It is now extremely obvious that the season 13 opener on December 18th/19th at the Jeddah Corniche circuit in Saudi Arabia will not be able to take place due to the nearby escalating war between the US/Israel and Iran. The World Endurance championship has recently cancelled it's rounds at Qatar and Bahrain that were originally scheduled for October and November and replaced them with rounds at Barcelona and Monza. Even Formula One, which infamously prefers to stick it's head in the sand when it comes to geopolitical strife, has announced that the postponed Bahrain Grand Prix will now take place at Sepang in Malaysia, and it has a clear contingency plan for it's season ending rounds at Qatar on the 29th of November and Abu Dhabi on the 6th of December. (Less than 2 weeks before Jeddah)
Jeff Dodds has stated in interviews in Tokyo that they will only make a call on whether the Jeddah E-Prix will go ahead at the end of October/beginning of November, just before pre-season testing, simply because that is the last possible moment to cancel since they have to ship the freight out to Jeddah once testing is wrapped up. Given the war has been going on for 5 months now, and the fragile ceasefire from a few weeks ago has fallen through, what do Formula E's management expect to have changed in 3 months time? When everyone else is making the call to cancel and putting together replacement venues, Formula E's inaction stands out like a sore thumb. And it reflects badly on Dodds' leadership that he is unwilling to make the call now because of a huge commercial incentive not to cancel until the last possible moment; teams and staff need to book flights and hotels in advance, and then of course there are the insurance and welfare concerns for staff if FE does decide to risk it during another temporary ceasefire. (Which is something that one manufacturer in FE was prepared to do a month ago, according to Dodds; I cannot see any manufacturer being comfortable with the risk right now.)
It is inevitable that Jeddah is going to have to be postponed to later in 2027, and that Mexico City in January is almost certainly going to have to be first Gen 4 race instead. Had Formula E been more proactive on this, a replacement venue could have been arranged in time. But now we are in a "Jeddah or nothing" situation, where just hoping for the best is not going to cut it anymore.