THE LONGINES GLOBAL CHAMPIONS TOUR

The Longines Global Champions Tour is not a fixture. It is a circuit of more than a dozen legs across four continents, running from early March to a playoff in November, and the cities change from one year to the next.

It is the richest series in equestrian sport, and it does not belong to the sport’s governing body.

The Private Circuit

Jan Tops won Olympic team gold for the Netherlands at Barcelona in 1992, and then looked at his sport from the outside.

What he saw was a discipline with no coherent global circuit. National shows, scattered championships, and no reason for anyone outside it to pay attention. In 2006 he started his own, with six legs, five of them in Europe, and an invitation to the world’s top thirty riders.

The circuit runs under the governing body’s rules and the governing body ratifies its calendar. Beyond that it has no part in it. This is a private series, owned and operated by the man who founded it, and it now offers more prize money than anything the federation runs.

In 2016 he added a league. The teams are franchises, bought rather than earned, named for cities rather than countries, with riders of different nationalities on the same side. Monaco Aces, New York Empire, Shanghai Swans. It is football’s structure applied to an individual sport, and it was by no means obvious that it would work.

The Cities

The other thing he changed was where the sport happens.

Show jumping had always been a country sport, held on grass at showgrounds outside towns. The Tour put it in the middle of cities: beneath the Eiffel Tower, beside the Formula 1 pit lane at Monaco, on the sand at Miami Beach, in Doha, Shanghai, Rome, London and New York.

An arena is built and taken away again, which is what makes the travelling possible and also what makes the calendar unstable. Legs are added and dropped, and a city that hosts one season may not host the next.

One venue is fixed. Valkenswaard in the southern Netherlands is Tops’s own arena, and the circuit calls it home.

What to Know

Check the calendar before planning anything. The host cities are announced season by season.

The season runs from March to November and closes with a playoff, which compresses a great deal of the year’s prize money into a single weekend.

The city legs are the ones to take. An arena assembled in a public square for four days is a different proposition from the same sport on a showground, and the crowd is different for it.

Longines has been the title partner since 2013, which is why the circuit is stable even when its map is not.

Questions

What is the Longines Global Champions Tour schedule for 2027?

The full 2027 calendar is to follow. The one 2027 leg announced so far is Paris, on the Champ de Mars beneath the Eiffel Tower, from 18 to 20 June 2027. The 2026 season ran from Doha in March to the finals in Rabat and the Playoffs in Riyadh in November.

How does the Longines Global Champions Tour work?

It runs two competitions. Riders score in each leg toward the individual Longines Global Champions Tour Championship, while teams of riders of mixed nationalities contest the GCL, founded in 2016. In 2026 both finals were held in Rabat, and the GCL Super Cup at the season-ending Playoffs in Riyadh.

What should you wear to a Longines Global Champions Tour event?

Global Champions sets no formal dress code and recommends comfortable clothing and footwear suited to outdoor conditions, with sunscreen or a jacket as the weather requires.

How can you watch the Longines Global Champions Tour?

Global Champions streams the series live and on demand on its own service, GCTV. As of October 2026 it lists prices from 4.99 euros a month when bought as an annual Live Pass.

Can you buy Global Champions Tour tickets on the day?

If tickets remain, they can be bought online or at the venue, but Global Champions recommends booking ahead, as many sessions sell out. Tickets are sold leg by leg through tickets.gcglobalchampions.com.