Oxford’s women won the Boat Race for the first time since 2016 in 2026, on a rough and windy Thames, while the Cambridge men held on to their title.
Oxford’s women beat Cambridge on Saturday 4 April 2026, ending a run of eight Cambridge wins over the Championship Course from Putney to Mortlake.
The Boat Race is a fixture of the British spring: two universities, a tidal river and one afternoon, staged each year by the Boat Race Company Ltd. The 2026 races were the first broadcast on Channel 4, with Times Radio alongside. The women’s race started at 2.21pm and the men’s at 3.21pm, on a Saturday rather than the Sunday of the year before.
Conditions were rough and windy. The women’s race, the 80th, went to Oxford by three lengths in 19 minutes 15 seconds, their first victory in it since 2016. The men’s race, the 171st, stayed with Cambridge, who won by three and a half lengths in 17 minutes 57 seconds after taking the 2025 race by five and a half, their sixth victory in seven years.
A procession of traditional Thames boats, the Festival of Rowing, opened the afternoon. Oxford’s women won the first of four races and Cambridge took the other three, its reserve crews Goldie and Blondie winning theirs. The results moved the running totals to 89 men’s wins for Cambridge against Oxford’s 81, and 49 women’s wins for Cambridge against Oxford’s 31. The build-up was told in the documentary series Turning the Tide, released in episodes before the day.