As motorcycles vary greatly in design, there are several different types of motorcycle racing contest, including

• Road racing - racing on road circuits. In its purest form, this is racing on public roads, such as the Isle of Man TT course and some courses in Ireland. Due to the inherent dangers that these street venues often carry (such as narrowness, curbs and adjacent walls), most road racing is now carried out on purpose-built tracks.
• motocross and its cousin supercross, racing on dirt courses, usually featuring large jumps in which motorcycles launch themselves over considerable distances.
• supermoto is a crossover motorcycle racing between road racing and motocross. The motorcycles are mainly motocross types with road racing tyres. The racetrack is also mixed between road and dirt courses, mostly handcrafted.
• motorcycle speedway and ice speedway, held on oval circuits where riders slide their machines round turns.
• motorcycle enduro racing, over long, unmade tracks, often through isolated terrain (such as the motorcycle category of the Paris-Dakar rally or the Six Days endurance race).
• motorcycle trial, where participants ride specially-designed motorcycles at quite slow speeds over a variety of obstacles.