ORC finishes strong in 2026 and looks ahead to 2027

The 57th Annual General Meeting of the Offshore Racing Congress (ORC) concluded on Wednesday with delegates from around the world conferring to address the needs of their constituents who race boats as varied as Sportboats to Superyachts in the world’s largest fair, scientific and transparent system of handicapping.

Based on year-to-date statistics, the ORC system has once again seen growth in both number of boats using the system (9677 monohulls and multihulls, a 1% increase) and total number of certificates (15,630, a 10% increase) compared to 2025. These figures confirm the ORC system as being the largest in the world of science-based handicapping.

Participation in ORC Championship events was also strong in 2026, with World Championships held in Sorrento Italy and Scheveningen Netherlands, and European and North American championships held in Altea Spain, Charleston USA, Klaipeda Lithuania, and San Francisco USA. There were also 16 national championships held in 2026, as well as nearly 90 significant offshore races and regattas on ORC’s international race calendar of Monohull, Multihull, Superyacht and Sportboat events.

Besides these reports, another key function of the AGM is to evaluate the feedback provided by users of ORC during this season in the Submissions process. This year there were 51 submissions from 10 nations and from the Management Committee to request rule, procedure and policy changes in nearly all aspects of ORC system use, from technical aspects of ORC's Velocity Prediction Program (VPP) to measurement protocols to event formats and scoring.

Meetings held by the International Technical Committee in Malta in October and the Offshore Classes and Events, Management, Promotion and Development, Race Management and the Measurement and Race Officers Committees in Las Palmas addressed these submissions to make their recommendations to the Congress which votes on each to approve or disapprove for the 2027 rule season. The Agendas and Minutes for the committee meetings are found on the ORC website at https://orc.org/agm-2026-palmas.

A new feature of the AGM this year was a day dedicated to a Networking Forum to present and discuss presentations of new tools - such as ORC Light certificates, modern tracking solutions and the SailrScience system of performance and race analysis - followed by discussions on how to promote ORC, prioritizing new developments and shared ideas on added value for certificate holders.

Based on the votes in Congress, the following are highlighted changes and innovations for the 2027 rule season:

Adoption of a revised Hydrodynamic model in the 2027 ORC VPP that significantly improves the equity of the handicapping for planing hulls, and the modern breed of ‘scow bow’ boats yet with only a small change to the All-Purpose Handicap. The full benefit of this change will be seen in condition-sensitive scoring models, such as Performance Curve Scoring, Constructed Course Scoring and Weather Routed Scoring (WRS).

A new offshore race scoring method (with a preliminary name of Weather Prediction Scoring) was demonstrated as either an initial or fallback alternative to WRS where weather forecasts are extreme or unreliable. This method shows strong initial promise but will be further evaluated and tested with results from 20 past races in Europe and North America before being rolled out for public use.

The Congress approved expansion of guided use of the new ORC Light certificate type that has shown success in this past season in Italy at giving host clubs an opportunity to get boats racing that would otherwise not race, give new sailors a simple, low-cost first handicap certificate, and lead owners towards ORC Club and ORCi as they gain more experience. Adoption for ORC Light use will be established for use within each country and is not intended for international use.

These are in addition to numerous ongoing advances in ORC measuring, rating and scoring technologies and upgrades to web-based applications, such as ORC's unique Sailor Services system. In Sailor Services a free login allows the user access to any valid ORC certificate, to run test certificates for a small fee and obtain their boat's polar performance data in an ORC Speed Guide or Target Speed data for windward/leeward racing. Since its introduction in 2014 the system has attracted 49,000 users, and in 2026 to date 950 users ran 4700 test certificates and purchased 1175 Speed Guides and Target Speeds, an increase of 9% over 2025.