Every single Boat Race since the first, in 1829, has only been raced after a formal challenge from one club to another. On Wednesday 1 October, this years’ student Presidents from the losing crews will challenge their winning opponents to The Boat Race 2026. Follow our social feeds to see images and videos of this historic moment.

But where did it start?

On 10 February 1829 a meeting of Cambridge University Boat Club requested Mr Snow of St John’s College, Cambridge, to write immediately to Mr Staniforth of Christ Church, Oxford stating

‘that the University of Cambridge hereby challenge the University of Oxford to row a match at or near London, each in an eight-oared boat during the ensuing Easter vacation.’

The record of letters back and forth indicate the Cambridge weren’t too fussed about the date of the race – which eventually took place in the summer vacation, on 10 June.

The inaugural Challenge wasn’t issued face-to-face. It was in fact sent to an Oxford boat builder, Mr Stephen Davies, and asked to be placed ‘in some conspicuous part of his barge’. An early version of posting a message on social media?

We don’t know too much about the challenge that ignited the first Women’s Boat Race, in 1927; only that the two women’s crews were forbidden from racing side-by-side. They instead raced the course, on the Isis in Oxford, at a fifteen-minute interval, and their times were compared. Judges also decided which crew had better style. Oxford, on their home water, were fastest against the clock; and the women were judged equal on style. Oxford took the inaugural victory.

We have a 1966 letter accepting a Challenge from Cambridge, kindly provided by Mike Sweeney, former Oxford President.

The Presidents’ Challenge will this year be held at Somerset House, right by the River Thames in central London. Oxford Presidents Heidi Long and Tobias Bernard will challenge their Light Blue counterparts, Gemma King and Noam Mouelle, after the Light Blue clean sweep in 2025.

In 2015 the Presidents’ Challenge involved four rather than two, when the Women’s Boat Race was added to Boat Race Day on the Championship Course, in West London. The two races, with the Reserve Crews in between, now form London’s Party By The River: the kick-off event for the British summer of sport.