed: away from the idea of an objectively fixed history, towards the realisation that history is always an ‘interactive process of appropriation’. History, adds historian Jörn Rüsen, is not the reception of something predetermined, but a ‘construction of the present’ – something that every generation actively recreates, rather than merely observing. According to this logic, a museum piece that one merely looks at remains dead: fixed, explained, concluded. A motorbike, on the other hand, which carries its owner to their own exhibition, defies precisely this fixation.

This is precisely the point of the juxtaposition between Heritage Village and the augmented reality experience, which found a second, even more fleeting canvas in Saturday evening’s drone and fireworks display. There, hundreds of drones traced iconic images from a hundred years of Ducati history into the night. A rear-view mirror of light that had already dissolved again mere seconds later. This, too, is the appropriation of history in Möller’s sense: not the permanent preservation of an image, but its fleeting, collectively shared realisation. At the same time, the event also set new standards in the digital realm: more than two million page views, more than 20 million social media impressions, 700,000 viewers for the live stream of the Lenovo Race of Champions, and 220,000 FantaWDW sessions on the official Ducati WebApp. You could also look at it this way: an anniversary that merely looks back would betray its own legacy.

So, hop on the bike and straight into the parade. The sun beats down from the sky, countering the thermal radiation from the V2. It’s rumbling at idle. In other words: we’re stationary. Stop-and-go. Thousands of Ducatistas are taking part in the parade. Here’s a gap. A quick twist of the throttle on our Ducati Monster. The bike leaps into the gap in one go. The bloke on the Diavel is left behind. The crowd organises itself with typical Italian creativity. The Carabinieri remain calm. The dusty clatter of a dry clutch. A deep rumble as we ease off the throttle. You could safely call this the Italian national anthem. At least this weekend.

Later, Ducati CEO Claudio Domenicali would himself describe the parade to Riccione as an image he would never forget – an endless (predominantly) red procession of a brand that keeps its past alive, both literally and figuratively. Resonance rather than reach means, in this case: as many people should be able to connect with a piece of Ducati’s hundred-year history – even if it’s only for the duration of a virtual configuration or a thirty-second drone shot against the night sky.

A museum preserves by putting things on display. Ducati has demonstrated the opposite in Misano: it sent its oldest machines back out onto the road one last time before putting them on display, projected its history up into the sky one last time before it faded away, and invited almost 120,000 people from 94 countries to experience a piece of it for themselves. Luxury as autonomy ultimately means just that: the freedom to appropriate one’s own past and to shape it oneself.

→ Click here for the best-of highlights from the World Ducati Week Centenario Edition.