The weekend of 9-11 January sees the first weekend of the Camrose Trophy (Open Home International Championship) being hosted by Ireland and held in the CityNorth Hotel in Gormanstown. Kibitzers are welcome all weekend, and all the matches will be broadcast, with a short delay, on RealBridge, including audio-visual commentary from a panel of expert commentators. We will also have a Vugraph Room at the venue. This is the first of two weekends in this competition; the second will be held in Wales over the weekend of 6-8 March.
You’ll find full details of the event, including pen pictures of all the players, the match schedule, and a history of the event in this booklet: Camrose 1 Programme 2026. As hosts of the second weekend, Wales supplies two teams to the competition this year, one as “Wales” the other as “WBU“.
The Camrose is the longest-running international bridge tournament; this will be the 82nd running of the event. Ireland has won the Camrose seven times since we rejoined the tournament in 2000 after a long absence, most recently in 2017. England has dominated the event both generally (winning well over half the tournaments) and in recent years – on the basis that an EBU victory in 2019 is attributed to England, then our 2017 win is the last time that an English team did not bring home the trophy. Best of luck to our team of Tom Hanlon, Conor Boland, John Carroll, Mark Moran, Adam Mesbur, Nick FitzGibbon, and NPC Gráinne Barton for their weekend’s work!
If you simply wish to check the match schedule, you’ll find it here.
Here is the link to watch the vugraph on RealBridge, and you’ll find system cards for all the pairings on the BGB website, while the live results will be updated here.
Best of luck to all the teams, and we hope everyone will enjoy the weekend.