Cowdray Park Polo Club, in Midhurst (West Sussex), once again becomes the epicentre of world polo. This Tuesday, 23 June, the British Open Polo Championship for the Cowdray Gold Cup gets under way — the 22-goal tournament that crowns the English high-goal season and that this year reaches a singular milestone: it celebrates 70 years since its first edition. Back in 1956, it was Los Indios — Jorge Marín Moreno, Pablo Nagore, Antonio Heguy and Juan Carlos Echeverz — who became the tournament's first-ever champions.
The sheer prestige this tournament carries explains why, every June, it draws organisations, patrons and players from all over the world, lured by a golden trophy steeped in tradition. This edition also unveils a new title sponsor: St. Regis has come on board as the principal partner this year, in an association the organisers link to the brand's long-standing relationship with the sport.
The 2026 edition arrives with several talking points. For a start, nineteen teams will take part, which forced a redesign of the qualifying system. The opening phase is arranged into a League A of five sides, playing a round-robin of four matches each, and two crossover sections — Groups B/C and D/E — made up of four and three teams respectively. Five organisations were named as seeds based on their performance in the recent Queen's Cup.
The entry list features familiar names from the closing stages. La Hechicera, naturally, will be closely watched: the side retains the core of the Balanz Capital line-up that has just lifted the Queen's Cup. The La Dolfina-linked outfits — Marqués de Riscal/La Dolfina and Jindal Steel/La Dolfina — return as benchmarks for the tournament, alongside UAE, Park Place, Dubai and Ferne Park, the latter a semi-finalist last year. Valhalla, one of the home sides with the strongest backing in the stands, lines up once again.
Other teams arrive with recent match play behind them. White Crane, quarter-finalists in 2025, are banking on the partnership of Polito Pieres and Tomás Beresford, and will have the honour of opening the tournament. They face Akasha, who count Pablo Mac Donough among their ranks. Gaston Polo, led by Chile's Jean-Paul Luksic, are looking to make the leap that has eluded them in the knockout rounds in recent years, and will close the opening day with their clash against Jehangiri.
The competition will run for almost a month. After the group phase, the eight best teams will advance to the quarter-finals, set for 11 and 12 July; the semi-finals will be played on the 15th, and the final will arrive on Sunday the 19th. As an added attraction, the closing day is scheduled to feature the final of the British Ladies Open, contested at the same venue.
Every match can be followed live and free of charge on Cowdray TV, produced by Pololine TV, broadening the global reach of a competition that blends elite sport with the unmistakable hallmark of English polo.
With Tuesday's opening throw-in, a month begins in which the world's high-goal polo converges on Cowdray Park. The Gold Cup celebrates seven decades of history with the bar set high: to crown, on the West Sussex turf, a new champion of one of the most tradition-rich tournaments on the international calendar
