Best Polo Teams in the World: Top 10 Squads Ranked

Walk into the clubhouse at Palermo during the Argentine Open and you’ll hear two names traded back and forth more than any others: La Dolfina and Ellerstina. Their current incarnations, La Natividad-La Dolfina and Ellerstina-Indios Chapaleufu, met in the 2025 final, and between the two Argentine dynasties they’ve owned the sport’s biggest tournament for the better part of two decades. Here are the ten teams currently sitting at the top of world polo, with the results and rosters that put them there.

At a Glance: The World’s Top Polo Teams

1. La Natividad-La Dolfina

The current standard-bearer for Argentine polo, this lineup pairs Adolfo Cambiaso and his son Poroto with Bartolome “Barto” and Camilo “Jeta” Castagnola, a rare foursome carrying four 10-goal handicaps. In 2025 the team went through the entire Triple Crown, the Hurlingham Open, the Tortugas Open, and the Argentine Open, without a loss, closing it out with a 17-13 win over Ellerstina-Indios Chapaleufu in the final at Palermo. It’s the clearest evidence that the La Dolfina project, built around Cambiaso since 2000, remains the benchmark other teams are chasing.

2. Ellerstina-Indios Chapaleufu

Ellerstina, the club built around the Pieres family, joined forces with the Heguy family’s Indios Chapaleufu for the 2025 Triple Crown, and the alliance reached the Argentine Open final. Facundo Pieres returned to the family team after two seasons playing for La Natividad, where he’d won back-to-back Argentine Opens in 2023 and 2024, and lined up alongside Gonzalo “Gonzalito” Pieres and brothers Antonio and Cruz Heguy. The combination of two of polo’s most decorated dynasties makes this one of the most dangerous teams in the world any season it fields a strong four.

3. La Dolfina Saudi

Separate from the Argentine-season La Natividad-La Dolfina lineup, La Dolfina Saudi is the sponsor-backed team Cambiaso fields on the international and US circuits, again with Poroto Cambiaso alongside Pelon Stirling and Juan Martin Nero. Renamed in 2020 after a sponsorship deal, it’s widely regarded as the most successful polo team in history by combined Triple Crown count, and Cambiaso has said he intends to keep playing into 2026, chasing Juan Carlos Harriott’s record for career Argentine Open titles.

4. Valiente

Backed by American businessman Bob Jornayvaz, Valiente is the most consistent US-based high-goal team, a regular winner of the C.V. Whitney Cup during the Florida winter season at the International Polo Club Palm Beach. The team recruits top Argentine professionals each season to pair with its American backing, and it’s the outfit most likely to test La Dolfina’s various US Open entries when the American season peaks each spring.

5. King Power Foxes

A fixture of the British high-goal calendar backed by the King Power group, this team competes for the sport’s oldest English trophies, the Queen’s Cup and the Gold Cup, both played at Cowdray Park in West Sussex. Like most of the UK’s leading teams, its roster rotates seasonally around a sponsor core, drawing high-handicap professionals from Argentina and elsewhere to compete at England’s 22-goal-plus level.

6. Ghantoot

One of the strongest teams to come out of the UAE’s rapidly developed polo scene, Ghantoot is fronted by Nasser Al Shamsi and has picked up the IFZA Gold Cup and the HH President of the UAE Polo Cup without dropping a match in recent seasons. The Emirates has become one of the sport’s fastest-growing high-goal markets, and Ghantoot is usually the local team best placed to beat visiting European and Argentine sides.

7. UAE Polo Team

Led by Sheikha Maitha, the UAE Polo Team has become a genuine force on the European high-goal circuit, winning England’s Queen’s Cup and the Ladies British Open and reaching the final of the British Open Gold Cup. It’s a rare women-led ownership at the top of a men’s high-goal team, and its results have made it one of the most closely watched squads outside Argentina.

8. Park Place

A joint US-UK operation fronted by Jack Whitman, Park Place has won the C.V. Whitney Cup and the Prince of Wales Championship, fielding Argentine 10-goal professionals like Hilario Ulloa alongside its American backing. The team competes on both sides of the Atlantic each year, giving it one of the busiest and most competitive schedules of any team on this list.

9. Thai Polo

Fronted by British-Thai brothers Ned and Louis Hine, Thai Polo has won the Prince of Wales Trophy and the British Open Gold Cup, remarkable results for a team representing a country with no domestic polo tradition to speak of. It’s the clearest proof that the sport’s talent pool now extends well past its traditional Argentine, British, and American strongholds.

10. Scone

Backed by Australian businessman David Paradice, Scone made headlines when it signed Adolfo Cambiaso for the US season and went on to win both the USPA Gold Cup and the US Open Polo Championship. It’s the leading team out of Australia’s small but serious high-goal scene and a regular visitor to the American winter season.

How We Ranked Them

Polo has no single global ranking table the way football or tennis does, so prestige comes down to performance at a handful of marquee events: the Argentine Open at Palermo, the US Open Polo Championship, the British Gold Cup at Cowdray Park, and the UAE’s Gold Cup. Teams that win or reach finals at these tournaments, especially the Argentine Triple Crown, are the ones the sport considers its best. Player handicaps, on the same -2 to 10 scale used across the game, work as a rough proxy for team strength too: the highest-rated players in the world are overwhelmingly Argentine, which is itself part of why Argentine teams keep winning. Because rosters reshuffle every season, and sometimes between circuits within the same year, this list reflects each team’s most recent results and current lineup rather than a fixed, permanent ranking. Fielding a 40-goal team isn’t cheap either; see our breakdown of what it costs to play polo for a sense of the money behind these rosters.