What the 2024 America’s Cup Changed
The America’s Cup has always been an unusual sporting contest. It is a yacht race governed partly by tradition, partly by private negotiation and partly by an engineering competition in which the boat can matter as much as the crew.
Barcelona’s 2024 edition pushed that formula further. The AC75 yachts did not move through the water in the conventional sense. Once sufficient speed was reached, they rose onto hydrofoils and travelled above it, turning a regatta founded in 1851 into a contest shaped by aerodynamics, software, simulation and precision engineering.
The 37th America’s Cup took place in Barcelona between August and October 2024. Emirates Team New Zealand ultimately defeated INEOS Britannia 7–2 in the final match, becoming the first continuous team to win three consecutive editions of the competition.
That result confirmed New Zealand’s dominance. The wider importance of the event, however, lay in what happened around the racing: Britain returned to the America’s Cup match after a 60-year absence, a women’s competition was introduced, Barcelona turned the regatta into a large urban waterfront event, and the technology moved another step away from conventional sailing.
Why We Are Still Talking About 2024
There was no America’s Cup match in 2026.
The competition does not take place annually or according to a fixed four-year Olympic-style calendar. Its timing is determined after each edition through negotiations involving the defending yacht club and the Challenger of Record.
The 37th edition was raced in Barcelona in 2024. The next edition, the 38th America’s Cup, is scheduled for Naples in spring and summer 2027. Italy was formally announced as the host country in May 2025.
The possible confusion arises because the route towards Naples includes racing and preparation during 2026. An official preliminary regatta is scheduled for Cagliari from 21 to 24 May 2026 as part of the “Road to Naples 2027”. Teams are also testing boats, training crews and developing new designs. These are preparatory events, not the America’s Cup match itself.
For that reason, an article discussing the completed Barcelona competition should refer to the 2024 America’s Cup or the 37th America’s Cup. An article looking forward should focus on the 2027 America’s Cup in Naples, with 2026 described as part of the development and preliminary-regatta period.
Sailing Became an Engineering Race
The most visible innovation in Barcelona was the second generation of the AC75, a 75-foot foiling monohull first introduced for the 2021 America’s Cup.
Traditional displacement yachts push their hulls through the water. AC75s use large foil arms to generate lift, allowing most of the hull to rise above the surface. With less resistance, the boats can exceed 50 knots under suitable conditions.
This changes the nature of the competition.
Sailors still need tactical judgement, physical endurance and the ability to read wind shifts. But their performance depends on an extensive technical operation involving naval architects, aerodynamicists, software engineers, data analysts and materials specialists.
Teams model thousands of design variations before manufacturing a component. Sensors capture data on foil position, sail shape, hydraulic pressure, wind and boat movement. Simulators allow crews to practise manoeuvres and test configurations before the yacht enters the water.
The advantage is no longer found through one dramatic invention such as the winged keel that helped Australia II end the New York Yacht Club’s 132-year winning streak in 1983. It is accumulated through small improvements across foil design, control systems, sail trim, crew coordination and software.
A fractionally more efficient turn can preserve enough speed to keep the boat on its foils. A poor manoeuvre can cause it to fall back into the water, creating a loss that may be impossible to recover during a short match race.
New Zealand Turned Technology Into Reliability
Emirates Team New Zealand entered Barcelona as the defender and therefore progressed directly to the final America’s Cup match. The five challengers first competed in the Louis Vuitton Cup to determine who would face it.
INEOS Britannia defeated Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli in the challenger final, giving Britain its first place in an America’s Cup match since 1964. The achievement was historically significant: although the original race was held against a British yacht fleet in 1851, Britain has never won the trophy.
The final initially appeared more competitive than its 7–2 score suggests. INEOS Britannia won two races and demonstrated that it could pressure the defender under the right conditions.
New Zealand nevertheless proved more consistent across changing winds and sea states. Its advantage was not simply outright speed. The team combined reliable boat handling with accurate tactical decisions and avoided the prolonged foil losses that can decide modern America’s Cup racing.
Its victory on 19 October 2024 completed a third consecutive triumph following wins in Bermuda in 2017 and Auckland in 2021.
The sequence is important because America’s Cup success is difficult to sustain. Rules, venues and technical requirements can change between editions. Teams must retain knowledge while rebuilding boats, software and sailing systems for a different contest.
New Zealand’s real advantage may therefore be organisational: the ability to preserve a high-performance engineering culture across several campaigns.
The Women’s America’s Cup Was More Than a Side Event
Barcelona also staged the inaugural Puig Women’s America’s Cup, raced in smaller AC40 foiling yachts.
The event was intended to create a more credible pathway for female sailors into a competition whose principal race crews have historically been overwhelmingly male. It allowed women to train in simulators and compete in the same high-speed foiling environment used by the main America’s Cup teams.
Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli won the inaugural competition.
The longer-term test is whether the event changes recruitment into the main teams rather than remaining a parallel competition. There are early signs of movement. Rules for the 2027 edition require at least one woman aboard each AC75 race crew, while Olympic champion Jo Aleh has been named to a main-team sailing role.
That does not resolve sailing’s wider access problem. America’s Cup campaigns remain expensive, technically specialised and concentrated in a small number of countries and professional networks.
But Barcelona created a pathway that did not previously exist at this level. Its value will be measured by whether women move from the separate competition into design, leadership and race positions across future campaigns.
Sustainability Claims Need Context
The organisers also presented Barcelona 2024 as a platform for cleaner marine technology.
Teams used more sustainably fuelled chase boats, including hydrogen-powered support vessels designed to follow the AC75s at high speed. Emirates Team New Zealand’s Chase Zero, for example, used two hydrogen fuel cells to supply most of its energy.
This is a relevant engineering experiment. Support boats must travel quickly and cover substantial distances, making them a demanding test for alternative propulsion.
It would be excessive, however, to describe the America’s Cup itself as environmentally benign. Building carbon-intensive racing yachts, transporting teams and equipment internationally and staging a large global sporting event all carry an environmental cost.
The stronger claim is that the competition can act as a development environment for technologies that may later have broader marine applications.
America’s Cup innovation has historically moved beyond racing, particularly in composite materials, sail design, weather analysis and hydrodynamics. Whether hydrogen-powered chase boats produce a similar transfer will depend on cost, fuel availability, storage and commercial reliability rather than their visibility during one regatta.
Barcelona Gained More Than Spectacle
Unlike remote offshore racing, the 2024 competition took place close to Barcelona’s urban waterfront. Team bases were located around Port Vell, with youth and women’s teams based at Port Olímpic.
A post-event study by the University of Barcelona and the Barcelona Capital Nàutica Foundation estimated that the event generated a positive economic impact of €1.034 billion for Barcelona and Catalonia. The figure includes direct, indirect and induced activity and should be understood as an economic-impact estimate rather than cash revenue received by the city.
Such studies deserve scrutiny. Major events frequently produce optimistic projections based on assumptions about tourism spending, additional economic activity and jobs. Some visitors may simply replace travellers who would otherwise have come to the city, while public spending and disruption also have costs.
Barcelona nevertheless had structural advantages as a host.
It already possessed a strong tourism market, international transport links, an established waterfront and maritime industries capable of supporting the teams. The event could therefore use and promote an existing urban economy rather than attempt to create a sailing destination from nothing.
The longer-term return will depend on whether infrastructure, technical knowledge and waterfront investment remain useful after the teams leave.
Naples Inherits a More Demanding Competition
The 38th America’s Cup will take place in Naples in 2027, the first time the event has been held in Italy.
The AC75 will remain the principal racing yacht, but the class rules have continued to evolve. The next edition will introduce changes including a guest-racer position and requirements for lower-emission chase boats powered by batteries, hydrogen or biofuels.
Naples also inherits greater expectations.
The boats must remain technologically extreme while producing racing that spectators can understand. The women’s pathway must lead to meaningful participation. Sustainability claims will require evidence beyond demonstration vessels. The host city will need to show that the public value extends beyond luxury sponsorship and temporary tourism.
The America’s Cup has survived because it has never been purely a sailing competition. It is a contest over rules, design, money, national ambition and control of the next event.
Barcelona 2024 did not resolve the tension between tradition and technology. It showed that the tension is now the event’s principal attraction. The boats may look increasingly like aircraft, but the oldest question in the competition remains unchanged: who can interpret the rules more intelligently than everyone else?
