On Friday afternoon at 4pm, inside the Grand Hall at Alexandra Palace, the first of nearly 500 boxers from 14 countries will try and become the 2026 Haringey Box Cup champion. It is the world’s most prestigious tournament of its kind.
There is a magnificence and wild ambition about the Haringey Box Cup and it has been there since it launched in 2008. The numbers grew to a ridiculous 550 boxers at one point, which made it the biggest boxing tournament to ever take place in the UK; far bigger than the Olympics, the European championships, the Commonwealth Games and the world championships.
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The Box Cup’s continued relevance has been highlighted once again during the last week or so. The seemingly endless stream of champions and contenders from appearing in the Haringey have popped up repeatedly in boxing news and on fight nights during the last few days.
The rising star Leo Atang is a recent graduate of the Haringey Box Cup (Getty)
Last Saturday in Sheffield, Leo Atang, now a professional, won for the seventh time as a heavyweight, the sixth by knockout. In 2024 he was the Male Youth 92+kgs champion – he was bout 17 in Ring B on the Sunday during the finals. His final was brutal and he was only 17 at the time. “It was hard, but I knew I had to win a Haringey title,” he said.
Katie Taylor’s career began with a Haringey title in 2010 (Getty)
The day before Atang’s latest win, Katie Taylor walked out on the Croke Park pitch to announce her farewell fight at the iconic venue in September. There will be 82,000 people there on the night with some paying €1,500 (£1,296); Taylor won a Haringey title in 2010, and at the Olympics two summers later. It cost just fifteen quid for the quarters, semi-finals and finals when Taylor won. Double Olympic gold medal winners Nicola Adams and Kellie Harrington also won the Box Cup.
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A few days before Taylor’s emotional news, Anthony Joshua officially announced his return to the ring in Jeddah in July. Joshua has been a spectator at the annual event on numerous occasions, hiding in plain sight, cheering on boxers from Finchley boxing club; he was also instrumental in DAZN’s brief sponsorship. In 2010, Joshua won the Haringey title on the same afternoon as Taylor. He had won it the year before. “That tournament helped prepare me for the Olympics,” he said.
In any conversation with boxing people – the location is irrelevant – there will be a Haringey connection. Last Saturday in Bournemouth, the unforgettable fight between Chris Billam-Smith and Canada’s Ryan Rozicki was typical of the event’s relevance. Josh Pritchard – who works with Billam-Smith’’s trainer, Shane McGuigan – was a winner in 2012; Cheavon Clarke, an Olympian in Tokyo, was in chief support on Saturday and won at Haringey in 2011. He claimed his crown during the same hour of the finals as Chris Eubank Jr.
The Haringey Box Cup has a long history (Getty)
On Friday, it all starts again. The nerves, the fear, the eyeing-up process, and the inevitable glory and elimination. There will be five rings to start, and that will go down to three rings on Sunday for the finals. It rightly remains one of the highlights of the boxing calendar. At noon on Sunday, 126 boxers across a dozen weights and over a dozen countries will try to win one of the 63 titles; it is unmissable for boxing fans and increasingly essential for boxers.
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