Archery's most-watched month opens this week. The Hyundai Archery World Cup marks its 20th anniversary season with a Grand Final in Saltillo, Mexico, on 12–13 September — and it arrives with a genuinely open field, a program shakeup for 2029, and two more world titles still to be shot in South Dakota and Japan before October.

  • 20th anniversary season of the Hyundai Archery World Cup
  • 32 athletes qualified for the Saltillo Grand Final
  • 12 career stage golds for compound's Mike Schloesser

Saltillo hosts the finale, and the hosts are ready for it

The 2026 World Cup season ran four stages — Puebla, Shanghai, Antalya and Madrid — between April and July before narrowing to the 32 archers who booked a place at the Grand Final. Host nation Mexico fields the largest contingent of any country: seven archers across the compound and recurve divisions, including the Olympic mixed-team pair Matias Grande and Alejandra Valencia, plus a compound line featuring Sebastian Garcia and Rodrigo Gonzalez De Alba.

Garcia and compound teammate Andrea Becerra didn't need a host pick — both punched their tickets outright, winning their respective stages in Shanghai and Antalya earlier in the season.

Notable absences: six qualifiers have withdrawn from Saltillo to prepare for the Asian Games later this month: China's Li Mengqi (recurve men), Zhu Jingyi and Yu Qi (recurve women); Korea's Kim Je Deok (recurve men) and Kang Chaeyoung (recurve women); and Chinese Taipei's Tang Chih-Chun (recurve men).

With Zhu and Kang both out, the recurve women's title is up for grabs for the first time in a while — a genuinely open draw at a Grand Final that usually crowns a familiar name.

Antalya's real story was a compound archer quietly rewriting the record book

Before Saltillo, Antalya delivered the season's sharpest individual performance. Mike Schloesser claimed his 12th career Hyundai World Cup stage gold — a tally no one else in the sport's history has matched — on a course that has been kind to him before: five previous golds in the city, four individual and one team.

Two matches, two scores of 149. Schloesser missed a perfect 150 by a single low-left arrow against Mathias Fullerton, then closed it out in a shoot-off anyway.

On the women's side, Mexico's Andrea Becerra took compound gold in Antalya — the result that, paired with her Grand Final berth, makes her one of the host nation's clearest medal hopes this weekend.

Two more world titles, and then the Asian Games

Saltillo is the headline act, but not the only one. The calendar stays full straight through the start of October:

  • 12–13 September · Saltillo, Mexico — Hyundai Archery World Cup Grand Final — The 20th-anniversary finale, with recurve women's gold newly up for grabs.
  • 24 September – 4 October · Yankton, USA — World Archery Field & 3D Championships — A shift in terrain — uneven ground, unmarked distances — from the flat-target World Cup circuit.
  • 26 September – 3 October · Okazaki, Japan — Archery at the 2026 Asian Games — Compound and recurve events at Okazaki Central Park, drawing several of Saltillo's late withdrawals.

Looking past 2026: archery keeps its place at the World Games

Off the field of play, World Archery secured a longer-term win this year. Meeting in Lausanne on 25 April, the International World Games Association confirmed archery on the program for World Games 2029 in Karlsruhe, Germany, running 19–29 July. Compound and field archery continue as before; a run-archery format is under review for a possible addition. The World Games has previously been a proving ground for Olympic inclusion — compound archery's own path toward LA28 ran through it.

Separately, World Archery published an updated edition of its rulebook in January, incorporating amendments approved at the federation's Congress in Gwangju — housekeeping that matters most to judges and coaches, but that sets the technical rules every result above was shot under.

Sources