The great tournaments

Polo's calendar orbits three poles — Argentina's spring, England's summer and Florida's winter — with a lengthening tail of international destinations. These are the events that define the sport.

Argentina: the summit

• The Argentine Open at Palermo, Buenos Aires — “the Cathedral” — is polo's absolute pinnacle, contested since 1893 by the highest-rated teams ever assembled;
• It crowns the Triple Crown alongside the Hurlingham Open and Tortugas Open each spring (roughly September–December);
• Argentine club dynasties — most famously La Dolfina and Ellerstina in the modern era — carry rivalries here that the rest of the sport watches like theatre.

England: the summer season

• The Queen's Cup at Guards Polo Club (Windsor) and the British Open Gold Cup at Cowdray Park, Sussex, headline the English high-goal season (roughly May–July);
• The season doubles as a social institution — royal patronage, garden-party crowds — but the polo underneath is world class;
• Coronation Cup day at Smith's Lawn adds the international exhibition fixture.

United States: the winter capital

• The US Open Polo Championship concludes the American high-goal season at Wellington, Florida — the northern winter's polo capital, where much of the world's professional talent spends January to April;
• The Gauntlet of Polo series (C.V. Whitney Cup, USPA Gold Cup, US Open) structures the Florida spring.

The wider map

Sotogrande's summer season (Spain), Deauville (France), Dubai and Gulf polo's winter circuit, St. Moritz's snow polo, and growing scenes across Asia — including Thailand's polo country — fill the calendar year-round. Every event publishes its own dates annually; check official tournament and association sites for the current season. Our guide to famous clubs and destinations covers many of these grounds in more depth, for anyone planning a trip around the calendar rather than just reading about it.

How these tournaments are structured

Most major open championships run on a knockout or round-robin-into-knockout format across the tournament's weeks, with teams selected by combined handicap where a cap applies, or open to any team where it doesn't — the Argentine Open notably imposing no handicap ceiling, which is part of why it draws the sport's very best. More on how handicap caps shape entry.

Olympic and international polo

Polo has an Olympic past, having featured as a full medal sport at several early-twentieth-century Games. It isn't part of the current Olympic programme, but the Federation of International Polo runs its own world championships at capped handicap levels, and international exhibition fixtures like the Coronation Cup keep a national-team flavour alive alongside the club and patron-team tournaments that otherwise dominate the calendar. More on this history.

Women's tournaments

Alongside the mixed-team events above, dedicated women's tournaments have grown steadily at both club and international level, giving the women's game its own competitive ladder in addition to the mixed-team polo described throughout this page. Read more about women's polo.