The polo grounds at Glen Farm were supposed to be quiet by now. Newport Polo had planned to close its 150th anniversary season on the last Saturday of September, a Diamond Jubilee finale 150 years in the making. Then the nor'easter arrived, and the whole thing — the match, the parade, the charity fundraiser, the season-long prize drawing — was swept off the calendar and onto a single Saturday in October.
So this Saturday, Oct. 3, the club will do something it has never done before: stage its season finale as an encore. The gates at BD Field, 250 Linden Lane in Portsmouth, open at noon. The TD Pavilion opens at 2 p.m. At 3, more than 50 polo ponies and their riders will take the field for a 150th anniversary parade, honoring the horses that have carried the club across a century and a half. At 4, the six-chukker Turkish Airlines Finals begins. Around 6, the trophy presentation — and with it, the conclusion of a season-long drawing for round-trip business class airfare for two anywhere in Turkish Airlines' network.
That the club has a 150th anniversary to celebrate at all is the real story here. Polo was first played in the United States in Newport, and the club that brought it there — the Westchester Polo Club, founded in 1876 by sportsmen from Westchester County, New York, who kept Newport as their summer headquarters — is recognized as America's first polo club. The sport arrived alongside sailing, tennis, and golf as part of the Gilded Age social scene, played on grounds near Bellevue Avenue where the summer elite gathered to watch. Newport became the site of the Westchester Cup, the international competition between the United States and England that helped cement the city as a destination for the sport.
Then it faded. World War I, the Great Depression, and shifting economic conditions brought the Gilded Age polo era to an end, and Newport's place at the center of American polo went quiet for decades.
The revival came from an unlikely direction. In 1990, Dan Keating, the founder and president of Newport Polo, signed a lease with the town of Portsmouth and began restoring the deteriorating property at Glen Farm — a site whose heritage stretches back more than 370 years, and which in the late 1800s was assembled into a sprawling estate by New York industrialist Henry A.C. Taylor. Keating's goal was to revive the international polo tradition in its American birthplace. In 1992, the Newport International Polo Series began, and each Saturday from June through September since, teams from around the world have come to Glen Farm to face USA/Newport. The club remains registered with the United States Polo Association under the historic Westchester name.
The 2026 season, the club's 35th modern-day series and its 150th Diamond Jubilee, was built as a once-in-a-century celebration — one that happens to coincide with America's 250th anniversary. The year brought venue upgrades, a Rhode Island license plate, a new club mascot, commemorative jerseys, a living digital timeline of the club's archives, and a schedule that included Mongolia's first-ever appearance in Newport, the revived Gilded Age rivalry of the Vanderbilt-Carnegie Cup, the Veuve Clicquot Cup, and a special Diamond Jubilee Challenge Cup. A pony parade through Newport on opening weekend kicked off the season in fanfare. The finale was meant to be the capstone.
When the nor'easter forced the postponement, the club simply moved everything to Oct. 3 and kept all issued tickets and reserved seating valid. The result is an afternoon carrying more than a normal match day's weight. The 10th annual All Charity Day, also postponed from the rained-out weekend, lands on the same date. More than 30 nonprofits will sell their own tickets as a fundraiser, with proceeds from lawn ticket sales going directly to the participating organizations. The program has raised more than $300,000 in past years, part of the roughly $1.9 million Newport Polo says it has raised for civic and charitable organizations across its modern history.
For spectators, the club is offering a free lawn admission with each one purchased, using the code CHEERS150 online. The final Stella Artois Best in Show competition of the season carries the theme Coastal Cowboy, judged on which tailgate, chalet, picnic, or table shows the most pride and creativity in embracing it — paired this time with a first-time barbecue cook-off among tailgaters.
And then there is the matter of the ponies. The 150th anniversary parade is the piece of the afternoon that has no precedent in the club's modern era: a procession of more than 50 horses and riders meant to stand in for every generation of the sport since 1876, from the Bellevue Avenue grounds of the Gilded Age to the restored fields at Glen Farm. It is, in effect, a living timeline taking a lap.
It is also, for anyone who has never been, an unusually easy afternoon to walk into. Lawn admission is free with a purchased ticket, the grounds open at noon, and there is no dress code for watching polo from a blanket. The match starts at 4. The trophy comes out around 6. After that, the 150th season is over — a year late to nothing, and a week later than planned.