Three new hulls. Three design philosophies. One brutal ocean to prove them right or wrong.
The IMOCA design war is no longer something waiting somewhere in the distant road to the Vendée Globe 2028. It is already here. This week, the next generation of the class came sharply into focus with three major new hull stories: Boris Herrmann’s new Team Malizia IMOCA preparing for launch, Thomas Ruyant’s new TR Racing boat entering the water, and Kojiro Shiraishi’s radical new DMG MORI Global One pointing toward a very different future.
On the surface, this may look like the usual early-cycle activity. New boats, new sponsor presentations, new renders, new launch announcements.
But look a little closer, and something much more interesting is happening.
The IMOCA class is beginning to split into different design answers to the same fundamental question:
How do you make the next Vendée Globe boat faster without making it impossible for the skipper to actually use that speed?
Because in modern IMOCA sailing, raw speed is no longer the only problem. The boats are already brutally fast. They foil, they slam, they accelerate violently, and they ask an almost impossible amount from the sailor inside.
So the next design battle is not simply about who can build the most powerful machine.
It is about who can build the most usable speed.
That is where the real design war begins.
Boris Herrmann and the pressure cooker programme
The first major story is Boris Herrmann and Team Malizia.
Boris is preparing to race the Route du Rhum 2026 on the team’s brand-new IMOCA. The new boat is scheduled to launch in Lorient in early July, which immediately places the team into one of the most compressed development windows imaginable.
A new IMOCA is not like a new car rolling out of a factory. It is not simply “finished” when it touches the water. These boats have to be learned. They have to be tested, broken, repaired, tuned and understood. Every sail crossover matters. Every foil mode matters. Every system has to be trusted. The autopilot has to learn the boat, and the skipper has to learn where the machine’s real limits are.
And for Malizia, there is very little time to do that gently.
After the launch and sea trials, the programme points quickly toward The Ocean Race Atlantic from New York to Lorient, and then toward the Route du Rhum from Saint-Malo to Guadeloupe. That means this new boat is expected to go almost straight from the shed into high-pressure ocean racing.
That is a serious test.
For Boris Herrmann, the Route du Rhum is not just another entry on the calendar. It will be one of the first moments where the new Malizia is placed under public, solo-racing pressure. One man, one new boat, one Atlantic crossing, and a start line full of skippers who also believe they have the future in their hands.
But the Malizia story is even more interesting because this boat is part of a broader design collaboration.
Team Malizia, Thomas Ruyant’s TR Racing, and Banque Populaire have all been connected through a shared design and construction philosophy involving Antoine Koch, Finot-Conq, GSea Design and CDK Technologies. The idea is not that the boats are identical clones, but that the teams are working from a shared foundation, with each project adapting the concept to its own skipper, programme and priorities.
That is unusual in a class where secrecy and individual advantage normally matter so much.
But it also makes sense.
The IMOCA class is becoming extremely expensive, extremely technical, and increasingly conscious of sustainability. Sharing tooling, knowledge and experience can reduce waste, lower risk, and allow teams to push the platform forward without each of them having to reinvent the entire wheel alone.
So when Malizia launches this new boat, we are not only watching Boris Herrmann receive a new IMOCA.
We are watching one of the first real-world tests of a new design family.
Thomas Ruyant: evolution, refinement and control
The second major story is Thomas Ruyant’s new IMOCA.
Ruyant is one of the key names in the modern class. He is not a skipper who simply participates. He helps define the front of the fleet. His previous campaigns have been fast, ambitious and technically important, and his new boat is clearly intended as a serious weapon for the next cycle.
But what makes the new TR Racing hull fascinating is that it does not appear to be chasing shock value.
This is not a boat designed merely to look strange. It is not radical for the sake of being radical. It looks like a very deliberate evolution of what the modern foiling IMOCA has already become.
The important word here is versatility.
A Vendée Globe boat cannot only be fast in one perfect condition. It has to perform across the full range of ocean reality: reaching, running, upwind work, transitions, confused seas, Southern Ocean swell, North Atlantic punishment, light-air traps, squalls, damage, fatigue and tactical uncertainty.
The fastest theoretical boat is not always the fastest boat around the world.
The Southern Ocean does not care about your computer render. The Atlantic in November does not care about your press release. And after weeks alone at sea, even the best skipper cannot use a boat that is too violent, too wet, too fragile or too exhausting.
That is why Ruyant’s new boat matters.
The design appears to focus on improving the known IMOCA language rather than abandoning it. The hull is relatively narrow in places, but powerful. The chine geometry is complex. The boat seems aimed at balancing downwind efficiency with more support, lift and control when the boat is reaching, accelerating and meeting heavy seas.
In simple terms, the hull is trying to do several things at once.
It wants to be slippery.
It wants to reduce drag.
It wants to generate usable stability.
It wants to lift the bow and reduce the worst slamming.
It wants to work with the foils, not against them.
And above all, it wants to give the sailor a machine that can be driven hard for long periods without becoming a punishment chamber. That is the heart of modern IMOCA design.
For years, the class has pushed toward more power and more foil-assisted speed. But the human cost has become impossible to ignore. These boats slam so hard that sailors describe living inside them as physically brutal. They are loud, wet, violent and exhausting. The loads are immense. The motion is relentless.
So the next step is not simply more power.
It is better power.
It is smoother power.
It is speed that can actually be used.
This seems to be the design direction behind the Ruyant and Malizia family. It is evolution rather than revolution. A refinement of the modern foiling IMOCA. Better transitions. Better ergonomics. Better hull-foil interaction. Better control.
That may not sound as dramatic as a completely alien hull shape. But in the Vendée Globe, refinement wins races.
DMG MORI: the radical counter-argument
If Ruyant and Malizia represent the evolutionary branch of the new IMOCA generation, DMG MORI is the radical counter-argument.
Kojiro Shiraishi’s new boat, designed with Guillaume Verdier, appears to ask a very different question:
What if the next IMOCA should not behave quite so much like a traditional monohull?
The most striking feature is the hull concept. DMG MORI has been described around a central hull or bustle-like form, almost evoking the centre hull of a trimaran. The idea seems to be that when the boat is sailing flatter and more foil-assisted, the immersed hull shape can reduce wetted surface and drag, while also softening the ride and helping the boat lift earlier.
That is a bold interpretation of where the class may be going.
Modern IMOCAs are foiling more and more. They are also sailing in modes that would have seemed extreme not that long ago. If the boat is spending more time flatter, more supported by foils, and less dependent on old-style heeled monohull behaviour, then perhaps the hull should change accordingly.
Instead of simply refining the existing language, Verdier and the team seem to be asking whether the whole relationship between hull, foil and sea surface can be rethought.
If it works, the advantages could be huge.
Less wetted surface means less drag. Less slamming means less fatigue. Earlier foil assistance means more time in fast modes. A smoother motion means the skipper can push harder for longer. And if the boat is easier to live with, then its top speed becomes more than just a number on a perfect day — it becomes usable performance.
But radical designs always come with risk. The ocean is not a simulation. A boat can look brilliant in theory and still reveal unexpected problems in real waves. A central hull concept may reduce drag in one mode but create balance, handling or sea-state problems in another. It may be incredible in some conditions and compromised in others.
That is why DMG MORI is perhaps the most exciting of these new boats from a pure design perspective.
What if the next IMOCA is not just a more powerful monohull? What if the next IMOCA starts borrowing more of its behaviour from the world of multihulls?
That is a massive idea. And if it proves successful, the rest of the class will be watching very closely.
The true design war in IMOCA is now about the relationship between the sailor and the machine.
For a long time, the question seemed simple: how fast can we make the boat? Now the question is more complex: how much of that speed can the skipper actually use, day after day, ocean after ocean?
The Ruyant and Malizia direction appears to be about refining the known system. Improve control. Improve versatility. Improve comfort, or at least reduce the worst violence. Keep the speed, but make it more usable.
DMG MORI appears to challenge the system more directly. Change the hull behaviour. Reduce wetted surface. Sail flatter. Reduce slamming. Allow the boat to behave more like a foil-assisted hybrid between monohull and multihull thinking.
Both approaches are trying to solve the same problem.
The boats are so fast now that the limiting factor is no longer just sail area, foil size or hull power. The limiting factor is the total system: hull, foils, rudders, autopilot, cockpit, ergonomics, energy management, reliability, sea state and the human being inside the machine.
A boat that is theoretically faster but impossible to drive hard for long periods will lose.
A boat that is slightly less spectacular but can stay at 90 percent for longer may win.
That is the uncomfortable truth of offshore racing.
The ocean rewards usable performance.
What to watch next:
The next few months will be extremely important.
First, watch Malizia’s launch and early sailing. How quickly does the team get the boat on the water? How much testing can they do before the next major events? Does Boris look immediately confident, or does the boat clearly need a long learning curve?
Second, watch the cockpit solutions. Modern IMOCA cockpits are no longer just places to steer. They are survival capsules, control centres and workstations. Protection, visibility, steering access, trimming layout and rest management all matter. The cockpit may be one of the most important hidden battlegrounds of this design cycle.
Third, watch the foil behaviour. Ruyant and Malizia seem to represent a powerful but refined foil-assisted direction. DMG MORI seems to integrate the foils with a hull that wants to sail flatter and reduce wetted surface. When these boats are finally compared in anger, look not only at top speed but at stability, acceleration, control and recovery after slamming.
Fourth, watch how the boats perform in real sea state. Flat-water speed can be misleading. The Vendée Globe is not won on a perfectly flat speed strip. It is won in the messy, violent, inconsistent oceans of the real world.
And fifth, watch the skippers.
Because in the end, these are not remote-controlled prototypes. They are solo ocean racing machines. The sailor still has to sleep, eat, repair, navigate, trim, steer, think, survive and make decisions under exhaustion.
The road to Vendée Globe 2028 has already begun
The choices being made now will define the next cycle. Hull forms are being committed. Foil philosophies are being tested. Cockpit layouts are being built. Teams are deciding whether to refine the current generation or gamble on something more radical.
Boris Herrmann’s new Malizia will soon begin its real-world test programme.
Thomas Ruyant’s new boat is already showing us one possible future of refined foiling IMOCA design.
And DMG MORI Global One may be showing us something more disruptive — a possible glimpse of a flatter, smoother, more multihull-influenced future.
Three new hulls. Three different expressions of ambition.
But only the ocean will tell us which ideas are real.
The IMOCA design war is taking shape
