Schönbrunn Palace Hosts Vienna's 2026 Title Showdown
Elite Jumpers Return to Austria
The Global Champions Tour of Vienna returns to Schönbrunn Palace from 24 to 27 September, arriving at a decisive stage in the 2026 title race as the world's leading show jumping riders compete for maximum championship points.
The four-day fixture runs at the Ehrenhof of Schönbrunn Palace, the palace's formal entrance courtyard, marking the event's second edition after its 2025 debut. For 2026 the format expands to include international dressage for the first time, alongside the established GCT and its team competition, the Global Champions League (GCL). Run commercially as the Longines Global Champions Tour, the circuit is marking its 20th anniversary season, with the GCL marking its 10th. The Vienna stage sits between the Valkenswaard leg already completed and the season's closing stages in Rome, Cairo and Rabat, ahead of the Playoffs in Riyadh. A Grand Prix win at any stage carries a maximum of 40 championship points, a return large enough to reorder the standings in a single result.
Vienna's first edition ran as Stage 13 of the 2025 Championship Race, staged over three days from 26 to 28 September at the same Schönbrunn Palace site. That debut paired a Saturday evening GCL team competition under lights with the individual Grand Prix of Vienna, won by Philipp Weishaupt aboard the 9YO Kilmister ahead of Harrie Smolders on Monaco and Bertram Allen on Qonquest de Rigo. The win carried a Golden Ticket to the Super Grand Prix at the 2025 GC Prague Playoffs, and Weishaupt returns to the Austrian capital in 2026 looking to defend the title. For this year's edition, organisers have added a fourth day and the international dressage programme, with the full dressage schedule still to be confirmed alongside the established show jumping and team competition calendar.
Among those arriving in the Austrian capital with the title in view is Abdel Said, the Egyptian-born Belgian rider who competes for the Qatar-backed Wathnan Show Jumping Team. Said moved into the outright championship lead by the London stage in July, with 187 points from nine rounds, and has continued to press for the podium through Cannes and St Tropez since, most recently aboard Wathnan Zasou vom Claashof. Said will face a deep field of rivals looking to disrupt the standings before the season's remaining stages run out.
The international entry is deep. Former World No.1 Henrik von Eckermann heads to Vienna alongside two-time champion Edwina Tops-Alexander and Maikel van der Vleuten, joined by established names including Christian Ahlmann, Cian O'Connor, Denis Lynch, Jur Vrieling, Peder Fredricson, Niels Bruynseels and Philipp Weishaupt. The GCL field is drawn from the same entry, since teams compete on the same weekend as the individual tour. Launched in 2016, the GCL unites riders of different nationalities on mixed teams that must each include at least one rider under the age of 25, with team scores carried forward from an opening round into a second, decisive round and no score dropped between the two. Both the team competition and the individual Grand Prix are run at CSI5* level, the sport's highest international tier.
Eckermann and Rivals Set the Tone
Riders who have already shaped the 2026 season return to Vienna looking to build on early results. Katrin Eckermann, who opened the season by winning the Grand Prix of Miami Beach aboard Iron Dames Dialou Blue PS, returns to the tour in search of another result at the top of the field. That Miami Beach victory was Eckermann's third at the venue, following wins there in 2022 and 2023, and it secured the maximum 40 points on offer to open her championship campaign, with the podium completed by Jack Whitaker and Piergiorgio Bucci. Antoine Ermann, who finished on the podium in Shanghai, is also entered, while Yuri Mansur arrives having finished on the podium at the most recent stage in Valkenswaard.
The field also includes Sophie Hinners, Sanne Thijssen, Michael Pender, Tom Wachman, Giacomo Casadei, Thibault Philippaerts, Olivier Philippaerts, Emanuele Camilli, Gudrun Patteet, Eduardo Álvarez Aznar and Kim Emmen. For the riders still within reach of the title, the calculation is becoming simple: the stages left to close a gap in the standings are running out, and every rail and every second in Vienna carries weight toward the final result.
Kühner Leads the Home Contingent
Max Kühner returns to compete in front of the Austrian crowd on home ground, joined by fellow Austrian riders Katharina Rhomberg, Felix Koller, Christoph Obernauer, Bianca Babanitz, Fritz Kogelnig and Wolfgang Ötschmaier. Seven Austrian riders make up the home contingent for 2026, with Kühner and Rhomberg both having competed on home soil at the 2025 debut, giving this year's line-up a returning core rather than a wholly new group.
The Vienna stage takes place in the Ehrenhof of Schönbrunn Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage site that marked the tour's return to the Austrian capital in 2025 under a five-year agreement running to 2029, after the tour had last competed in Vienna in 2016. Founder and president Jan Tops has said, “My vision is clear. Only the best for the best.” The addition of dressage to the 2026 programme extends that approach into a second discipline at the same Vienna site, bringing two of the sport's leading disciplines together in one location for the first time and giving the Austrian capital a broader sporting and cultural programme across the four days than its 2025 debut carried.
With Championship places still to be settled, an in-form Wathnan-backed leader defending his advantage, Austrian riders competing in front of a home crowd, and an entry list built around proven Grand Prix winners, Vienna adds further pressure to a title race with few remaining opportunities to close the gap before the season moves on to Rome, Cairo and Rabat.
For the GCL, points earned in Vienna also feed into a separate team standings race that runs alongside the individual Championship, giving team owners as much reason as individual riders to target a strong result before the tour leaves Europe for its final three stops. The event begins on 24 September.