Best in Show: The Crufts Result as a Published Record

A Century of Verdicts, Counted

The inaugural Best in Show winner at Crufts in 1928 was a Greyhound named Primley Sceptre. Since then the Gundog and Terrier groups have produced the greatest share of winners, with Cocker Spaniels accumulating more Best in Show titles than any other single breed — a fact the Kennel Club's historical Crufts records document year by year. Working, Pastoral and Utility group representatives have won far less frequently, and the Toy group has produced only a handful of Supreme Champions across the full series.

Repeat-winning breeds include the Wire Fox Terrier, which dominated the interwar period, and the Standard Poodle, which has won multiple times across different decades. Individual dogs have also repeated: Knopa, a Borzoi, won in 1934; the Lakeland Terrier Stingray of Derryabah won in both 1967 and 1968, one of the clearest cases of a single dog taking the title in consecutive years.

The welfare dimension of the record entered formal view in 2012, when a Pekingese named Samsara won Best in Show. The Pekingese is classified among the breeds assessed under the Kennel Club and University of Cambridge Respiratory Function Grading Scheme, which uses a four-point scale to measure airway obstruction; its inclusion in that scheme reflects documented concern about brachycephalic conformation. The 2003 winner was a Poodle; the 2009 winner, following the Pedigree Dogs Exposed broadcast, was a Sealyham Terrier — a breed on the Kennel Club's Vulnerable Native Breeds list rather than a welfare-flagged one. In 2024, an Australian Shepherd named Viking took the title.

The Kennel Club publishes the full Crufts results archive including group placements, judge names and registered dog details, making the series traceable as a documentary record rather than relying on secondary accounts.