PARIS — Formula 1 is celebrating its return to Madrid with a capsule collection with buzzy Spanish sportswear brand Pompeii, which will launch Tuesday ahead of a weekend of activations, including a takeover of the label’s Madrid flagship.

The collaboration marks the first foray into motor racing for Pompeii, which was founded in 2014 as a footwear brand and has won a cult following for its sneakers and soccer-inspired apparel.

The unisex capsule, consisting of nine items, offers a nostalgic take on the history of F1, drawing on style icons like the late Ayrton Senna and the sponsor logo patches on drivers’ uniforms.

For Cosme Bergareche, cofounder and creative director of Pompeii, the partnership was an opportunity to broaden the brand’s remit to other sports, following a collaboration with the NFL last year.

“We like to show the world what Madrid is,” Bergareche said, adding that the Formula 1 Tag Heuer Gran Premio de España 2026 was the “perfect excuse” to tap into race driving culture.

“Sports and sportswear in general has been very focused on performance, and we’re trying to bring that into fashion,” he told WWD. “What we do is refined streetwear, with the focus on that refined part, because we feel that’s always what differentiates slightly our products from other products.”

Formula 1 organizers have deepened their relationship with fashion brands amid the growing popularity of the sport, which reached a fan base of 827 million people in 2025, boosted by the release of “F1: The Movie,” according to data published by the Formula One Group.

That was up 12 percent year-over-year and a 63 percent increase versus 2018.

A Touch of Nostalgia

While its 10-year partnership with French luxury group LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton has given it a direct line to luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, F1 has gravitated to emerging labels for local activations, said Emily Prazer, chief commercial officer at Formula 1.

“Obviously, we’re a global brand, but we have 24 race weekends which all have individual and independent identities,” she said.

“For us the partnership was very much about celebrating our return to Madrid, and we wanted to partner with a brand that was very much born in Madrid and understood the city style and culture,” Prazer added. “Pompeii was a brand that just really stood out to us.”

The capsule collection will launch with an evening event at the Melia Palacio de los Duques hotel, where a Formula 1 x Pompeii liveried car will be on display.

To keep the momentum going, the F1 Paddock Club VIP hospitality service is teaming with daytime club The Coffee Party for a takeover of specialty bakery and coffee shop Acid Bakehouse, which will host an invite-only morning celebration.

Pompeii’s store will feature a curated Formula 1 exhibition of archival photography and historic footage alongside the capsule collection, which will be available exclusively at the flagship, on Pompeii’s website, at the F1 store at the new Madring circuit, and via online retailer Fanatics.

Bergareche noted that for many Spaniards, F1 remains closely associated with Fernando Alonso, who started out in the early 2000s, though in recent years, Carlos Sainz has drawn in a new generation of Spanish-speaking fans.

“For a lot of people, it will be their first time discovering Pompeii, so we’ve tried to maintain all of our essence and touch that nostalgic part, which I feel is what we do best,” he said.

Quality Over Quantity

With roughly 100 points of sale worldwide, the brand is available in a dozen countries including France, the U.K., Portugal, Italy, Greece, Japan and South Korea. Pompeii does 45 percent of its e-commerce sales in Spain, and the rest overseas, with the U.S. representing its second largest market online.

For Bergareche, the benefit of the F1 collaboration is reputational, above all.

“We’re not looking to open stores abroad in the short term, that’s not something that’s realistic as of today,” he said.

“We’re not looking that much to get bigger points of sale, but better, because we feel the brand is maybe slightly niche, and we’re more thinking of quality rather than quantity. It’s more that part of brand recognition and brand awareness,” he added.

Likewise, for F1, the opportunity lies in connection rather than mass reach.

“We’re not going to ever be the brand that floods the market with these types of things,” Prazer said. “It’s deliberately a limited-edition collection. We wanted people to feel very distinct when they bought it, and also to connect it to this moment in our history.”

Both parties said they saw potential for a recurring collaboration.

Meanwhile, Prazer continues to scout for new partners, seeking to capitalize on the growing synergies between fashion and Formula 1, as evidenced by Gucci’s sponsorship of the Alpine Formula 1 team.

After working with Los Angeles-based brands Nahmias and Etai on capsule collections for the Miami and British Grand Prix, respectively, F1 has tapped Spanish high street chain Pull&Bear to launch the Disney x Formula 1 collection, which made its debut last weekend on the Monza circuit in Italy.

“For us, it’s about engaging through the full pipeline of fandom. There’s always a danger of making something too aspirational and too difficult to purchase,” Prazer remarked.

Having said that, a collaboration with Vuitton would be “the absolute dream,” she conceded.

“That being said, they show up in different ways and are helping premiumize and elevate the fans and the sport. So there’s ways to work with them that won’t necessarily result in a direct collaboration in terms of product, but they’re very helpful in informing how we should be looking at things,” she said.