SailGP 2026: the fastest sailing on Southsea Common

If you spent the last weekend down at Southsea Common, you will have seen the Solent playing host to something rather unusual: the Emirates Great Britain Sail Grand Prix. The event ran across Saturday 25 and Sunday 26 July, and it was the opening leg of the 2026 Rolex SailGP Championship's European stretch. For the uninitiated, the format is simple to grasp but hard to believe: thirteen national teams racing identical 50-foot foiling catamarans that can travel faster than the wind, clocking speeds well over 100 km/h. It is the fastest sailing in the world, and it came right to Portsmouth's doorstep.

The Race Stadium was set up at Southsea Common, with the main entrance on Brian Kidd Way, next to the D-Day Story Museum. On the first day, the gates opened at 14:00 with racing scheduled from 16:30 to 18:00, and the second day followed a similar, if weather-dependent, pattern. The British team, led by Sir Ben Ainslie as CEO, brought a formidable crew to the water: Dylan Fletcher MBE at the helm, Olympic gold medallists Hannah Mills OBE, Stuart Bithell MBE and Ellie Aldridge MBE, and America's Cup sailors Neil Hunter, Nick Hutton, Luke Parkinson and Ben Cornish, with Kai Hockley as development sailor.

Getting a ticket was the hard part. Every single one sold out, from the standard Waterfront Grandstand at £75 a day to the new Premium Waterfront Grandstand at £130, the VELA Beach Club at £245 and the VELA Privé at £500 for groups of ten or more. The 2025 event had already set a high bar, drawing nearly 20,000 ticketed fans and leaving 92% of them feeling the ticket was value for money, so it was no surprise the 2026 edition filled up quickly. The good news for everyone else was that the racing was visible from plenty of free public areas along the seafront, including the new promenade at Southsea Common, so you did not need a grandstand seat to take it in.

With the race stadium taking over the seafront, the usual Southsea weekend was not quite the same. The promenade between the Blue Reef Aquarium and the Southsea Rock Garden was closed from 10 July, Southsea Castle shut its gates from 13 July, and the D-Day car park was off-limits for a week. On the race days themselves, Avenue De Caen and Clarence Esplanade were closed to traffic, and there was no official car parking at all, with the PR3 Park & Ride running the last bus from Clarence Pier at 19:24. Most people came in by train, with Portsmouth Harbour, Portsmouth & Southsea and Fratton all within walking distance or a short bus ride away, and a taxi drop-off set up on Clarence Esplanade east of Jack Cockerill Way.

Inside the stadium, the rules were firm: no smoking or vaping, no umbrellas in the grandstands, no drones, and only small personal cameras and mobiles, with tripods and telephoto lenses over 200mm banned. Bags were limited to one small one plus a wallet, and no animals were allowed except registered assistance dogs. Free water refill points were scattered about, and the organisers urged everyone to bring a hat, sunglasses, sunscreen, a light jacket and a reusable bottle rather than single-use plastic. Once the racing wrapped, the celebrations carried on with Jess Glynne and Craig David on the bill. It was a big weekend for Southsea, and the 2025 event had already left the city with a £9 million economic boost, so the bar is set high for whenever it returns.