M32 World Championship 2026 opens in Newport
by M32 World 28 Sep 16:23 PDT
28 September - 3 October 2026
2025 M32 World Championship © Hannah Lee Noll
The season ends here. The title fight starts now in Newport, Rhode Island, USA. Who will have the last word?
After four events in Miami, three in Newport and an entire season of training, racing and learning, ten M32 teams have made weigh-in and are completing measurement inspections at Midtown Race Club for the biggest prize of the year. The 2026 M32 World Championship begins Wednesday in Newport.
We're about to see a matchup for the ages.
Miles Julien's YoungBlood enters Worlds after the most consistent regular season in the fleet. They began 2026 by winning the opening Miami event, went on to claim the overall Miami Winter Series, then added the Newport Summer Series and M32 North American Championship last month.
But there is one rather important asterisk: defending World Champion Surge missed North Americans.
Ryan McKillen's Surge has been the most dangerous team at the individual regattas it entered this year, winning the April Miami event, New York Yacht Club Annual Regatta, and U.S. Nationals in succession. Now the defending champions arrive at Worlds with a reshuffled lineup. Mitchell Callahan takes the helm this week and Jeremy Wilmot steps in as tactician. Injuries may have changed the names in a few positions, but the process remains.
"It's certainly a great process they have going, and it starts from the top down with Ryan," Callahan said. "The crew is fantastic. I'm super grateful to step in for a few regattas and be a very, very small part of that and just drive the boat."
As for the expectation? "A win," Callahan said.
Callahan knows the program. This will be just his third regatta driving Surge, but the team has spent five years refining an approach built around preparation, communication, data, and keeping the larger championship in view. Surge proved exactly how effective that can be when McKillen and Taylor Canfield peaked at the right moment to win the 2025 World Championship in Miami.
YoungBlood and Surge may own two of the loudest storylines, but there is nothing resembling a two-boat championship.
Every chance Tuuci gets, Tuuci strikes. Cy Thompson and the team finished second at North Americans by just three points and tied YoungBlood for the Newport Summer Series before losing the title on a tiebreak. Thompson is back at the helm this week with Olympic gold medalist Tom Burton calling tactics.
Pursuit has been building toward this regatta all summer on home waters. Bill Ruh's Newport-based, all-American team finished second at U.S. Nationals and has kept the same group together through months of training and racing in the venue where Worlds will be decided. "We've been preparing for this regatta all summer long," Ruh said. "We've had the same crew together. We've spent plenty of days on the water practicing and training and racing."
Midtown Racing brings another hometown program into the fight. Larry Phillips and crew finished on the podium twice during the Newport season and now get to race Worlds from their own dock at Midtown Race Club, the host venue for the championship.
Rated X carries one of the deepest résumés in the fleet. Under Jake Julien, the team spent years at the front of the M32 class, building a long-running campaign that culminated in the 2024 World Championship. Now led by Charlie Julien, the next generation has already shown it can keep the program moving forward. Charlie won an event in his first season at the helm, took the March Miami regatta this year and finished second overall in the 2026 Winter Series.
That makes three Julien-led "J-Racing" teams on the starting line. Miles on YoungBlood, Charlie on Rated X and Bobby Julien on Dingbat. Dingbat started the year with a second-place finish in January and brings another stacked international crew to Newport, including the always formidable tactician Victor Diaz de Leon.
ChinaOne.Ningbo returns with Paul Campbell-James driving alongside Garth Ellingham, Louis Brake, Jake Lidell and Liu Ming. The team joined the Newport regular season at North Americans and now gets another crack at the fleet on the biggest stage. Jon Desmond's FinalFinal continues its progression through the class after celebrating its first M32 race victory earlier this summer, while Håkan Svensson's Cape Crow Vikings return with an all-Swedish lineup after racing throughout both the Miami and Newport seasons. The Vikings have seen steady improvement all season long under new tactician Sam Gilmour.
M32 Race Director Mattias Dahlström has watched the entire season build toward this week: "We've always had the tradition that our World Championship is the last event of the season, so it's been quite a buildup. But now we're finally here." And when the racing starts, the equipment offers nowhere to hide. The M32 is a tightly controlled one-design class. Boats and sails are regulated, with no development race hiding in the background. "Everything is exactly the same. Even the sails are one-design. There is nothing to develop within the rule. It's really up to the crew to make it happen. It's a competition of the sailors."
A target of 19 races is scheduled across four days, beginning Wednesday and finishing Saturday afternoon.
As always is true in this fleet, the social schedule is just as full. Midtown Race Club opens the week with a traditional Rhode Island clam bake tonight. The fleet will return to the dock each afternoon for food, live music and waterfront gatherings before Saturday's World Championship awards ceremony and after-party.
Technology has been built into M32 racing for years. The class pioneered the use of a fully automated racecourse, with robotic marks controlled digitally, and was a beta tester and early adopter of Vakaros RaceSense. While other classes are now beginning to adopt similar technology, this has long been standard operating procedure in the M32 fleet.
It is the final event of a season that has already produced plenty of plot twists. YoungBlood has been the model of consistency. Surge has won more of the regattas it entered. Tuuci has stayed within striking distance all year. Rated X showed its speed in Miami. Pursuit and Midtown found another gear in Newport.
None of it earns a single point Wednesday.
Everybody starts at zero.
Worlds is here.
2026 M32 World Championship Roster
ChinaOne.Ningbo: Paul Campbell-James (GBR), Garth Ellingham (NZL), Louis Brake (AUS), Jake Lidell (AUS), Liu Ming (CHN)
Dingbat: Bobby Julien (USA), Victor Diaz de Leon (USA), Tom Ramshaw (CAN), Max Salminen (SWE), Alan Johnson (USA)
FinalFinal: Jon Desmond (USA), Chris Steele (NZL), Tom Loughborough (USA), Ricky McGarvie (AUS), Brian Porter (USA)
Midtown Racing: Larry Phillips (USA), Sam Hallowell (USA), Mark Spearman (AUS), Mark Bulkeley (GBR), Malcolm Lamphere (USA)
Pursuit: Bill Ruh (USA), Andrew Campbell (USA), Mac Agnese (USA), Peter Kinney (USA), Scott Ewing (USA)
Rated X: Charlie Julien (USA), David Gilmour (SWE), Jeff McCooey (USA), Julius Hallström (SWE), Rhys Mara (SWE)
Surge: Mitchell Callahan (USA) / Ryan McKillen (USA), Jeremy Wilmot (AUS/USA), Ted Hackney (AUS/USA), Sam Loughborough (USA), Will Tiller (NZL)
Tuuci: Cy Thompson (ISV), Tom Burton (AUS), C.T. Olander (USA), John Wallace (USA), Charlie McHugh (USA)
YoungBlood: Miles Julien (USA), Carlos Robles (ESP/USA), Bernardo Freitas (POR), Moritz Spitzauer (AUT), Leonard Takahashi (NZL)
Cape Crow Vikings: Håkan Svensson (SWE), Sam Gilmour (SWE), Jakob Wilson (SWE), Rasmus Alnebeck (SWE), Hugo Christensson (SWE)
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