Germany win dressage team final Aachen; six LA28 Olympic team quotas awarded.
Equestrian: FEI World Championships Aachen 2026: Germany win dressage team final - six LA28 quota places decided
FEI World Championships Aachen 2026: Germany win dressage team final - six LA28 quota places decided
Germany, Great Britain, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden secure LA28 Olympic team quota at the FEI World Championships Aachen 2026, as Isabell Werth celebrates her 10th world title.
Sunshine bathed Aachen, Germany, a city steeped in equestrian history, as the world’s finest dressage riders and horses walked, trotted and cantered into the historic Aachen arena.
The setting could hardly have been more fitting for the first steps on a journey stretching all the way to the LA28 Olympic Games .
On Wednesday (12 August), the second day of the FEI World Championships Aachen 2026 , the world’s leading dressage teams took centre stage, with the first coveted LA28 team quota places on the line.
With Olympic hosts the United States already assured of their place in California, the six highest-ranked teams battled it out to obtain their own spots.
Germany entered Wednesday’s second and decisive day of team competition sitting atop the leaderboard, featuring performances from Isabell Werth (Wendy de Fontaine), Frederic Wandres (Bluetooth Old), Raphael Netz (Great Escape Camelot) and Katharina Hemmer (Denoix PCH), who all rose to the home occasion to claim gold in the Grand Prix Team Final on home soil.
For Werth, the most decorated Olympic equestrian of all time, the triumph marked the 10th World Championship title of her career, on home soil no less.
With a winning total of 235.063 percentage points , after the lowest of the four scores was dropped, the host nation dethroned Denmark as world champions and secured the first Olympic team dressage quota spot, comprising three athlete-horse combination places*, at the first opportunity for LA28.
Great Britain took silver with 231.445 , while Denmark completed the podium with 229.426 . Belgium , the Netherlands and sixth-placed Sweden also secured Olympic team quotas.
*As National Olympic Committees have the exclusive authority for the representation of their respective teams at the Olympic Games, athletes’ participation at the LA Games depends on their NOC selecting them to represent their delegation at LA28.
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Isabell Werth can dream of more Olympic success after 10th world title
Qualification does not guarantee any individual athlete a place at LA28, with Olympic quota places awarded to National Olympic Committees (NOCs) rather than individual riders.
But for Werth, already a 14-time Olympic medallist, the result brings the prospect of an eighth Olympic Games another step closer.
Werth has stood atop the Olympic team dressage podium seven times in her extraordinary career. But when Olympics.com asked the decorated Olympian what it would mean to add to that tally at LA28, she was not ready to look that far ahead.
“Now we think about tomorrow, and then the day after, and then Saturday. So, step by step, and then the horse will make the plan,” Werth told Olympics.com before assuring that she can, in fact, see herself continuing to LA.
For now, Aachen remains the focus.
While the team competition and Olympic qualification commanded the spotlight on Wednesday, another opportunity was already taking stride. The top 30 combinations from the Grand Prix advance to Friday’s (14 August) Grand Prix Special , where the attention turns from collective success to the pursuit of individual world championship glory.
Stay tuned to Olympics.com for more on-the-ground coverage from Aachen 2026.
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Isabell Werth has already won EIGHT Olympic gold medals in dressage - with five different horses. We asked the German horse whisperer about the reasons behind her impressive success. Werth’s answers might surprise you.
Picture by ALRV Arnd Bronkhorst
By Grace Goulding Fabian Breuer
14 - 30 July 2028
LA 2028 | Olympic Games | USA