CHIO AACHEN

CHIO Aachen is ten days of horses at the Soers, on the northern edge of Aachen, from late June into July: show jumping, dressage, eventing, four-in-hand driving and vaulting, each with its Nations Cup, running at once in the stadiums and arenas of one showground, and ending on the second Sunday with the Rolex Grand Prix. A country may hold one official international show with Nations Cups, and this is Germany’s. It calls itself the World Equestrian Festival.

It ends with the whole stadium waving white handkerchiefs, some forty thousand of them, as the riders go out.

The Soers

In 1898 thirty-five men of the district, manufacturers, landowners, farmers, cattle dealers and a riding master among them, founded the Laurensberger Rennverein to put on races for the town, which had lost its old meeting two years before. The club found its ground at the Soers after the First World War, and on 13 July 1924 held its first riding and driving show there, with a race on the same card and twenty thousand watching.

By 1927 the show ran six days. The Grand Prix of Aachen was first jumped that year, and the Spanish Riding School came from Vienna with twelve Lipizzaner stallions and performed every day. The first Nations Cup was held in 1929.

The last show before the war ended on 29 August 1939, and there was none until 1947. It has since missed 1986, for the world championship held in Aachen instead, and 2015, for the European championships, when only a short show was held in May.

It took the name World Equestrian Festival in 1992, and since 2001 has had a partner country each year. For the World Equestrian Games of 2006 the main stadium was rebuilt, with floodlights, and holds some forty thousand, among the most of any riding stadium anywhere. Eventing and vaulting were added the year after, and the show stretched from six days to ten. More than three hundred and fifty thousand people come.

The city was Charlemagne’s, and thirty-one kings were crowned in its chapel.

The Grand Prix

The vaulters open it on the first Friday. On the Saturday evening the Aachen symphony orchestra plays to horses, in a show called Horse and Symphony, and the Sunday is free to all, with a service. Monday rests. On the Tuesday the show is opened and the partner country welcomed.

The second week is the one. The jumpers ride from Wednesday to Sunday, the dressage from Thursday, and the driving marathon crosses the country beside the stadium on the Saturday. On the Thursday evening, under the lights, the Nations Cup is jumped.

The Grand Prix is on the Sunday afternoon: a million euros since 2013, and one of the four Majors of the Rolex Grand Slam, with ’s-Hertogenbosch, Calgary and Geneva. A rider who wins three in a row takes a bonus of a million more.

Then comes the Farewell of Nations, when riders, grooms and the whole crowd wave white handkerchiefs at one another until the stadium empties.

In 2026 the Soers gave the summer to the World Championships, held there in August, and the Rolex Grand Prix was jumped at a three-day show in May, won by Richard Vogel on United Touch S; the full ten days return from 25 June 2027.

What to Know

It runs from a Friday to the Sunday of the following week, in the last days of June and the first of July. Classes run through the day, often in two places at once, and in the second week into the evening under floodlight.

A lounge suit. The show asks nothing, and the evenings under the lights are cool.

Tickets are sold by the day, and the Grand Prix sells out.

Aachen is the westernmost city in Germany, on the borders of Belgium and the Netherlands and thirty-eight miles west of Cologne. The fast trains from Brussels and Cologne stop there, and so does the Eurostar from Paris. The Soers is on the north side of the city. Stay in Aachen, or in Cologne.

The mistake is to leave after the prize-giving. The Farewell of Nations follows, and it needs a white handkerchief, so bring one.

The Court

CHIO Aachen is not the Court’s own. Seats for the Nations Cup and the Grand Prix are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay in Aachen or Cologne, and the table afterward. The Grand Slam goes on to Calgary in September and Geneva in December.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.