★ Gold Cup for the British Open Polo Championship

01Waarom het relevant is

This is the tournament professionals want on their record. It is longer, deeper and more physically punishing than the Queen's Cup, it demands more horses, and its winners' list reads as a history of the modern game. Where the Queen's Cup carries the greater social weight, the Gold Cup carries the sporting weight: in our reading it is the one British trophy an Argentine ten-goaler would choose if offered only one. It also anchors a distinct corner of the English summer, the West Sussex stretch that runs on into Goodwood at the end of July.

02De week eromheen

Midhurst is a small market town and the tournament is the largest thing that happens to it all year. On finals Sunday the roads into the estate slow from late morning, the town's pubs and tearooms fill, and estate parking runs across the parkland. Nothing about the week resembles a metropolitan festival: the surrounding programme is the club's own polo, the estate's farm shop and cafe, and the South Downs on the doorstep. Anyone staying locally is effectively on a Sussex country weekend with a sporting fixture in the middle of it. The Qatar Goodwood Festival follows a fortnight later, twenty minutes down the road, and many visitors treat late July in West Sussex as one continuous stretch.

03Wanneer aan te komen

Arrive Saturday, watch the final on Sunday afternoon, leave Monday morning. The semi-final Wednesday is the connoisseur's day - full-strength polo, a fraction of the crowd, and no dress code to speak of. Do not plan to arrive on Sunday morning from London and reach the grounds comfortably before throw-in; the last five miles take longer than the first fifty.

04Waar te verblijven

Midhurst itself has the shortest journey and the fewest rooms; the Spread Eagle in the town is the landmark address. Petworth, ten miles north, has more to do in the evening and good dining. Chichester, twenty minutes south, is the practical base with the widest choice and puts you next to Goodwood. Further afield, the country-house properties around Climping and Amberley suit people who want the weekend to be about Sussex rather than polo. London is doable as a day trip by car but leaves no margin.

05Toegang en hospitality

The club sells tickets through its own booking system, with general admission by car or by person for league days and a fuller structure for the quarter-finals, semi-finals and final: grandstand seats, enclosure tickets and private pagodas along the Lawns. The club marked pagodas and enclosures for the 2026 semi-finals and final as sold out, which is the usual pattern by early July. League matches in late June and early July are the accessible part of the tournament and cost very little.

06Waar de sociale activiteit plaatsvindt

On the day, the enclosure lawn and the line of pagodas along the Lawns ground, with the ruins as the backdrop and a great deal of tailgate picnicking behind the far boards. Off the ground, Midhurst's North Street and the Spread Eagle, the pubs at Lodsworth, Lurgashall and Cocking, and the Petworth restaurants and antique shops carry the weekend. Chichester and the Goodwood estate take over from the end of July.

07Hoe u er komt

08Praktische informatie

09Geschiedenis

The club dates to 1910 and the championship to 1956, when Los Indios won the first Gold Cup. The Cowdray family, through successive Viscounts Cowdray, kept polo alive on the estate after the Second World War when the game had all but disappeared in Britain, and the club's revival is the reason the British high-goal season exists in its present form. Sponsorship has passed through Veuve Clicquot and Jaeger-LeCoultre, whose name the tournament carried for many years, to St. Regis. The final's setting below the ruins has not changed.

10Wie is er

Patrons and playing families, the professional and grooming community that moves between Sussex, Berkshire and Argentina through the season, club members and Sussex county regulars, sponsor and hotel-group hospitality guests, and a large local crowd who come for a Sunday in the parkland. Less international and less brand-led than the Queen's Cup, and more genuinely a polo audience.