Windsor Royal Horse Show Drops Dressage in 2025

Dressage

Great Britain

The show organizers of the Windsor International Horse Show have confirmed to Horse & Hound that dressage will be dropped from the 2025 edition.

The CDI classes have been deemed financially unviable.

Windsor hosted a CDI competition from 2014 til 2018 with a break due to COVID in 2020, 2021 and 2022. It returned on the calendar in 2023 and 2024. Windsor became a celebrated dressage venue when it hosted the 2009 European Championships where Totilas made his international break through.

HPower Group told Horse & Hound that "the format of the competition means that we have to run the grand prix class on the Wednesday before the main opening of the show on Thursday. The costs of opening the showground for that one class on Wednesday combined with the high costs of running the actual event itself, has led to the difficult decision not to continue with CDI4* dressage at Windsor in 2025."

Windsor is the second CDI in Great Britain to drop dressage after Hickstead also pulled the plug.

Totilas, Mistral Hojris, Parzival at the 2009
Europeans in Windsor

British Grand Prix rider Louise Bell took to Facebook stating, "yet again we loose one of the best shows in Royal Windsor Horse Show. It’s even more disappointing that no one is ever informed. We are not given a chance to ask any company that might want to sponsor we are just told it’s all gone. The show has other competitions going on on the Wednesday so it can’t just be about this? Windsor is the best outdoor show and Hickstead and we have now lost both….. it is a very very sad time for dressage and we all need to rally to fix this! But it would help if we could actually know before the door is closed … but in this case .. the horse has bolted."