CHI GENEVA

CHI Geneva is four days of show jumping, driving and indoor cross-country in the middle of December at Palexpo, the exhibition halls beside Geneva’s airport, in an arena of some five thousand square metres under one roof: the riders of the Rolex Top 10 Final, a leg of the Driving World Cup, and five-star jumping each day, ending on the Sunday with the Rolex Grand Prix, one of the four Majors of the Rolex Grand Slam. It was first held in 1926, and calls itself “the indoor show with the longest tradition”.

Only one rider has won the Grand Slam, and his run began here: Scott Brash, on Hello Sanctos, in December 2014.

A Hundred Years

The first show was held in 1926 at the Palais des Expositions, with eighty-five riders and a hundred and fifty-eight horses. The next year Geneva held its first Prix des Nations, and Switzerland won it.

In 1975 the show moved to the Centre sportif des Vernets, and in 1979 it joined the new World Cup circuit; Nick Skelton won the first Geneva leg, on Everest Lastic. The last Nations Cup in Geneva was won by the host country, with Robbiani, Candrian, Fuchs and Gabathuler, and from 1985 the show became a CSI, given over to the World Cup. The thirtieth edition was the last at Les Vernets, and John Whitaker won it on Milton.

In 1991 it moved to Palexpo, into what its organisers call “the world’s largest indoor arena”. The World Cup Final was held there in 1996 and in 2010. The Rolex IJRC Top 10 Final was first held in Geneva in 2001 and has come back to it every year since 2014. L’Année Hippique has named it the best show of the year on ten occasions.

In 2013 Geneva founded the Rolex Grand Slam with Aachen and Calgary, and ’s-Hertogenbosch joined in 2018. A rider who wins the Majors in a row carries the run from one to the next, across the turn of the year: Brash won Geneva in December 2014, then Aachen and Calgary in 2015, and is the only one to have done it.

The Week

The jumping is five-star throughout, with qualifiers for the Grand Prix through the week. The indoor cross-country, run since 2014, is a thousand metres over twenty-nine natural obstacles, among them a lake and a bank. Geneva has held the only Swiss leg of the FEI Driving World Cup since 2002, and classes for riders under twenty-five since 2019. Some six hundred and fifty to seven hundred volunteers run it, and more than forty thousand people come.

For its hundredth year, in 2026, the show runs five days, from 9 to 13 December, “one more than usual”, and is billed as the sixty-fifth edition. The Wednesday has the Prix des Communes Genevoises, the first qualifier for the Grand Prix. On the Thursday the Compagnie 1602 parades through the arena, “Led by a sidesaddle rider, recreating the poster for the 1926 edition”, and there is a speed class over a lake and natural obstacles. The Friday has the indoor cross-country and the twenty-fifth Top 10 Final, over two rounds at a hundred and sixty centimetres.

On the Saturday the Driving World Cup opens and the Coupe de Genève is jumped, and in the evening comes “The Challenge of the Century sponsored by UBS”, ridden “with obstacles from days gone by”. The Sunday begins with the Breakfast of the Century, laid in the main arena from eight to ten, and ends with the farewell of Sultan, Alizée Froment’s horse, and the Rolex Grand Prix, at a hundred and sixty centimetres with a jump-off.

Kent Farrington won the Grand Prix in 2025, on Greya, and Scott Brash the Top 10 Final, on Hello Chadora Lady. Ben Maher arrives having won the Major at Spruce Meadows on 13 September 2026, his first.

What to Know

It runs for four days in mid-December, ending on a Sunday; in 2026, its hundredth year, from Wednesday 9 to Sunday 13 December. The 2027 dates have not been announced.

Tickets are sold through Ticketcorner, online, by telephone or at Coop City and Fnac, from forty Swiss francs for an adult, and one franc from each goes to the charity Anima. The Breakfast of the Century costs fifty francs, on top of the Sunday’s admission. The show also sells places on its Hospitality Terrace, Privilege Seats and Cocktail Areas.

A lounge suit. The show publishes no code.

Palexpo is five hundred metres from Geneva Airport and its station, ten minutes on foot; the city centre is under ten minutes away by train, and Lausanne forty. The show’s official hotel is the Geneva Marriott, minutes from the airport.

The mistake is to come by car. The organisers warn of roadworks around Palexpo and ask visitors to take the train.

The Court

CHI Geneva is not the Court’s own. Places on the Hospitality Terrace for the Saturday evening and the Grand Prix are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay by the airport or in the city, and the table afterward. The Grand Slam goes on in the spring to ’s-Hertogenbosch for The Dutch Masters.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.