The Yacht Club de Monaco, a closed club whose regattas you can watch from the quay

Some places in Monaco are best seen from outside, and the Yacht Club is the prime example. It’s one of the most influential sailing clubs in the world, with the prince as its president and superyachts flying its burgee, and it has no public visits. It’s still worth knowing, though, because it puts on some of the loveliest scenes in the harbour, and those are free to watch.

What it is and who’s inside

Prince Rainier III founded the Yacht Club de Monaco in 1953, as the heir to the Société des Régates that Albert I had created in 1888 with twelve Monegasque members. Albert II has chaired it since 1984, appointed by his father while still hereditary prince. Today it has 2,500 members from 82 nationalities, and the club itself says it’s exclusive to its members, owners or captains of superyachts.

The family’s love of the sea goes back a long way. VisitMonaco mentions Rainier I, made Admiral of France in 1304, Honoré II, who owned four ships, and Albert I, the oceanographer prince who founded the museum on the Rock. That seafaring story is best told at the Oceanographic Museum.

Can you go inside?

Not as a visitor. It’s a private club, and I haven’t found any public tour or a restaurant open to passers-by. I’m saying it plainly because it’s one of the most searched questions and the answer saves you a walk. The clubhouse is on Port Hercule, with its own marina, the YCM Marina, which takes yachts of up to 60 metres.

The club does run a sailing school for young people from the age of six, and it has its own fleet. Its flagship is Tuiga, a 28-metre gaff cutter built in Scotland in 1909, which the club bought and restored in 1995. If she’s moored when you pass, she’s one of the most elegant boats in the harbour. The whole port, with its yachts and the best places to see them, is in Port Hercule.

The regattas you can watch

This is the good part for visitors. The club runs sporting and social events all year, and two of them are best enjoyed from land. The first is the Monaco Classic Week - La Belle Classe, a biennial event launched in 1994, harking back to the first motorboat meetings of 1904. It gathers traditional sailing yachts, vintage motor yachts and classic motorboats, with a strict rule, as only sailing yachts built before 1950 with wooden masts may berth in the marina.

There are regattas, handling contests, a prize for the best restoration and a concours d’élégance in which the boats parade before the jury. VisitMonaco suggests watching from the Rainier III Auditorium, the Rainier III Solarium and the Saint-Martin Gardens, and I think the last is the best choice, because from the Rock you have the whole bay in front of you and pay nothing.

The second is the Monaco Energy Boat Challenge, four days in which more than 40 universities test solar, electric, hydrogen and AI-assisted boats. In 2026, 26 teams raced in the Energy class, 11 in the AI class and 6 in SeaLab. The races are advertised as open to the public, in the club’s marina and out in the bay, with a free-entry village on shore.

How I’d make the most of it

If boats are your thing, I’d check the dates of these two events on the club’s website before booking. For the Classic Week I’d go up to the Saint-Martin Gardens in the morning and down to the quay in the afternoon to see the boats moored. And if you want to actually get on a boat, the club doesn’t hire to visitors, so it’s a boat trip or a skippered charter, which I compare in yacht charter in Monaco.

A word on hiring, while we’re here. In Monaco a boat carrying paying passengers must have a skipper, with a maximum of 12 people on a motor boat and 30 under sail. It’s a safety rule, and I find it a useful filter, because anyone on the quay offering something different isn’t working within the rules.

The other big nautical date of the year isn’t the club’s, it’s the Monaco Yacht Show, the superyacht fair that has taken over Port Hercule every September since 1991. In 2026 it brought together around 120 superyachts from 23 to 26 September, with a €700 day pass sold online only. I cover it in the Monaco Yacht Show.