On a sun-drenched Sunday in West Sussex, actors, designers, models and polo devotees gathered for one of the more genuinely glamorous fixtures on the British summer calendar.
The St. Regis British Open for the Cowdray Gold Cup final, held on 19th July 2026 at Cowdray Park Polo Club, brought together a guest list that ranged from screen royalty to fashion royalty, all drawn by world-class polo and the particular kind of occasion that St. Regis Hotels & Resorts has spent more than a century perfecting.
A Tournament At The Pinnacle Of International Polo
The Cowdray Gold Cup sits in rare company on the international polo calendar. Alongside the U.S. Open and the Argentine Open, it is one of the sport’s defining tournaments, and to contest its final is to compete at the highest level the game offers. To attend it is to watch polo at its most spectacular.
Cowdray Park Polo Club adds its own weight to the occasion. Set within the rolling West Sussex countryside, the grounds are almost cinematically English: vast, verdant, and carrying the particular atmosphere of a place where the same sport has been played for generations. It is exactly the kind of setting St. Regis gravitates toward.
A Star-Studded Afternoon In West Sussex
The final drew a guest list that would have distinguished any occasion. Actor Andrew Scott made the journey to West Sussex, as did Gwendoline Christie, whose commanding screen presence has made her one of the more recognisable faces in contemporary culture. Designer Giles Deacon, long regarded as one of British fashion’s most theatrically gifted voices, brought his distinctive eye to the afternoon, while model Erin O’Connor brought an authority that needed no introduction.
Lady Amelia Windsor attended alongside Jack Guinness, writer, broadcaster and style authority, and actor Sean Teale, whose profile continues to grow across British and international productions. Between them, they represented a cross-section of British creative talent that felt genuinely earned rather than assembled for effect.
The most fitting guests, perhaps, were Nacho Figueras and Delfina Blaquier. Figueras, the Argentine polo player widely regarded as the sport’s most recognisable global ambassador, is a St. Regis Connoisseur, a role through which he embodies the brand’s values of excellence, heritage and gracious living. His presence at the Cowdray Gold Cup final was less a guest appearance than a natural meeting of two things that have always belonged together.
Champagne Sabrage And The Iconic Bloody Mary
St. Regis has always understood that a great event is defined as much by what surrounds the main act as by the act itself. At Cowdray Park, guests experienced two of the brand’s most celebrated rituals: champagne sabrage and the legendary Bloody Mary.
The sabrage, the dramatic act of opening a champagne bottle with a sabre, is a St. Regis tradition that stretches back to the brand’s earliest days. Performed by Nacho Figueras, it carried a charge that went beyond theatre. Here was a man equally fluent on a polo field and in the company of the world’s most discerning guests, and the ceremony felt like a precise expression of everything both the sport and the brand are about.
The Bloody Mary has genuine provenance. St. Regis lays claim to having introduced the cocktail to the United States at its New York flagship, and in the decades since, it has become one of the most recognisable signatures in luxury hospitality. Alongside refined culinary offerings, these two rituals set the register for an afternoon that was attentive without being fussy, and considered without ever feeling managed.
A Century-Long Connection To Polo
St. Regis’s relationship with polo is not a recent marketing decision. It goes back to John Jacob Astor IV, who opened The St. Regis Hotel in New York at the beginning of the twentieth century with a vision of hospitality defined by impeccable service, cultural engagement and an absolute refusal to compromise on quality.
Polo, with its athleticism, its social occasion and its aristocratic heritage, fit naturally within that vision. Over more than a hundred years, St. Regis has tended that connection, and the sponsorship of the British Open for the Cowdray Gold Cup is its continuation, not its invention. The championship at Cowdray Park offered what the brand describes as “an unforgettable celebration of British heritage, world-class polo and the House of Astor’s enduring legacy”, and given the history behind those words, the claim holds up.
Looking Ahead: The St. Regis Arrives In Mayfair
The Cowdray Gold Cup final arrived at a particular moment for St. Regis in Britain. The event was held ahead of the forthcoming opening of The St. Regis London, which will bring the brand to Mayfair later this year.
The hotel will occupy the corner of Conduit Street and New Bond Street, placing it at the centre of one of the world’s most concentrated luxury quarters: leading galleries, couture houses and designer boutiques within a short walk in every direction. The location is, in the most literal sense, where St. Regis belongs. It joins a neighbourhood that has recently welcomed other landmark openings, including the much-anticipated RH London The Gallery in Mayfair, further cementing the area’s status as a destination for world-class luxury experiences.
The property will offer 193 rooms, including 65 suites. Among them, a Penthouse Suite with a private terrace. The interiors will draw on Mayfair’s long tradition of craftsmanship and restraint, with artisanal details and a timeless quality that answers the neighbourhood’s character without borrowing from it.
The hotel’s identity will draw deeply on the Astor family’s legacy, and in particular on Caroline Astor, whose influence on American high society at the turn of the twentieth century helped define what it meant to entertain at the very highest level. Her spirit will run through the property in concrete ways: the signature St. Regis Butler Service, curated social events, and the tradition of Midnight Suppers, which have long been part of the St. Regis social calendar across its properties worldwide.
For a Mayfair neighbourhood already well-supplied with excellent options, The St. Regis London will add something with a distinct character of its own.
Sport, Society And The Art Of The Occasion
What the St. Regis British Open for the Cowdray Gold Cup final demonstrated is the particular alchemy that occurs when world-class sport meets genuinely good hospitality. Polo, more than most sports, has always existed within a broader social context. The game itself is breathtaking in its pace and skill, but it has never been purely about the game. The conversation, the occasion, the company: these have always been part of what polo is.
St. Regis understands this instinctively. The brand’s presence at Cowdray Park was not a layer of branding applied to an existing event, but the expression of a relationship that predates almost everyone in attendance. The rituals it brought to the afternoon, the sabrage, the Bloody Mary, the attentive service, were drawn from over a century of the same conversation between the brand and the occasions it chooses to be part of.
For the guests gathered on that July afternoon in West Sussex, whether they had come for the polo, the people or simply a perfect English summer’s day, the St. Regis presence ensured that every detail was considered and every moment felt like it had been prepared for, quietly and without fuss, well in advance.
A Season To Remember
As the British summer season continues and anticipation builds around The St. Regis London, the Cowdray Gold Cup final stands as a vivid illustration of what the brand does at its best: sport, culture and the art of living well, brought together with the kind of quiet expertise that doesn’t announce itself. The guest list was exceptional, the setting incomparable, the rituals rooted in more than a century of practice. It is a spirit that resonates across the luxury calendar — much as the Game Fair 2026 similarly brings together British heritage, outdoor sport and the finest traditions of English country life each summer.
The St. Regis London opens in Mayfair later this year. For further information, visit stregis.com.
