The winner of the 2026 World Match Racing Tour (WMRT) will be crowned 2026 Match Racing World Champion as sanctioned by World Sailing, the world governing body of sailing.
The 2026 WMRT season includes seventeen stages including the WMRT Final in AMAALA, Saudi Arabia.
The Tour comprises two levels of events – ‘World Tour’ events and ‘World Championship’ events. All events are organised under World Sailing rules as ‘Open’ match racing events allowing both men and women teams, as well as mixed teams to enter.
WMRT championship points are awarded after every event for each finishing position up to twelve teams at ‘World Tour’ events, and up to sixteen teams at ‘World Championship’ events. The points will be posted to the official WMRT Leaderboard on this website. ‘World Championship’ level events award higher points and, in most instances, award prize money of at least USD75,000.
2026 WMRT Final/ Match Racing World Championship
To qualify for the WMRT Final/ Match Racing World Championship, skippers will count their best FOUR results from Stages 1-16 up to and including the 2026 edition of the Bermuda Gold Cup.
After the completion of the 2026 Bermuda Gold Cup, up to 12 skippers will be invited to the WMRT Final/ Match Racing World Championship in AMAALA, Saudi Arabia. The overall prize purse for the WMRT Final/ Match Racing World Championship will be a minimum of US$200,000.
The 12 skippers invited to the WMRT Final/ Match Racing World Championship will include –
- The top 9 placed skippers from the WMRT leaderboard counting their best 4 results after the penultimate event (Bermuda Gold Cup 2026)
- The next highest ranked skipper on the official World Sailing Match Racing Ranking taken from the 1 October 2026 World Sailing rankings release as posted at https://www.sailing.org/
- The 2025 defending WMRT/Match Racing World Champion
- A local or wild card team to be selected by WMRT and the Organising Authority of the WMRT Final/ Match Racing World Championship.
The following rules will apply for any series-score ties;
- – If there is a series-score tie between two or more skippers, each skipper’s race positions shall be listed in order of best to worst, and at the first point(s) where there is a difference the tie shall be broken in favour of the skipper with the best position(s). No excluded scores shall be used.
- – If a tie remains between two or more skippers, they shall be ranked in order of their scores in the last race. Any remaining ties shall be broken by using the tied skippers’ scores in the next-to-last race and so on until all ties are broken. These scores shall be used even if some of them are excluded scores.
