- 32 archers in the Saltillo bracket
- 30,000 CHF to each category winner
- 9 World Cup Finals already won by Sara Lopez
- 20th edition of the Hyundai Archery World Cup
Twenty years after the Archery World Cup first strung a circuit together, the 2026 edition ends the way it began — in Mexico. The season opened in Puebla back in April and closes September 12–13 in Saltillo, where thirty-two archers who topped the year's four stages jump straight into quarterfinals for a shot at the season's biggest single payday: 30,000 Swiss francs and the title of World Cup champion, per bow class.
Six qualifiers withdrew before the draw was even finalized, pulled away by a scheduling collision with the Asian Games later this month. Mexico, hosting, fields the largest team of the thirty-two: seven archers in all, four of whom qualified outright and three added as host-nation picks. It sets up a final stage with a genuine home crowd and a bracket that, unusually for an anniversary final, arrives without most of the sport's reigning names seeded at the top.
Lopez returns for No. 10
No storyline carries more weight into Saltillo than Sara López's. The Colombian owns nine World Cup Final titles already, more than any archer has won in any division, but 2026 nearly didn't happen for her at all: a twelve-month immigration layover, triggered by her marriage to fellow archer Jean Pizarro Latorre, cost her the 2025 World Championships and World Games entirely.
She came back swinging. Her win at the season-opening Puebla stage was her first World Cup gold since Antalya 2013 — thirteen years, almost to the week, between the two. A tenth Final title in Saltillo would extend a record that is already hers alone.
13 years: the gap between Sara López's first World Cup gold and her most recent one, won this April in Puebla
She won't have the stage to herself. Mexico's Andrea Becerra, competing at home, became the first archer since López to hold the World Cup and World Championship titles at the same time, and arrives in Saltillo defending her own Final crown — and chasing the same trophy in front of the same crowd.
Ellison defends, unseeded
Brady Ellison is chasing his seventh World Cup Final trophy, arriving as the defending champion after winning his sixth in Nanjing last year. What's different this time: the American world No. 2 isn't among the draw's top seeds, a rare position for a man who has stood on this particular podium more than anyone else in the field.
- Jean-Charles Valladont · France, 37 — circuit elder statesman
- Mauro Nespoli · Italy, 38 — lost 6–2 to Ellison, Moscow 2019 final
- Dhiraj Bommadevara · India — won Antalya stage, career-best season
Nespoli is the only man in that trio with Final experience against Ellison specifically, and it didn't end well for him. Bommadevara is the wild card: his win at the Antalya stage was the best result of his career and books him his third career Final appearance, arriving with less history against Ellison and more recent form than anyone else in the draw.
The bows don't stay in their cases
Saltillo is the World Cup's last word, but not archery's. Nine days later, the sport moves to Okazaki, Japan, where compound and recurve return to the Asian Games program from September 26 to October 3 — the conflict that thinned out this month's World Cup withdrawal list in the first place. Simultaneously, the discipline's outdoor specialists head to Yankton, South Dakota, where the World Archery Field and 3D Championships run September 24 through October 4, on the rough terrain and unmarked distances that make field archery its own sport within the sport.
- Indoors — The 2026 Indoor Archery World Series expands to seven stops, adding Rio de Janeiro and Mérida, and scraps its separate Finals event — the circuit's overall rankings alone will now crown the indoor champions, with the prize pool up 30% to CHF 55,000.
- LA28 — World Archery has published its qualification pathway for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics, with compound archery included on the program for the first time.
- Awards — Emircan Hanï was named World Archery's best archer of 2025, as the federation stood up a new events strategy committee to shape how future seasons are built.