New format and 2025 and 2026 venues for World Sailing Open Team Racing World Championships announced

The 2025 event will take place 28 May to 1 June at the New York Yacht Club in Newport, RI, United States, and is supported by US Sailing. The 2026 event will be held in August at the Gamla Stan’s Yacht Sällskap, Stockholm, Sweden, and is supported by the City of Stockholm and the Swedish Sailing Federation.

The World Sailing Open Team Racing World Championships make their return to the international sailing calendar in 2025 after a ten-year hiatus.  The first Team Racing World Championships were held in West Kirby, Great Britain, in 1995 and was held every two to three years.

For 20 years, the format of the Team Racing World Championships was the traditional 3×3 held in dinghies. Since the last event, a new 2×2 format – where two boats race against two other boats – has been developed which is exciting to watch as a spectator. The team with the last boat to finish loses the race.  

David Graham, World Sailing CEO, said, “We are delighted to reintroduce the World Sailing Open Team Racing Championships in 2025 in an exciting new format that offers opportunities to grow the sport. The rise of team racing events around the world have shown the desire for more varied competitions and the appetite for sailing. With the new keelboat 2×2 format, we hope to attract many more sailors of all ages and MNA’s to this exciting discipline of sailing. Taking to the waters of Newport and Stockholm will provide the impetus for further growth and development of the sport for a new generation of sailors.”

Each event will feature up to a maximum of 16 teams. Each team will consist of two boats and a total of six to eight people.  Each team shall have a minimum of two women and two men per boat. Racing will consist of a series of qualifying round robins, quarterfinals, semi-finals and finals.  

World Sailing is very pleased that the New York Yacht Club will be hosting the first new edition of the Open Team Racing World Championship as they have been an established leader in the team racing discipline since the 1990s and played a pivotal role in the growth of team racing as a sport for all ages. Investing in a fleet of 22 Sonars, they host four of the most prestigious team racing events every year.

The Women’s 2v2, Morgan Cup, Hinman Masters and NYYC Grandmasters are the cornerstones of the US team racing calendar and highly sought after invitations. Internationally, NYYC hosted the Team Race Worlds in 2005 and more recently helped launch the Global Team Race Regatta with the first and third editions in 2018 and 2022, respectively.

The Team Racing Ranking List piloted last year is being implemented by World Sailing and will play an important role in the qualification process of teams to the World Championships.