America's Cup Naples Opens Formal Booking Across 8 Marinas

How does an owner book a superyacht berth for the 2027 America's Cup in Naples?

BWA Yachting, reappointed the event's Official Superyacht Programme Delivery Partner, now runs every berth request for the Naples America's Cup through a single centralised process instead of separate approaches to each marina, with the Luise Group acting as preferred yacht agent on the ground.

The appointment itself is not new. America's Cup Event organiser ACE Italy named BWA Yachting delivery partner back in March, when BWA chief executive Paschalis Patsiokas called the event a meeting point for the industry and ACE Italy chief executive Grant Dalton said Naples would be in the spotlight in 2027. What changed this month, reported by Megayacht News on 3 September and by All At Sea two days earlier, is that the booking process itself went live: an owner or captain can now submit yacht length, draft and arrival and departure dates directly, and BWA assesses each request against space across its marina network.

Requests go to a dedicated inbox, [email protected], using the event's own shorthand for the 38th America's Cup. BWA says it will allocate space according to yacht specifications, operational requirements and availability. Neither of the launch reports nor BWA's own programme page describes an appeals process if a request is declined or a marina fills before an owner applies, so the practical advice repeated across every outlet covering the launch is the same: register early rather than wait for the 2027 season to get close.

Which marinas can take a superyacht for the America's Cup in Naples?

The network covers eight marinas around the Bay of Naples: New Marina di Bagnoli, Marina Molo Luise, Stabia Main Port and Marina di Stabia closest to the racecourse, Sud Cantieri at Pozzuoli, Marina di Capri and Marina di Procida on the islands, and Marina di Arechi at Salerno further down the coast, taking yachts from 15 to 100 metres.

Location within that list matters. Bagnoli and Molo Luise sit closest to the race area itself, the obvious pick for a crew that wants a short tender run to the action, while Sud Cantieri at Pozzuoli covers the western shore of the bay. Capri and Procida are a different proposition: island time rather than a slip beside the racecourse. Capri in particular has almost no natural harbour of its own. Marina Grande is a working port shared with the ferries and excursion boats that run tourists out to the Faraglioni rocks, and most yachts that visit anchor off rather than berth.

Salerno, at Marina di Arechi, is the outlier: roughly 50 kilometres by sea from the racecourse, an option for an owner who wants distance from the crowds during the loudest week of the event and is willing to run a tender or a helicopter in for race days. None of the eight marinas has published its own berth count or a per-yacht rate, so an owner comparing them is working from BWA's individual assessment rather than a public rate card.

Can an owner see Naples host America's Cup racing before committing to a 2027 berth?

The Louis Vuitton Preliminary Regatta 2 runs in Naples from 24 to 27 September 2026, three weeks after this booking window opened, putting AC40 foiling boats on the actual 2027 racecourse for the first time and giving an owner a live look at conditions before locking in a marina choice ten months early.

The Naples leg is the second preliminary regatta of the current America's Cup cycle and the first competitive racing held on the water that will decide the 38th Match itself. Teams are using it to test crew combinations and race execution rather than full campaign form. American Racing, the new United States challenger, joins the preliminary fleet for the first time this cycle at this event, both facts confirmed across the official America's Cup site and Emirates Team New Zealand's own team news.

The Match proper, the Louis Vuitton 38th America's Cup that decides the trophy, runs 10 to 17 July 2027, also in the Bay of Naples. That gap matters for anyone reading the berth-booking news as urgent: the September racing is a preview with no berths at stake beyond what the teams themselves need, and an owner who misses this month's regatta loses nothing but a chance to see the course a year early. The berths under formal booking now are for July 2027, not this month.

What does an owner still not know about booking an America's Cup berth in Naples?

BWA Yachting has not published berth pricing, a total slip count for any of the eight marinas, or a current tally of bookings since the process went live this month. The only public figure, roughly 100 confirmed berths, dates to the March reappointment announcement, five months old.

That is the single most useful gap in this story: an owner comparing a Naples season against, say, chartering a spectator boat instead is doing so without a rate to compare. BWA's own Official Superyacht Programme page describes membership perks, including premium berthing in the heart of the action and special rates on VIP hospitality packages, without naming a price for either the berth or the membership itself, and confirms only that requests are assessed individually rather than sold off a fixed tariff.

The nearest comparison is BWA's own record. It ran the same centralised booking model for the 37th America's Cup in Barcelona in 2024, coordinating superyacht berths across three preferred marinas: Marina Vela, Port Forum and Marina Port Vell. Naples repeats that structure at more than double the marina count, which points to organisers expecting a bigger, more spread-out fleet than Barcelona saw rather than a smaller one. An owner who wants Bagnoli or Molo Luise is competing for a slice of that larger network, and BWA has given no public date for when it expects individual marinas to close.

Why is Naples hosting the 38th America's Cup instead of Auckland?

Naples is hosting because Auckland dropped out: Emirates Team New Zealand wanted roughly NZD 150 million to defend on home water, about half of it from the government, and New Zealand's ministers judged their own offer of around NZD 75 million too costly to go further, so the defender opened bidding to other cities instead.

The collapse played out in public through 2024 and early 2025, with Team New Zealand pressing Wellington and Auckland Council for the balance of the funding and New Zealand's government concluding the number did not add up. Once that bid was confirmed dead, Italy stepped in: its government, Team New Zealand and the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron jointly named Naples host city for the Louis Vuitton 38th America's Cup in May 2025, giving Italy its first Cup Match after decades of Italian challengers, most recently Luna Rossa, competing for it elsewhere.

Naples is not entirely new to the event. The city hosted America's Cup World Series exhibition regattas in 2012 and 2013, well before the current AC75 foiling class existed, so the Bay of Naples has raced these boats before, just never for the trophy itself. That partial history is also why the berth infrastructure now being formalised through BWA Yachting matters more than it would at a venue with a settled superyacht calendar: Naples is building its America's Cup hospitality and marina network largely from this bid, not adapting one proven over several previous campaigns the way Auckland or Barcelona could.