If the Cannes Yachting Festival marks the beginning of the autumn boat show season, and the Monaco Yacht Show is the industry’s most prestigious marketplace, then the Régates Royales de Cannes — held in the same waters, in the same bay, just days after the show circuit closes — is the ceremony that closes the year with grace.
From September 22 to 27, 2025, the 47th edition of the Régates Royales de Cannes transformed the Bay of Cannes into something that no boat show can replicate: a living museum of maritime heritage under full sail, racing at competitive speed, in the finest natural setting in the Mediterranean. Over 120 classic yachts representing 15 nations gathered at the Quai Laubeuf and the Vieux Port, from Dragons racing in packs in the Rade Est to majestic Big Boats covering the course between the Lérins Islands and Cap d’Antibes with hundreds of square metres of canvas overhead.
No tickets, no exclusive access, no appointment required. The Régates Royales de Cannes is free to watch from the shore. But for charter clients who understand what they are watching — and who know how to position themselves to experience it fully — this week in late September offers something that cannot be purchased at any boat show: the sea as it was before engines, in vessels that carry a century of history in their hulls, racing with the competitive intensity of people who have devoted their lives to the craft of sailing.
This guide is for the charter client who wants more than a spectator’s view. It is for the client who wants to be on the water when these yachts race — and who wants to understand why the Régates Royales de Cannes is the event that the Mediterranean sailing world considers its most eloquent annual expression of what yachting actually means.
What the Régates Royales Are — and Are Not
A point of honest orientation, before everything else.
The Régates Royales de Cannes is not a boat show. It is a racing regatta for classic and vintage sailing yachts, with a history that runs back to 1929 — the year the event was created to honour King Christian X of Denmark, an avid sailor who chose the French Riviera as his autumn racing ground. The event fell dormant during the Second World War and the difficult decades that followed, revived in 1978 by Jean-Pierre Odéro, then director of nautical activities for the city of Cannes, and has grown without interruption ever since.
Today, the Régates Royales de Cannes is the concluding event of the Panerai Classic Yachts Challenge — the circuit that began at the Voiles d’Antibes in late May and continued through Portovenere, Porto Cervo, and Mahon before arriving at its final destination in the Bay of Cannes. Where the Voiles d’Antibes opens the Mediterranean classic circuit, the Régates Royales closes it — the final reckoning, the championship conclusion, the moment where a full season of racing on the most beautiful waters in the world resolves into results, trophies, and the particular melancholy of a great season reaching its end.
For charter clients, this positioning is not merely contextual. It means that the yachts arriving in Cannes for the Régates Royales in late September are coming with a season behind them — their rigs tuned, their crews in harmony, their campaigns at peak performance. The racing you watch from the Croisette or from the deck of a spectator yacht in late September is the finest vintage yacht racing of the year, because it is the racing of vessels and crews at the end of a season-long effort rather than at its uncertain beginning.
The event is the last rendezvous of the Trophée Panerai circuit, considered a true classic yachts’ world championship. The Régates Royales de Cannes themselves are also one of the oldest inshore races in the Mediterranean, with the debut event in 1929 — which gives them a historical authority that few sporting events on the Riviera can match.
The 2025 Edition: A Record Fleet, a Closing Chapter
The 47th Régates Royales de Cannes drew over 120 classic yachts from 15 nationalities to the Bay of Cannes — a record at the international scale, confirming the event’s position as the world’s most important gathering for classic and vintage yacht racing.
The fleet racing in the Cannes Bay across six days is divided into eight categories according to size, rig, and age. The Big Boats — the majestic schooners, ketches, and large gaff-rigged sloops that dominate the visual language of the event — race in the Rade Ouest, the western bay between the Croisette and the Lérins Islands, on coastal courses that carry them close enough to shore for spectators to read the names on their transoms. The smaller classes — Dragons, 5.5 MJI, Tofinou one-designs — race in the Rade Est, the eastern bay between Cannes and Antibes.
The 2025 edition brought together the full spectrum of the Panerai Classic Yachts Challenge fleet for the season’s final reckoning. Among the expected participants, the regular stars of the circuit who have built their reputations over decades of Régates Royales appearances were present in force:
Elena of London (55 metres, built 2009 to a Nathanaël Herreshoff design) — the largest regularly attending classic yacht, a three-masted schooner of extraordinary proportions whose white sails make her visible from the Croisette almost before she rounds the headland.
Cambria (40 metres, William Fife, 1928) — perhaps the most historically significant racing yacht regularly active in the classic circuit, a gaff ketch that competed against the America’s Cup defenders in her original career and that still races with the competitive intensity of a campaign rather than a parade.
Moonbeam IV (35 metres, William Fife, 1914) — the larger of the two Moonbeam yachts, a pre-war racing schooner with a profile that is immediately recognisable to anyone who has followed the classic circuit: long, low, and fast in the way that Fife designed his finest yachts to be fast.
Moonbeam of Fife (30 metres, William Fife, 1903) — 122 years old in the 2025 season, still racing, still turning heads, still demonstrating that the finest wood and metal construction of the Edwardian era remains seaworthy and competitive well into the twenty-first century.
Mariska (27 metres, William Fife, 1908) — the 15-metre class racing yacht that represents the absolute pinnacle of Edwardian yacht design, built for one purpose — racing — and still fulfilling that purpose 117 years after her launch at Fairlie on the Firth of Clyde.
Tuiga (23.18 metres, William Fife, 1909) — the 15-metre class sloop that serves as the flagship of the Yacht Club de Monaco, and whose presence at the Régates Royales is as much institutional as competitive: the Monaco club has been sailing Tuiga in this bay for as long as anyone can remember, and her Riviera appearance in September is as much a seasonal ritual as a racing campaign.
Also present in 2025 was the NGO Pure Ocean as a new partner of the event — a conservation organisation committed to the protection of marine ecosystems, whose presence at the Régates Royales reflected the event’s growing engagement with the environmental questions that surround any gathering of beautiful but resource-intensive sailing yachts in waters that deserve the most careful stewardship.
The Panerai Circuit: Why Cannes Is the Final Chapter
The relationship between the Régates Royales de Cannes and Panerai — the Florentine watchmaker whose identity is built around nautical precision and diving heritage — has been central to the event’s growth and international profile for over twelve years. The Régates Royales de Cannes marks the last rendezvous for the Trophée Panerai, considered as a true classic yachts’ world championship.
Understanding this relationship deepens the experience of watching the racing in the Bay of Cannes in late September. The yachts that line up at the start each morning are not competing only in the Régates Royales. They are completing a season-long campaign that began at the Voiles d’Antibes in May, continued through the Italian circuit in summer, and arrives in Cannes with accumulated points, rivalries, and reputations that give every start the weight of a championship bout.
The Dragon class has been present at the Régates Royales for over thirty years, providing the event with its Olympic class dimension alongside the historic classic yachts. The Dragons — sleek, one-design keelboats first designed in 1929 and raced at the Olympics from 1948 to 1972 — race with an intensity that contrasts dramatically with the stately grandeur of the Big Boats in the western bay. Over fifty Dragon crews from twelve or more nations typically attend, making Cannes one of the most important Dragon regattas on the international calendar.
The circuit structure means that the Cannes final often produces dramatic championship outcomes. A yacht that has led the Trophée Panerai circuit through the summer may find its lead overturned by a competitor who hits peak form in Cannes. A yacht that has struggled through the summer may use the final event to salvage championship points that transform a disappointing season into a creditable result. For spectators and charter clients who have followed the circuit from Antibes through the season, the Régates Royales has the emotional weight of a finale that cannot be replicated by any individual regatta considered in isolation.
The Race Courses: Six Days Across the Bay of Cannes
The racing at the Régates Royales de Cannes takes place across the full Bay of Cannes — a water body framed by Cap d’Antibes to the northeast, the Lérins Islands to the southwest, and the Croisette to the north, offering a natural amphitheatre that gives spectators on shore excellent visibility for the coastal courses when they pass close to the beaches.
The race schedule runs from Monday September 22 (arrival, registration, and technical inspection) through Saturday September 27 (final racing and prize-giving). Racing begins at 11:00 each day, with the different classes rotating between coastal and geometrical courses according to wind conditions and the particular navigational characteristics of each class.
For the classic yachts, the coastal courses — which carry the fleet along the shoreline past the bouée de la Pointe de Bacon, along the waterfront between Antibes and Villeneuve-Loubet, and back around the bay — are the most spectacular from a spectator’s perspective. When the Big Boats approach the shore on a coastal leg, they come close enough to the beaches and the promenade for the crowd to see the individual crew members working the sheets, the bow wave cutting the Mediterranean blue, and the canvas overhead taking the shape that the designer intended when he conceived the hull over a century ago.
The western bay, where the big classic yachts race, is protected by Cap Roux and Cap d’Antibes, offering an exceptional body of water that provides varied conditions ranging from gentle breezes to mistral gusts — guaranteeing a spectacle that is both sporting and visually grandiose. The eastern bay, where the Dragons and 5.5 MJI race, is more exposed to the afternoon thermal breeze that typically develops along the Riviera coastline, making for faster, more tactical racing in conditions that suit the one-design character of these classes.
The Lérins Islands — Sainte-Marguerite and Saint-Honorat — serve as natural turning marks for the longest offshore courses, and are visible from the racing fleet and from the shore throughout the regatta week. For charter clients who have anchored off the Lérins during a summer Mediterranean charter, seeing the classic fleet racing around the islands they know from personal experience gives the regatta an immediacy and a geographic intimacy that shore-based spectating alone cannot provide.
The Charter Client’s Three Ways to Experience the Régates Royales
Like the Voiles d’Antibes, the Régates Royales de Cannes offers charter clients three distinct modes of participation — each suited to a different kind of ambition and a different relationship with the sailing heritage the event embodies.
Racing as a Crew Member Aboard a Classic Yacht
The most immersive and least widely known option is placing aboard one of the competing classic yachts as a guest crew member for one or more days of racing. Operators including Noblesse Yachts, who manage competition-standard classic yachts including the Fife 15-metre MARISKA, offer day tickets or full-regatta packages that put guests on the racing deck under the instruction of a professional skipper and crew.
The experience of racing a 117-year-old Fife 15-metre in the Bay of Cannes in late September — with the Croisette visible to the north, the Lérins Islands astern, and the competition fleet stretching across the water in both directions — is one of those experiences that rewrites how you think about what a yacht is for. These are not museum pieces. They are working racing vessels, and they are sailed as such. The physical experience of the boat under sail — the heel, the acceleration, the sound of the hull through the water, the smell of the canvas — is unlike anything available on a modern production yacht.
Noblesse Yachts describes the experience precisely: “The Régates Royales in Cannes stands as a magnificent celebration of all things nautical. Whether you’re a seasoned sailor or an enthusiastic spectator, we’ve crafted an unforgettable experience for all. Our professional crew will handle all the technical aspects and show you the ropes if you’d like to get involved.” Day tickets from approximately €1,650 per person, with full-regatta packages available for the entire six-day campaign.
The Régates Royales de Cannes is a particularly welcoming event for non-sailors who want the racing experience, because the professional crew handles everything technical while giving guests the opportunity to participate at whatever level suits them. The social dimension — the return to harbour after racing, the evening at the Village on the Quai Laubeuf, the prize-giving ceremony with the crews of competing yachts gathering under the Riviera sky — is as much part of the experience as the racing itself.
Spectating from a Private Charter Yacht in the Bay
For charter clients already on the water in the Riviera during late September, positioning a charter yacht as a spectator vessel during the Régates Royales is one of the most compelling uses of a day at sea on this coastline.
A motor yacht or sailing yacht anchored at the racing mark near the Pointe de Bacon, or positioned along the coastal course between Antibes and Juan-les-Pins, gives its guests a view of the classic fleet that is simply not available from the shore. At water level, the scale of the Big Boats becomes apprehensible in a way that no photograph can convey: a 55-metre schooner carrying 450 square metres of canvas, approaching at seven knots in a building afternoon breeze, is a sight that fills the horizon and fills the memory.
The approaching a spectator yacht is the professional crew’s responsibility; the charter captain handles positioning, keeps a respectful distance from the racing fleet, and navigates the show responsibly. What the guests experience is the classic fleet on their terms: at whatever proximity the fleet’s approach allows, with the Riviera coastline behind and the Lérins Islands ahead, drinking in an afternoon sun that in late September has the particular golden quality that photographers and painters have been chasing on this coast for two centuries.
Charter yachts based in Cannes, Antibes, Juan-les-Pins, or Golfe-Juan can position in the bay for a racing day with minimal logistical complexity. Ask your charter broker to include a spectating day as part of a late-September Riviera itinerary.
The Village Experience: Free, Festive, and Utterly Cannes
For charter clients who want to experience the Régates Royales from shore — or who want to combine a beach and village experience with the racing spectacle — the event’s Village on the Quai Laubeuf is the natural centre of gravity for the week.
The Village des Régates Royales is open every day from 09:00 to 19:30 on the Quai St Pierre. It is the ideal place to meet enthusiasts, exchange with the crews, and discover exhibitor stands dedicated to the world of the sea. Between two regattas, a stop at the Village buvette allows you to enjoy the convivial atmosphere that reigns throughout the event.
The programming across the six days combines the sporting seriousness of the racing with the social exuberance of a Riviera festival that knows how to celebrate itself. Evening concerts, social events, rope-pulling competitions, boat painting contests, and gatherings between crews of different nationalities give the Régates Royales its reputation as the most convivial event on the classic circuit — a reputation that has been built and maintained over 47 editions and that reflects the specific character of Cannes as a host city: glamorous but not remote, sophisticated but not exclusive.
The programme typically includes themed evenings at the Village — in recent editions, rock’n’roll nights, samba evenings, and cocktail receptions aboard competing yachts have all featured — giving charter clients who are based in Cannes for the week a social calendar that runs from first light on the racing course through to late evening on the waterfront.
The Croisette viewing positions — the Suquet hill above the old port, the seawall at the Quai Laubeuf, the outer breakwater of the Vieux Port — give excellent sightlines onto the Bay of Cannes for the coastal racing courses. Early afternoon is generally the best time for close views of the Big Boats, as they return to harbour under reduced sail after the day’s racing, their hulls gleaming in the late September light and their crews relaxed and social after the competitive intensity of the day.
The Village and the Social Programme: Cannes in its Most Authentic Mode
Something that the Régates Royales de Cannes does better than any other major event in the classic sailing calendar — and better, in its way, than either the Voiles d’Antibes or any of the Italian circuit events — is integrate the racing with the social life of the host city in a way that feels genuinely mutual rather than commercially arranged.
The Racing Village on the Quai Laubeuf is open from 09:00 to 19:30 each day, and it functions as the event’s social heart: the place where crews, officials, sponsors, spectators, and the general Cannes public mingle without hierarchy, drawn together by a shared fascination with the boats and the people who sail them. After the day’s racing, as the Big Boats work their way back through the Vieux Port entrance and the Dragons are lifted out and covered for the night, the Village gradually fills with the particular energy of people who have been at sea all day and are ready to talk about it.
The traditional “Splice the Mainbrace” — the nautical toast to the day’s racing that generations of sailors have offered each other on returning to harbour — is a feature of the Régates Royales evening programme that captures something essential about the event’s character: it is a celebration that has been earned. The yachts and crews competing in the Bay of Cannes have done something real on the water. The evening’s conviviality is the reward.
The prize-giving ceremony on the Saturday evening is the emotional climax of the week. The Vieux Port fills with the yachts that have been racing all week, their crews gathered around the awards stage with the accumulated pride and exhaustion of a demanding campaign. The Mayor of Cannes and the representatives of the principal sponsors present the trophies in a ceremony that is simultaneously formal — in the manner of a proper sporting occasion — and deeply warm, as the personalities and histories of individual yachts and campaigns are acknowledged.
After the ceremony, the fleet disperses. Many of the classic yachts sail directly from Cannes to Saint-Tropez for Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez, which begins within days of the Régates Royales closing — the traditional rally between Cannes and Saint-Tropez being one of the great seasonal passages of the classic circuit. Charter clients who position themselves to follow this passage by yacht — departing Cannes as the classic fleet does, running down the coast past Théoule and the Esterel, arriving in Saint-Tropez in company with some of the most magnificent sailing yachts in the world — experience the Mediterranean autumn in a way that has no equivalent.
Cannes in September: The Charter Destination at Its Most Perfect
The Régates Royales de Cannes takes place in the week following the Monaco Yacht Show, in a city that is still fully operational but that has begun the gradual transition from the intensity of high season to the particular quality of autumn. This timing is one of the most compelling arguments for a late-September charter in Cannes.
The weather in late September on the Côte d’Azur is reliably excellent. Cannes typically enjoys late-summer conditions: mild daytime temperatures of around 24°C and pleasant evenings at around 16°C, with an average of eight hours of sunshine per day. Winds are generally steady at 6 to 9 knots, most often from the west — ideal for competitive but comfortable sailing. Sea temperatures hover around 22-23°C, making a swim after a day’s racing entirely natural.
The practical advantages of late September over August are considerable. The anchorages around the Lérins Islands, which in August are crowded to the point of requiring early morning positioning to guarantee a berth, are spacious and manageable. The restaurants of Cannes — the Croisette addresses and the quieter tables in the old port district — are operating at full quality without the August pressure of six-week waiting lists. The traffic on the water is a fraction of the summer peak.
Port Canto, the eastern marina that hosted the sailing area of the Cannes Yachting Festival just ten days before the Régates Royales begin, remains available for charter yacht berths during the regatta week. The Vieux Port is occupied primarily by the competing classic yachts and the organisational infrastructure of the event, but charter yachts berthed at Port Canto have immediate access to the Village, the race viewing positions, and the evening programme by foot or by tender.
The proximity of Cannes to the other Riviera destinations that bookend the Régates Royales week — Monaco to the east, Antibes to the immediate west, Saint-Tropez to the southwest — makes the regatta a natural anchor for a late-September itinerary that encompasses the full range of what the Côte d’Azur offers in its most refined and least crowded season. A charter that arrives in Monaco during the Yacht Show, moves to Antibes and Juan-les-Pins for the days before the Régates Royales, spends the race week in Cannes, and then follows the classic fleet to Saint-Tropez for the Voiles encompasses, in two weeks, the entire arc of the most meaningful events in the autumn yachting calendar.
Planning a Charter Around the Régates Royales: Practical Intelligence
For charter clients who want to build a Riviera itinerary around the Régates Royales de Cannes 2025, the practical considerations are straightforward but require advance planning.
Book your berth at Port Canto in March at the latest. The September regatta season concentrates enormous demand on Cannes harbour infrastructure — the Yachting Festival, the Régates Royales, and the traffic of the Monaco Yacht Show boats returning east all compete for the same berths in the same two-week window. Charter operators who understand this market reserve their Port Canto berths for the autumn season before the summer begins.
Build at least four days around the regatta, not one. The Régates Royales is a six-day event with daily racing and evening programming. A charter client who arrives for a single day of spectating and departs will experience the visual dimension of the event without the social and emotional arc that gives it meaning. Four days minimum allows you to see the racing across multiple weather conditions, attend the Village in the evening, experience at least one aboard-a-classic-yacht sailing day, and be present for the closing ceremony.
Coordinate with your broker on the Monaco to Cannes passage. The ideal late-September Riviera charter follows the natural progression of the show calendar: Monaco Yacht Show (September 24-27), then a leisurely two-to-three-day passage westward via Cap d’Antibes and Antibes, arriving in Cannes in time for the opening of the Régates Royales on September 22. This passage — under 30 nautical miles — can be done in an afternoon, but deserves to be savoured: the approach to Cannes from the east, past the headland of Antibes with the bay opening ahead and the Lérins Islands appearing, is one of the finest coastal sails on the Riviera.
Plan an evening at the Village for each day of your stay. The Village is free and open to all. It is the social heart of the event and the place where the most authentic encounters of the regatta week happen: the crew of a hundred-year-old schooner at the table next to you, the Dragon team from New Zealand talking through the day’s wind shifts, the naval architect who designed the restoration of one of the competing yachts explaining what makes a William Fife hull so fast. These conversations happen nowhere else and at no other time of year.
Why the Régates Royales Is the Perfect Close to the Charter Season
September on the French Riviera is the most underrated charter month of the year. The light is extraordinary — the particular gold of early autumn that painters have been chasing since Monet. The sea is warmer than in June. The crowds are gone. The restaurants are better than in August, because the chefs are cooking for locals and enthusiasts rather than for the peak-season volume. And at the end of September, the Régates Royales de Cannes provides the most beautiful possible punctuation to a summer season on the water.
There is something profoundly right about closing a Mediterranean summer charter season in the company of yachts that have been doing exactly this — sailing the Mediterranean, racing in its bays, gathering in its ports — for a century or more. The Moonbeam yachts and Mariska and Cambria and Elena of London do not represent nostalgia. They represent continuity: the understanding that the sea is what it has always been, that the wind is what it has always been, and that the pleasure of a fine sailing yacht moving through the Mediterranean autumn is what it has always been.
Charter clients who are fortunate enough to witness the start of a Big Boats race in the Bay of Cannes on a September morning — the guns, the manoeuvring for position, the gradual spread of those extraordinary hulls across the blue water with the Esterel red in the background and the Lérins green ahead — carry that image for the rest of their lives. It is not a spectacle. It is, in the most direct sense available to modern yachting, a memory.
The 48th Régates Royales de Cannes will take place from September 19 to 26, 2026, once again in the Bay of Cannes. Registration will open in early 2026 at the Yacht Club de Cannes.
Tags: Régates Royales de Cannes 2025, Cannes classic yacht regatta, Panerai Classic Yachts Challenge, Trophée Panerai, classic yacht charter, French Riviera September charter, Moonbeam of Fife, Elena of London, Cambria, Mariska Fife, Tuiga Monaco, Dragon class racing, Cannes autumn charter, Lérins Islands charter, Port Canto Cannes, Vieux Port Cannes regatta
