Cagliari opens America’s Cup prelims as eight AC40s hit the water
Eight AC40s launched the Road to Naples 2027 in Cagliari, giving the first real look at who is sharpest before Naples hosts the Match.
Cagliari opened the first meaningful on-water read of the new America’s Cup cycle as eight AC40 foiling catamarans from five teams took to the Gulf of Angels off the Port of Cagliari. The Louis Vuitton 38th America’s Cup Preliminary Regatta Sardinia began on May 21 with an opening press conference and immediately shifted attention from planning to execution, giving the fleet its first racing benchmark on the Road to Naples 2027.
The regatta runs through May 24, with practice racing setting the tone before points racing begins. That matters because this is not just another warm-up. It is the first public chance to see which programs have kept their speed work, systems and crew work clean enough to convert preparation into results. Naples will host the 38th America’s Cup Match on July 10, 2027, the first time Italy has staged the event, and a second preliminary regatta is already set for Naples from September 24 to 27, 2026.
One of the most interesting developments in Sardinia is the two-boat format. Teams can field two boats at once, which opens the door for a senior crew to race alongside Women’s and Youth sailors in the same event. Emirates Team New Zealand, Luna Rossa and the GB1/Athena Pathway pairing are among the entries using that approach, making Cagliari a useful test not only of outright pace but of squad depth and how smoothly crews can be shuffled between programs.
For catamaran watchers, the AC40 is still the sharp end of the story. The 40-foot foiling class has already been used in preliminary regattas and in Women’s and Youth America’s Cup pathways, and it was named World Sailing’s Boat of the Year for 2023. In a fleet like this, the telling signs are in the details: how quickly a boat comes onto the foils, how much height it carries through maneuvers, how tidy the gybes look under pressure and how well the crew protects speed when the boats are bunched up.
Cagliari is the first place this cycle stops being theoretical. With eight AC40s on the water and Naples now fixed on the calendar, the Sardinia prelims are the first clean read on which teams can handle the boat, trust their combinations and start building a pecking order before the road to Italy’s first America’s Cup Match really accelerates.
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