05/12/2026
by Emma Harrison
For fans of SailGP it’s been a long six-week wait between the Mubadala Abu Dhabi Sail Grand Prix 2025 Season Grand Final presented by Abu Dhabi Sports Council and the first event of the 2026 Season: the Oracle Perth Sail Grand Prix presented by KPMG.
That’s six weeks of reminiscing about the superb efforts under the utmost pressure of the Emirates Great Britain SailGP Team in that Grand Final, and wondering what might have been for the runners-up the BONDS Flying Roos, and third-placed finishers the Black Foils SailGP Team.
But the wait is over, and there’s plenty to look forward to as we move to Perth, Australia, for the inaugural event of the 2026 Season.
While the 13 teams – including the new addition that is the Swedish Artemis SailGP Team – have been busy preparing for the new season, the bookmakers have been studying last year’s results, considering the impact of changes in team personnel and all the other factors that allow them to come up with the odds on who will win the SailGP’s 2026 Season.
Let’s look at what they’ve come up with.
Bookies showing the BONDS Flying Roos the respect they deserve
What can you say about a team that has won this championship on three separate occasions and finished as runner-up in a further two seasons?
You can say that, without a doubt, they’re the most successful team in the history of SailGP. Or that with a little more luck in terms of the wind in last season’s Grand Final, they may well have won it. Or even that with the new addition that is Iain Jensen, a reigning SailGP champ in the wing trimmer seat, they may be even better this season than ever before.
All factors that are not lost on the bookies, who have installed them as the 4.05 favorites to win the 2026 Season.
Surprisingly, in light of all of this, the Aussies only won one event last season: the ITM New Zealand Sail Grand Prix in Auckland.
But they made the final in a further four events, and even when they weren’t doing that during the 2025 Season, they were at least finishing in the top half of the points table for most of them. And as we know, every point counts in this competition.
Consistency is the name of the game for Tom Slingsby and his crew, but the 2012 Olympic gold medalist is likely to find this the toughest SailGP season to date, given the constant improvement in the teams around him.
Can the Emirates Great Britain SailGP Team defend their title?
Odds of 4.33 say they can.
Heading into the 2025 Season Emirates GBR’s best result was a third-place overall finish in the 2022-23 season, which was won by Slingsby and his Australian crew.
But like the Australians, last year they showed that consistent podium finishes and recovering as best they could from poor starts to individual races were the recipe for success.
Podium finishes in their first three events of the season, including a win in Sydney in the third event, meant they were genuine contenders from the very beginning.
The next three events weren’t quite as successful for Dylan Fletcher and his crew, but as the second half of the season got underway they hit back on home waters in Portsmouth in Round 7, finishing as runners-up, and then went on to secure podium finishes in three of the next four, including an event win in the ROCKWOOL France Sail Grand Prix in Saint-Tropez.
And as we know, they saved the best for last. A fourth-placed finish in the Abu Dhabi event was more than enough to secure a place in the Grand Final, and once they got there they made the most of it, winning it thanks to a genius manoeuvre in the closing stages.
In the process they topped the season points table and also won the SailGP’s Impact League, in addition to the Rolex SailGP Championship as a whole.
Black Foils SailGP Team complete the trio of favorites
Somewhat unsurprisingly, the same three who were priced up as favorites for most of the events last season and the Championship as a whole are the same three this time around.
So, rounding off the trio of favorites is the Black Foils SailGP Team, last year’s third-placed outfit.
The Kiwis are available at odds of 4.41 to win this year’s edition. They secured two event wins of their own last season and have made the Grand Final on three occasions.
So plenty to like about them, but it’s also been a case of ‘always the bridesmaid, never the bride’ for Peter Burling and his team.
Could this be the year that changes?
New team has it all to do
Joining an established sporting championship for the first time, especially one as competitive as this one, will never be easy, and there will inevitably be teething problems at the outset.
All of which helps explain why the Artemis SailGP Team are the joint outsiders of the 13 for 2026 SailGP glory.
Despite boasting a team with plenty of familiar names for sailing fans – including driver Nathan Outteridge, wing trimmer Chris Draper and flight controller Andy Maloney – the bookies have decided that they have it all to do, pricing them up as 90.91 shots for the Championship win, the same price as the United States SailGP Team.
Dismiss Los Gallos at your peril
Rounding things off, the team that looks overpriced at the odds is the Los Gallos SailGP Team. The somewhat surprising winners of the 2024-25 season are a team that showed strong consistency throughout last season, finishing fourth in the Championship standings and giving themselves every chance of making the Grand Final right up to the bitter end.
If you want the biggest of compliments from the biggest of names as regards your credentials, consider this: in the build-up to last year’s Grand Final, Tom Slingsby, no less, said they were the team he feared the most.
The France SailGP Team at 8.62, the ROCKWOOL Racing SailGP Team at 11.24 and the Switzerland SailGP Team at 14.08 complete the top seven in the betting.
But the bookies seem pretty adamant: it could well be the same three from last year competing for glory, sporting excellence and plenty of prize money, yet again.
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