The 44th Mapfre King’s Cup already has new champions. After a week in which Palma Bay once again became one of the main international sailing stages, the 2026 edition of the competition came to an end with a final day full of excitement and six titles at stake. Teatro del Soho San Miguel, Nadir, Baleària Team RCNP, Vudu, Niramo, and Nola were the big names of a Cup that also saw the Estonian yacht Nola crowned overall champion.
The final day had everything that makes the King’s Cup one of the most important events on the sailing calendar: victories decided in the final race, leaders who withstood the pressure, and surprises in some of the classes that came into the decisive day with everything to play for. In the ORC and ClubSwan 42 divisions, there was only one final race, while the Baleària Women’s Cup was decided by a series of races among the week’s top six teams.
The result is a list of winners that combines experience, continuity, and new stories. The Teatro del Soho San Miguel won its ninth Cup for its owner, Javier Banderas; Pedro Vaquer’s Nadir obtained its third title in the ClubSwan 42 class, and María Bover’s Baleària Team retained the women’s title for the fourth time. At the other end of the spectrum, the Italian Vudu, the German Niramo, and the Estonian Nola were also featured players in this year’s event.
Vudu holds firm and Spain is one step away from glory
In the Abanca ORC 0 class, Vudu entered the final race with a nine-point lead and managed to hold on. The TP52 helmed by Italian Mauro Gestri finished second in the deciding race, which was enough to secure its first King’s Cup title after leading the standings since the second day. Hispania, competing for the second consecutive day without its skipper, King Felipe, had one of the day’s standout performances. Its victory in the final race allowed it to move up two places and secure second position. Jeremy Weir’s Kilara II finished third.
Back at the Royal Yacht Club of Palma, Michele Regolo, Vudu’s tactician, expressed the relief felt by a team that had seen opportunities slip away for 2025. “I’m very excited today, more than I expected; last year we finished fourth after a disqualification. It was something that kept us up at night all August. In fact, I was the one who filed the protest a year ago, so I’ve felt guilty. A year later, it’s like a weight has been lifted from our shoulders.”
How the Carkeek 40 wins the showdown
The ORC A class final of Sail Racing was destined to be one of the highlights of the final day. Rán, helmed by Swede Niklas Zennström, and Nola, helmed by Estonian Taavel Hinrikus, were separated by just one point, having alternated at the top of the standings all week. In the end, it was Nola who delivered the decisive blow. They triumphed in the final race while Rán finished third, allowing the Estonian team to be crowned champion. The podium was completed by Per Roman’s GP42 Garm.
Margus Uudam, skipper of Nola, summed up the result as follows: “It’s an incredible, very intense feeling. Every day felt like the start of a new regatta. The point difference was very, very tight. It was never easy. Today we had a good start and just had to give it our all, both tactically and technically, in very light wind conditions, to make the most of every puff. Everything went well; the team did a wonderful job. This is our first big regatta victory, a major milestone for us that gives us hope and perspective for the future.”
Banderas’s Ninth
If there is one figure that summarizes the importance of this Cup for the Teatro del Soho San Miguel, it is nine. Javier Banderas’s team went into the final day of the Uber ORC B with a 14.5-point lead and only had to hold on. A third-place finish was enough for the new XR-41 to secure its owner’s ninth King’s Cup in 30 appearances. It was a victory that also came on a particularly symbolic date for the team’s tactician, Luis Doreste: exactly 42 years after he, along with Roberto Molina, won his first Olympic gold medal at the 1984 Los Angeles Games.
The Immens, helmed by Uruguayan Nicolás González, finished second, while Katara, helmed by Argentine Julián Somodi, the reigning world champion, finished third.
Niramo turns a victory into a title
In the Azulmarino ORC C class, the Cup reached its final day with the outcome still very much up in the air. The top three teams were separated by less than three points after four days and seven races. The final race shook up the standings. The Cape 31 Niramo secured a victory that gave them the championship, while their two main rivals, Earlybird and Project Work, finished fourth and third, respectively. The German team thus claimed their first Mapfre King’s Cup title, ahead of Earlybird and Project Work.
Sönke Meier, owner and helmsman of Niramo, acknowledged the importance of the victory: “This is the greatest victory of my life in the most important regatta. We had already won Kiel Week, my home regatta, and now this. But this is very important to us. I think this is the tenth time I’ve participated in the King’s Cup and we’ve finished second and third before, so we’re very happy. I love this boat. It’s more demanding than the ClubSwan 50, which I still have, and this Cape 31 maybe keeps you on your toes. Tovar (Mirsky) and Bouwe (Bekking) make a great team.”
Third title for Nadir
The final regatta of the ClubSwan 42 series got off to a tense start. A series of penalties against Nadir and Selene Alifax – first and second in the provisional standings – opened an opportunity that Pez de Abril took advantage of to secure its first victory of the week. But Nadir had a comfortable lead. Second place was enough for Pedro Vaquer’s team to secure their third Mapfre King’s Cup, following their victories in 2022 and 2023. The Selene Alifax finished second, 11 points back, and the Pez de Abril third, 15 points back.
Vaquer explained what’s behind this new title: “The numbers don’t reflect the reality of what we’ve been through in this Cup. Everything has gone our way and it seems like it was easy, but it certainly wasn’t. Today was a good example: the slightest mistake and the whole fleet passes you, and at one point we were second to last. Rayco (Tabares, tactician) says this is the best of the titles we’ve won, although for me the most special one is still the first, the one in 2022, because, honestly, I never thought I would win it; it was like a dream. I bought this boat in 2015 to try to win the King’s Cup. The class was created in 2017, and since then we’ve won three. I’ve been with the same team for eight years; we place a lot of importance on the human factor and have created a very close-knit family, which is a very effective asset in competition.”
The successful tetralogy of Baleària Team
In the Baleària Women’s Cup, María Bover’s team completely dominated. The Baleària Team RCNP led the standings at the end of each day and closed out the week by winning the three medal races that decided the championship. Bover has thus won her fourth Cup in the women’s category, following her victories in 2022, 2023, and 2025. Elena de Tomás’s Solgreen-Les Roches finished second, and Sara Momplet’s Pulperas Team finished third.
There has been fantastic teamwork and a really great atmosphere on board, which undoubtedly comes from working together as a team for many years. I think part of the secret to our success is that this year each of us had been working on our own sporting projects and we were really looking forward to getting back together, enjoying the regatta and, well… It was the best reunion we could have hoped for. We love each other very much and, after all, we’re like a family,“ explained María Bover.
Nola, champion of all categories
The final honor of the 44th Mapfre King’s Cup went to Nola. A comparison of the results from all ORC classes crowned the Estonian team as the overall corrected-time champion. Taavet Hinrikus’s boat, helmed by Margus Uudam and with Portuguese Olympic medalist Hugo Rocha as tactician, finished the competition with 12.5 points over eight races, with four wins and two third-place finishes as its worst results.
There were also titles in the Corinthian division – reserved for all-amateur crews – for L’Immens in the Uber ORC B and for the German yacht Meerblick, owned by Gabrielle Pohlmann, in the Azulmarino ORC C.
The awards ceremony at the Almudaina Palace in Palma officially brings to a close a week that, once again, has made Palma Bay the center of the international sailing world. The 44th Mapfre King’s Cup has produced six champions, new stories, and a host of names that have already gone down in the competition’s history.
But the end of one Cup is also the beginning of the next. The 45th Mapfre King’s Cup already has a date: it will be held from July 31 to August 7, 2027. Until then, this year’s results are a testament to a week in which the Cup has once again demonstrated why, more than four decades later, it remains one of the main summer sporting events in Palma.
