★ Hublot Polo Gold Cup Gstaad

01Pourquoi c'est important

Gstaad's summer is quieter than its winter, and this is the fixture that fills it. The tournament has run since 1996 and reaches its 30th edition in 2027, long enough to have become the anchor of the Saanenland's August. It also carries an unusual concentration of sponsorship for a 14-goal event: a watchmaker as title partner, a champagne house, an aviation group, a car marque and the Gstaad Palace behind the catering. In our reading its importance is local and seasonal rather than sporting - the polo is good club-level medium goal, not the high goal of Cowdray - but as an entry point to the Alps in summer it has few equals, because almost all of it can be watched for nothing.

02La semaine environnante

Mid-August is the top of Gstaad's summer. The Menuhin Festival is in the middle of its run in the churches and tents at Saanen and Gstaad, the hiking and cycling season is at full strength on the Wispile and the Eggli, and the village promenade is as busy as it gets outside the Christmas fortnight. The polo adds four days of traffic and a visible tented encampment on the airfield, five minutes from the centre by road and a pleasant forty-minute walk along the Saane. What is public is a lot: the Polo Village, the field surround, the players' parade through the promenade on Friday afternoon with the horses walked through the middle of the village, and the whole atmosphere of the airfield on match days. What is not public is the VIP tent and the Saturday gala, both sold in advance and both sold out well before the tournament in 2026. The resort's own week continues around it - the Menuhin concerts in the evenings, the mountain restaurants at lunch, and the Saanen and Gstaad markets - so a visitor who came for the polo will find the village doing several other things at once.

03Quand arriver

Arrive Thursday or Friday. Thursday's qualifying is the quietest and best-value polo, Friday's parade is the day the tournament belongs to the village, and the weekend carries the crowd. Sunday finishes with the prize giving at half past four, which leaves the evening free and makes a Monday departure the natural one. Anyone combining this with a Menuhin Festival concert should check that calendar first, since the festival's own weekend programme is the harder ticket.

04Où séjourner

Gstaad village itself, along the promenade and the slopes above it, is the obvious base and puts the airfield within a short drive or a long walk; the Gstaad Palace on its hill and the Alpina above the village are the landmarks. Saanen, one stop down the valley and closer to the field, is quieter and cheaper with a beautiful old centre. Schonried, Saanenmoser and Gsteig are the other valley villages, all on the MOB railway line and all suited to visitors who want the Alps more than the promenade. Rougemont, over the language border into the Vaud, is ten minutes away and a different country in temperament.

05Accès et hospitalité

The organizer sells only VIP tent places, and publishes their prices: CHF 420 per person for the Saturday or Sunday lunch buffet, prepared by the Gstaad Palace kitchen, with table seating for eight and access to the VIP terrace over the field; and CHF 490 per person for the Saturday gala night, a served dinner with entertainment and a move to the Gstaad Palace dancefloor at midnight. Both sold out for 2026, and the organizer states that bookings cannot be cancelled, exchanged or refunded, including if the event is cancelled. No general-admission ticket is listed on the reservation page: spectators watch from the Polo Village and the field surround, which is how most of the crowd sees the tournament.

06Où se déroule l'activité sociale

The Polo Village on the airfield during the day, with the sponsor tents, the food stands and the terrace along the field. In the village, the Gstaad promenade and its terraces, the bar and Grand Hall of the Gstaad Palace, and the restaurants at Saanen carry the evenings. The Friday parade puts the tournament into the centre of Gstaad for an hour. Beyond that, August in the Saanenland is a mountain-restaurant culture rather than a nightlife one, and the pull after the final is toward the valley and the huts rather than toward any single bar.

07Comment s'y rendre

08Informations pratiques

09Historique

Polo came to the Saanen airfield in 1996, at a point when Gstaad was extending its summer programme beyond the Swiss Open tennis in July. The airfield, in use since the middle of the twentieth century and modernized after the Airfield Cooperative Gstaad-Saanenland took it over in 2011, is an unusual host: it has a single 1,400-metre asphalt runway, sits at 1,001 metres, and is one of the principal business-aviation fields serving the Bernese Oberland. The tournament has kept its four-team, 14-goal shape throughout, missing 2020 and 2021, and returned from 2022 without changing the formula. Gstaad Palace has won it; so, in 2026, did Albinati Aeronautics.

10Qui s'y trouve

Gstaad's summer residents and chalet owners, Swiss and German visitors from Bern, Zurich and Basel, the sponsors' guests, the international polo community that plays the European medium goal, and a large family and day-trip crowd from the Saanenland and the Vaud. More local and less professional than the British high goal, and much more open than its brand roster suggests.