Fremantle is making its SailGP debut as host city, and the Oracle Perth Sail Grand Prix presented by KPMG is already sold out. The championship is also running its full season within a single calendar year for the first time.
The off-season was filled with transfer news across the fleet, but New Zealand's Black Foils arrive in Western Australia with an unchanged sailing line-up from Season 2025. The one area of change sits behind the scenes, where Matt Steven and Will McKenzie have come on board as a new High Performance Support Team.
Black Foils Co-CEO and Driver Peter Burling said the team were heading into the opening event in a positive place.
"Last season's result definitely gives you plenty of motivation for the season ahead. And I think right across the whole group we're super proud of what we achieved that season. We had a new flight controller with Leo, quite a new group and built momentum really well through the season. And for us, we feel like we're still on that positive trajectory. It's going to be a completely different weekend here – the other end of the breeze spectrum, probably the other end of the configuration spectrum as well. We are looking forward to trying to put one notebook away, pull out the other one and get off to a good start to the season."
Burling said having a settled sailing line-up alongside new coaching staff made for an exciting start to the campaign.
"It's been super nice to have the same starting line-up that we had last season. We obviously had a big change last season, losing Andy. So that for us has been a lot of upskilling and processing. We've got new faces in our coaching department with Matt and Will and that's bringing a really cool, fresh energy to the group. But to have a consistent line up and be really happy with that group is something that's putting us in really good stead coming into this first round of the season and we're looking forward to continuing to grow."
