The women will close the show on the Championship Course at The Boat Race 2027 — the first time the Women’s Boat Race will be the final race of the day. The change marks the Women’s Boat Race centenary year.
The announcement came at today’s Presidents’ Challenge at Somerset House, where Oxford and Cambridge formally opened the season and unveiled two new trophies designed by Chanel. The men’s and women’s cups are equal in size — a possible first among major sporting events, according to Chanel’s own research — and will be awarded for the first time next April.
The men’s Blue Boats will race at 15.40 on Sunday 11 April 2027, followed by the women at 16.40. That reverses the order of the two races and gives the centenary contest the final slot on the Putney-to-Mortlake course.
“But this year, the focus will firmly and quite rightly be on the women, and we celebrate The Boat Race being open to everybody,” said Siobhan Cassidy, chair of The Boat Race Company.
From the Isis to the final slot
The first Women’s Boat Race took place on the Isis in Oxford on 15 March 1927. The crews rowed separately and were judged on speed and style, a very different contest from the side-by-side racing their successors will undertake a century later.
The event was held intermittently before becoming a regular fixture in the mid-1960s. In 2015, the women moved to the Championship Course, joining the men on the same day and stretch of the tidal Thames. Last April, the women raced an hour before the men, with the reserve races between them.
Cassidy pointed to the shared training demands and broadcast platform of today’s crews. Women’s rowing entered the Olympic programme in 1976, almost half a century after Oxford and Cambridge’s first encounter.
The launch brought that history into the room. Diaries belonging to Margaret Teify Rhys, known as Tiffy, Cambridge’s cox in 1927, were displayed, and her nephew Richard Rhys O’Brien attended alongside alumnae whose races dated back to the 1960s.
“It’s because of you that I’m standing here and they’re standing there,” Cassidy said to the former competitors, with this season’s students gathered for the challenges.
Silver cups inside Chanel frames
Arnaud Chastaingt, who leads Chanel’s watch creation studio, designed the new trophies, which Thomas Lyte made in London. Each combines a sterling silver cup in a traditional style and an aluminium frame, rectangular in shape, that runs through its centre.
The women’s trophy is enclosed by a polished white frame marked with matte black lines; the men’s frame is polished black and also has matte black lines. The J12 watch’s black and white ceramic is reflected in these colours, and its name is also used for the race.
These are Chanel’s first sporting trophies. Their arrival coincides with the third year of the house’s title and timing partnership with The Boat Race, ahead of the men’s bicentenary in 2029.
Frédéric Grangié, president of Chanel watches and fine jewellery, said Chastaingt attended the 2025 race, travelled aboard a launch and spoke to rowers afterwards before developing the design. The aluminium frames were intended to keep the trophies light enough for the winning crews to lift.
Making the cups fit those frames required Thomas Lyte to build each silver trophy in full, then cut it precisely in half and reassemble the halves on either side. The silversmith had to develop a new method for the construction.
“We have made thousands of trophies, but we have never cut one in half before,” said Kevin Baker, Thomas Lyte’s chief executive.
It took 120 fixings for each 50cm-high cup, and specially made tools were needed to work in detailed spots near the handles and lid. The craftsmen also had to fit handworked silver to engineered aluminium made to much finer tolerances.
Development took almost two years, with more than 320 hours of workshop craftsmanship devoted to each trophy. The design incorporates the race logo and imagery of the oars and Thames, while the bases record the previous winners.
Oxford defend the women’s title
The Presidents’ Challenge follows the familiar convention: the previous season’s losing club challenges the winners, who accept on behalf of their university.
Oxford men’s president Alex Sullivan issued the challenge to Cambridge’s Simon Hatcher. In the women’s event, Cambridge president Eloise Etherington challenged Oxford’s Kyra Delray, who raced in both 2025 and 2026. Both challenges were accepted.
Oxford enter the women’s centenary season as defending women’s champions after winning by three lengths in a time of 19 minutes 15 seconds in exceptionally rough conditions last April. Their first victory since 2016 ended Cambridge’s run of eight consecutive wins.
Cambridge’s men held off Oxford’s challenge to win by three and a half lengths in 17 minutes 57 seconds, securing a fourth consecutive victory. The overall records now stand at 49–31 to Cambridge in the women’s race and 89–81 in the men’s.
Cambridge’s Patrick Wilde, who learnt to row on the Tideway, said returning to the course also meant returning to friends and family on the banks.
“It goes right through the heart of the city and it’s completely free and you can come and watch,” Wilde said.
For Cambridge newcomer Jessica Martin, speaking in her third week at the university, the daily experience within the squad was already giving the season its character.
“It’s just so lovely to be part of a squad that you genuinely feel supported by,” Martin said. “They’ve got your best interests at heart. It genuinely makes all the difference.”
