On Friday, we saw the gate pick selection process for Saturday's qualifying race at the 2026 Monster Energy FIM Motocross of Nations. The old-school style selection process starts by drawing a ping pong-sized ball out of a first box (the country names box), with each country having their name folded up inside of the box. The country's name is revealed, then a second ball is picked from the number box and revealed, announcing said country to having said number gate pick for Saturday's qualifying races. FIM Director Antonio Alia Portela does the selection with the help of two volunteers.

Enter a rant from Steve Matthes on the ping pong ball process here.

The first ball picked was FIM Latin America, who earned the 32nd—and final—gate pick. The good luck of being the first country picked…with the bad luck of the final gate selection for Saturday. Great Britain was up next and picked gate 18. Canada was the first single-digit gate pick, landing gate five just a handful of picks into the process. Defending champions, Team Australia, landed the third gate pick. Around the middle of the process, Team Ireland was pulled and received the second gate pick. The following pick, the United States of America...selected 26th. The following country selected was Mexico, who grabbed gate #1! 

Morocco, who had incredible luck the last few years with two #1 gate picks, had the luck of 30th gate pick this go round. Hosting country Team France was 22nd gate pick. Estonia was pulled and took seventh at the time, the final single-digit gate selection to go.

Spain was the final country selected and with the process of elimination, they took the final gate pick left: #31.

2026 MXoN Gate Selection for Saturday

1. Mexico
2. Ireland
3. Australia (defending champions)
4. Slovenia
5. Canada
6. Lithuania
7. Estonia
8. Belgium
9. Brazil
10. Finland
11. Germany
12. Slovakia
13. Switzerland
14. Japan
15. Iceland
16. Latvia
17. Netherlands
18.  Great Britain
19. Croatia
20. Denmark
21. Austria
22. France (hosting nation)
23. Czech Republic
24. Sweden
25. South Africa
26. United States of America
27. Ukraine
28. Italy
29. Norway
30. Morocco
31. Spain (final country selected to final spot left)
32. FIM Latin America