The Royal Bermuda Yacht Club is set to resume discussions with the World Match Racing Tour over the future of the Argo Group Gold Cup early in the new year.

The match race spectacle was cancelled this year after discussions over the new Tour format between the RBYC, the hosts, title sponsor Argo Group Limited and the WMRT ended without agreement.

However, Andy Cox, the Gold Cup chairman, confirmed that the RBYC “will be speaking to the WMRT” as early as next month.

The King Edward VII Gold Cup is the oldest match racing trophy in the world for competition involving one-design yachts, while the RBYC is a founding member of the World Match Racing Association.

The future of the event has been hanging in the balance ever since the World Match Racing Tour switched to M32 catamarans from the International One-Design racing sloop last year.

Organisers had been hoping to find a way to hold the regatta, with Peter Shrubb, the RBYC rear commodore, saying in April that he was “hopeful the Gold Cup will carry on”.

Hakan Svensson, the Tour’s owner, also visited the island to “thrash things out”, but even then there were too many questions that had yet to be answered.

In the interim, Argo has committed to sponsoring Artemis Racing in their challenge to win the America’s Cup next year, and Cox said that was where the sponsor’s priorities presently lay.

New Zealander Adam Minoprio, helmsman of America’s Cup challenger Groupama Team France, won the last Gold Cup event staged in Hamilton in 2015 after edging Australian rival Keith Swinton 3-2 to lift the prestigious trophy, whose origins date back to 1907.