The International Jumping Riders Club built a competition twenty-five years ago on a premise so simple it has never needed amending: take the ten best riders in the world, put them in one arena on one night, and let the rankings do the arguing. The 2026 edition, confirmed this week, is the twenty-fifth running of it, and the line-up suggests the formula has lost nothing.
Richard Vogel heads the entry as world number one and team world champion. Scott Brash returns as defending champion. Steve Guerdat comes back as the only rider to have won the thing three times, and as the reigning individual world champion into the bargain.
The ten qualified riders, in world ranking order, are Vogel, Kent Farrington, Shane Sweetnam, Guerdat, McLain Ward, Brash, Ben Maher, Nina Mallevaey, Daniel Deusser and Daniel Bluman. Seven nations are represented. Sophie Hinners stands as first reserve.
Martin Fuchs winner of the Rolex IJRC Top 10 Final at the CHI Geneva 2024. Image: © M. Froment for EQuerry Co
Ben Maher and Point Break qualified for Rolex IJRC Top 10 Final at the CHI Geneva. Here at the CHI Geveva 2024. Image: © M. Froment for EQuerry Co
Mallevaey, and a Line That Has Not Been Crossed Since 2016
The most significant name on that list belongs to the rider least likely to be described as a favourite.
Nina Mallevaey sits eighth in the world rankings and qualifies on the strength of a season of relentless consistency rather than a single headline result. She made her Royal Windsor debut in May having broken into the world's top ten, anchored the French team that won the final Longines League of Nations qualifier at St Tropez-Gassin in September, and has spent the year being quietly excellent at an age when most riders are still learning the circuit.
She will be the only woman in the field at Palexpo, and if Hinners is called up from reserve there would be two. That would be the first time since 2016 that more than one female rider has contested the Final, a statistic that says rather more about the structure of the world rankings than about the depth of talent available.
Farrington's Unfinished Business
Among Vogel's likeliest challengers is Kent Farrington, who was runner-up in 2025 and arrives chasing a third Top 10 title to add to those he won in 2015 and 2019.
Farrington's 2026 has been the most complete season of his career. He opened it by winning the $1 million Rolex US Equestrian Open Grand Prix at Wellington with Greya in March, took the Longines FEI Jumping World Cup Final at Fort Worth in April on four faults across four days, won the $400,000 Longines Grand Prix at the Hampton Classic in August, and spent much of the autumn as world number one. He also won the Rolex Grand Prix of Geneva in 2025, which means he knows precisely what this arena asks of a horse in December.
Only one rider has ever completed a Top 10 hat-trick. Guerdat managed it with Jalisca Solier in 2010, Alamo in 2018 and Venard de Cerisy in 2023. Four riders have won twice: Ludger Beerbaum, Rodrigo Pessoa, Meredith Michaels-Beerbaum and Farrington himself.
Why the Format Has Survived
Eleonora Ottaviani, the IJRC's director, has made the point that the competition runs today on the same format it used in its first edition, and that what strikes her is how well a contest conceived twenty-five years ago as a pioneering and deliberately television-friendly idea has held up.
She is right, and the reason is that the Top 10 Final solves a problem the rest of the calendar cannot. Across a season the world's best riders meet constantly but rarely all at once, split between Grand Slam Majors, World Cup qualifiers, the Global Champions Tour and championship squads. One night in December, with ten riders and nothing else on the card, is the closest the sport gets to a definitive answer.
The Centenary Week
The timing carries extra weight in 2026. The Top 10 Final reaches its twenty-fifth anniversary in the same year that CHI Geneva celebrates its centenary, and the Final itself returns to Palexpo for the twenty-first time.
The week is also the final Rolex Grand Slam Major of the calendar year, with Ben Maher arriving as the live contender after taking the $5 million CPKC 'International' at Spruce Meadows in September. Maher won the Top 10 Final in 2021 and is on the entry list here too, which gives him two reasons to be in Geneva in good form.
The riders' parade begins at 19:45 on Friday 11 December, with the opening round following at 20:15.
Ben Maher's Grand Slam journey began at Spruce Meadows in September, and our guide to how the Grand Slam bonus structure works is here [LINK anchor: "our guide to how the Grand Slam bonus structure works is here" → Rolex Grand Slam explainer].
