The 2026 Endurance World Championship: moved, and still to come.

Status on 21 October 2026

How the 2026 championship moved

When the FEI gave the 2026 World Championships to Aachen, the award covered six disciplines and left out endurance, which was awarded separately and first set for AlUla in Saudi Arabia (CHIO Aachen, 2023; Horse Sport, 3 July 2026).

1. The dates moved first. Early material, as summarised in search results from US Equestrian and AlUla pages, gave 17 October 2026; later reports gave 28 or 29 November 2026. We could not confirm which was final. Horse Sport gives 28 November as the AlUla date at the time of the withdrawal.
2. 29 June 2026: the Royal Commission for AlUla told the FEI it could no longer organise the championship "as planned" because of the geopolitical situation (Horse Sport, 3 July 2026).
3. 1 July 2026: the FEI Board ended the host agreement and reopened bidding (Horse Sport).
4. 28 July 2026: the FEI Board confirmed Butheeb as the new host, with the championship set for 14 to 20 December 2026 (Your Horse, 6 August 2026).

So, across the sources in our research, the championship has carried four different dates: 17 October, 28 November, 29 November and now 14 to 20 December 2026. The December dates are the only ones tied to the current host. We did not check whether any FEI page still lists AlUla.

How endurance competitions are run

This is the principle only, as researchers describe it; the full discipline is explained on endurance. Horse health questions belong with a vet.

• FEI endurance rides of 80 to 160 km are split into three to six stages called loops, and vets inspect every horse at the end of each loop and record the findings (Bennet and colleagues, Equine Veterinary Journal, 2020).
• That inspection is called a vet gate, and heart rate is the main criterion assessed there (Younes and colleagues, Frontiers in Physiology, 2016). Citing the 2016 FEI Endurance Rules, the same paper says a horse whose heart rate is still above 64 beats per minute after 20 minutes of recovery fails and leaves the competition; we have not confirmed that threshold for 2026.
• Results are decided on time, but a horse must also pass the final veterinary examination to be classified, according to a search summary of a HorseSport.com championship report.
• From 1 January 2026, the FEI Endurance Rules (Art 838.1) define a combination's average speed, used for its speed restrictions, as the average over all completed loops, including a loop that ends in "Failed to Qualify". The 2026 rules also add a definition of catastrophic injury (US Equestrian's outline of the 2026 FEI rule changes).

Tryon 2018: the championship that was cancelled

The last endurance world title contested inside the multi-discipline World Equestrian Games did not finish. The Tryon Daily Bulletin (14 September 2018) reported that the race opening the Tryon Games in North Carolina on 12 September 2018 was restarted after several riders were sent the wrong way, shortened from 100 miles over five loops to 74 miles over four, and then cancelled before completion.

Officials cited a potentially dangerous combination of heat and humidity and trail conditions after heavy afternoon rain. A Wet Bulb Globe Temperature reading of 31 was judged an unacceptable risk to horse welfare, with readings above 25 monitored closely, and the FEI cited Article 109.12 of its General Regulations and its extreme-weather code. The FEI asked its Equestrian Community Integrity Unit to investigate the misdirection at the start.

The decision was disputed. The FEI's position, as the Tryon Daily Bulletin reported it, was that the decision was unanimous among the ground jury president, the technical delegate, the veterinary commission president and the organisers, and was taken for the welfare of horses and athletes. Search summaries of Eurosport and The Horse report that some teams, including France and Spain, who were leading at the time, criticised it, and that France's technical director, Sophie Dubourg, blamed organisational errors and a lack of FEI oversight. We could not read those reports in full.

Wikipedia records that a horse in that race, Barack Obama, ridden by Jenny Champion of New Zealand, was euthanised after kidney problems that followed the competition. The FEI's heat guidance is covered on heat and competition.

On 20 November 2018, after Tryon, the FEI General Assembly ended the multi-discipline Games format (Wikipedia, citing FEI minutes); see World Championships history. Results of the endurance world championships held since then, including any in 2022 and 2024, were not covered by our research.