Kerala's Snake Boat League Opens With Nine Crews and a Revolt From Twenty Three Excluded Northern Clubs
Season six runs across eleven venues from the nineteenth of September, and for the first time teams are named after the boat rather than the club.
The sixth season of the Champions Boat League, Kerala's league competition for snake boats, opens at Karuvatta in Alappuzha on 19 September 2026 and runs to 21 November, finishing on Ashtamudi Lake in Kollam.
Eleven venues make up the calendar, among them Kallada, Pandanad, Kottapuram, Marine Drive in Kochi, Piravom, Thazhathangady, Pulinkunnu, Kainakari and Kayamkulam. Nine crews qualified through their placings at the Nehru Trophy: Aroma Chundan, Nadubhagam Chundan, Veeyapuram Chundan, Melpadam Chundan, Niranam Chundan, Arppookara Chundan, Cheruthana Chundan, Punyalan Niranam Chundan and Thalavady Chundan. Three of the boats are new this season.
For the first time teams are identified by the name of the boat rather than the club, with points accumulating across the season and the highest total taking the overall title.
The calendar has drawn protest. Every venue in the Malabar region has been left out, leaving around 23 clubs from Kannur and Kasaragod, who had invested in traditional churulan boats, with no fixtures. Earlier league races in the region had paid prize money of up to 1.5 lakh rupees plus team bonuses. A planned venue at Kasaragod was cancelled over technical issues and never rescheduled, and the clubs said the newly released list had once again ignored the region. Only two local water festivals now remain in Malabar.
The league was founded in 2019 and inaugurated by Sachin Tendulkar, building a season out of established traditional races from the Nehru Trophy to the President's Trophy. It began with nine clubs, grew to twelve by 2022, and was cancelled in 2020 and 2021.