The Road to Fort Worth: Inside the 2025/2026 World Cup Season

It is March 2026, the indoor season is drawing to a close, and the road to Fort Worth is almost complete. The 46th Longines FEI Jumping World Cup Final is three weeks away. Scott Brash sits at the top of the world rankings for the third time in his career. Willem Greve has just done something that almost never happens -- winning three World Cup legs in a single season with two different horses. And the Longines League of Nations has landed in Ocala this week with the world's top nations ready to fight for points. If you have been watching closely, this has been one of the more compelling indoor seasons in recent memory. If you have not -- here is everything that has happened, everyone worth knowing, and what to watch for as the season reaches its climax.

Scott Brash: World Number One, Again

At the end of January 2026, Scott Brash climbed from second to first place in the Longines Rankings with 3,459 points, ending Kent Farrington's eight-month reign at the top -- exactly ten years after Brash last held the number one position. For those keeping count, this is the third time in his career that the Scottish rider has sat at the summit of the sport. It is a remarkable achievement for a man who began riding ponies in Peebles, Scotland, and who now operates out of a state-of-the-art yard in West Sussex with some of the most accomplished horses in the world.

When asked about the ranking, Brash was characteristically measured. "For me, reaching number one is never about just a few recent results," he said. "It's something that is built quietly and patiently over many years. With horses, success comes from the time you invest in them, the trust you develop, and knowing it's a long-term journey. That's why it feels so special to stand here with such remarkable horses, all of whom feel at the very top of their game."

The horses he is referring to are the Hello string -- all named with the prefix by long-time owners Lady Harris and Lady Kirkham. Among his current top horses are Hello Jefferson, his twice Olympic showjumping partner, and Hello Folie, with whom he contested the 2025 Europeans. Hello Chadora Lady won the Rolex IJRC top ten final in December 2025, adding another chapter to what has been an extraordinary recent run of form across multiple horses.

Brash's career credentials speak for themselves: team gold at the London 2012 Olympics with Hello Sanctos, team gold again at Paris 2024 with Hello Jefferson, and in 2015 the Rolex Grand Slam of Show Jumping -- becoming the first and still only rider in history to win Geneva, Aachen, and Spruce Meadows in a single year, claiming the sport's biggest individual prize of one million euros. In September 2025 he won the Spruce Meadows Rolex Masters Grand Prix for an unprecedented third time. The records keep accumulating.

Willem Greve and the Hat-Trick That Almost Never Happens

If Scott Brash has been the story of the rankings this season, Willem Greve has been the story of the World Cup. The 42-year-old Dutchman has done something that is genuinely rare in a circuit as competitive as the Western European League -- he has won three legs in a single season, and he has done it with two different horses.

Greve struck twice with Pretty Woman van't Paradijs N.O.P. in Stuttgart and La Coruña, before adding a third with Grandorado TN N.O.P. in Gothenburg in February -- a display of exceptional form and enviable depth that has propelled him to the top of the Western European League standings on 81 points. Behind him, defending champion Julien Epaillard of France sits second on 69 points, and Germany's Daniel Deusser is third on 66.

The Gothenburg win was particularly special. Grandorado TN N.O.P. is a 15-year-old KWPN stallion by Eldorado vd Zeshoek out of Carolus II -- a horse Greve has been campaigning since the stallion was competing in the international five-year-old young horse classes back in 2016. A full decade of partnership, culminating in one of the biggest wins of the season. "I'm over the moon for my horse," Greve said after the victory. "Grandorado has been a great horse for many years, and he deserves to have this win. This one is for him."

Greve is also refreshingly direct about the reality of life at the top of the sport. "Being at the top of the world rankings doesn't get me any discounts at the supermarket," he said in a recent interview -- a line that tells you everything about his approach. While many of his colleagues followed the money to Doha, Abu Dhabi, and Wellington, Greve stayed on the European circuit, made a plan for his horses, and executed it quietly and methodically. The results speak for themselves.

The Season in Full: Who Did What and Where

The 2025/2026 Longines FEI Jumping World Cup Western European League has now completed twelve of its thirteen legs, with only Helsinki remaining before the field heads to Fort Worth. After Basel this week -- the first World Cup leg of 2026 on the European calendar -- the series moves on to Leipzig, Amsterdam, Bordeaux, Gothenburg, and Helsinki before the Final. The competition for the remaining qualification spots has been intense throughout.

The names that have defined this season's European circuit read like a who's who of the sport's current elite. Gregory Wathelet of Belgium, Marcus Ehning and Christian Ahlmann of Germany, world number six Richard Vogel, world number nine Julien Epaillard of France, Steve Guerdat and Martin Fuchs of Switzerland -- these are the riders who have been contesting the sharp end of the leaderboard week after week through the indoor season.

France's Epaillard deserves particular mention. The Frenchman contested nine legs and collected points in seven, including victory in Amsterdam aboard the 13-year-old homebred gelding Donatello d'Auge -- finishing the regular season second in the standings on 69 points despite having no pressure to chase qualification as defending champion. That kind of consistency across nine shows is what separates the genuinely elite from the rest of the field.

Why the World Cup Final Matters More This Year

The 2026 World Cup Final at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas, running from April 8 to 12, carries unusual significance this season -- and not only because of the quality of the field. A string of top European riders have declined to contest the Final, choosing instead to focus on the World Championships in Aachen this summer. In the dressage discipline especially, the withdrawals have been significant -- top Western European League riders declining the trip to Texas in order to protect their horses for the Aachen campaign.

For the jumping Final, the field remains formidable. Around 40 to 50 riders from the global rankings will compete across three days -- a speed class, a two-round class, and the Grand Prix -- with the winner claiming one of the most prestigious indoor titles in the sport. Greve heads there as the Western European League leader with a strategic decision still to make: does he take Pretty Woman, with whom he has been so consistent this season, or Grandorado, who produced that brilliant Gothenburg performance?

"Actually, the first plan was Pretty Woman, but Grandorado is also in great shape, so we'll see," Greve said after Gothenburg. "We have now two weeks off... but first, we will enjoy this." That is the pleasant problem of a rider who has built his campaign on genuine depth rather than dependence on a single horse. It is also, for those who follow bloodlines closely, a fascinating strategic question -- two KWPN mares with very different profiles heading into the same championship class.

The League of Nations Comes to Ocala

While the World Cup season wraps up in Europe, the Longines League of Nations has moved to North America. The League of Nations 2026 is in Ocala, Florida from March 18 to 22, bringing the world's leading show jumping nations to one of North America's premier equestrian venues. Teams from Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States are competing for crucial league points. Team strategy, consistency across rounds, and individual excellence all play decisive roles -- this is the format that most closely resembles Olympic competition, and it matters accordingly.

The Ocala leg is particularly important as a warm-up and ranking event ahead of the Fort Worth Final. Nations Cup results feed directly into Olympic qualification pathways, and the combinations that perform well here will carry momentum into the spring championship season. For European riders competing stateside, it is also a chance to acclimatize horses to American conditions before the World Cup Final three weeks later.

Aachen, the World Championships, and What the Summer Holds

Beyond Fort Worth, the summer looms large. The FEI Jumping World Championships return to CHIO Aachen -- the sport's most hallowed venue -- and the shadow of that event has shaped this entire indoor season. It is why some riders pulled back from the World Cup Final. It is why Greve is managing his horses so carefully through the spring. It is why the European circuit has felt, at times, like one long preparation for a single defining moment in July.

Aachen in a championship year is something different from Aachen in any other year. The CHIO itself -- the Concours Hippique International Officiel, the most prestigious multi-discipline show on earth -- is already extraordinary. When it hosts a World Championship, the atmosphere, the scrutiny, and the stakes are elevated to a level that even veteran competitors describe as unlike anything else in the sport. Richard Vogel, the 2025 European champion, will arrive as title holder. Brash, Greve, Maher, Epaillard, Farrington -- the entire top ten of the Longines Rankings will be building toward the same moment.

That is what makes this stretch of the season so compelling to follow. Every start, every clear round, every World Cup qualifier is a data point in a much longer calculation. The horses are being managed for a summer that has not arrived yet. The riders are making decisions now that will determine how they arrive in Aachen in peak form. The sport, at this level, is as much a game of strategy and patience as it is of riding ability. As Brash put it when he reclaimed the number one ranking: "Success comes from the time you invest in horses, the trust you develop, and knowing it's a long-term journey."

At the highest levels of this sport, that is not a philosophy. It is the only approach that works.

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Three Weeks to Fort Worth

The indoor season ends in Helsinki next week. Then the field travels to Texas, where the 46th World Cup Final will sort out who has had the best season, whose horses are peaking at the right moment, and who has made the right strategic calls across eight months of qualifying competition. After that, the outdoor season begins in earnest, and the road to Aachen opens up.

It is a genuinely great time to be watching this sport. The world number one is a 40-year-old Scotsman from Peebles who has been at the top of this sport for fifteen years and shows no signs of slowing down. The World Cup leader is a 42-year-old Dutchman who won three legs with two different horses and then said the ranking does not get him a discount at the supermarket. The defending World Cup champion declined to go to Fort Worth because she is focused on Aachen. The entire top ten of the world rankings is preparing for a summer that will define careers.

Pull up the live stream. This is the good part.