Bridge Madness 2026 – Elite Eight

Rules

In the 2026 Bridge Madness Tournament, 16 bridges that cross the Thames River in London go pier-to-pier in a reader’s choice tournament to pick the best one. This year’s tournament features bridges visited by urbantraipsing on a 2012 bridge-walking expedition.

Results of the Sweet Sixteen:

  • Battersea Railway Bridge vs. Tower Bridge – 24% to 76%
  • Battersea Bridge vs. London Bridge – 43% to 57%
  • Albert Bridge vs. Cannon Street Bridge – 100% to 0%
  • Chelsea Bridge vs. Southwark Bridge – 67% to 33%
  • Grosvenor Bridge vs. Millennium Bridge – 38% to 62%
  • Vauxhall Bridge vs. Blackfriars Bridge – 33% to 67%
  • Lambeth Bridge vs. Waterloo Bridge – 92% to 8%
  • Westminster Bridge vs. Jubilee Bridges – 58% to 42%

Below are the brackets for the Elite Eight. Remember to vote for one bridge in each bracket by noon on Saturday, March 14th, and then return on March 15th to vote for the Final Four.

To learn more about the bridges, revisit the introduction which has links to posts on each bridge.

The Bridge Brackets

Bridge Madness 2026 Map

Bridge Madness 2026 – Sweet Sixteen

Rules

In the 2026 Bridge Madness Tournament, 16 bridges that cross the Thames River in London go pier-to-pier in a reader’s choice tournament to pick the best one. This year’s tournament features bridges visited by urbantraipsing on a 2012 bridge-walking expedition. Below are the brackets for the Sweet Sixteen. Remember to vote for one bridge in each bracket by noon on Saturday, March 7th, and then return on March 8th to vote for the Elite Eight.

To learn more about the bridges, revisit the introduction which has links to posts on each bridge.

The Bridges

Bridge Madness 2026 Map

Bridge Madness 2026 – Introduction

Rules

In the 2026 Bridge Madness Tournament, 16 London bridges go pier-to-pier in a reader’s choice tournament to pick the best one. I engaged with approximately 18 bridges across the River Thames on my last trip to London. Because the Blackfriars Station Railway Bridge was under construction when I was there, it is not included in this tournament. The Jubilee-Hungerford Bridges are either 1 or 3 bridges depending on how you count them. For the purposes of this tournament, we are counting them as 1 bridge to stay with our usual 16 tournament bridges.

Beginning March 1, you will be able to vote for your favorite bridge in each bracket. The champion bridge will be announced on March 29. Don’t forget to come back each week to vote your favorite bridge to #1!

Each round of voting will go live at 8 AM on the scheduled Sunday and close at noon the following Saturday. The schedule is:

  • March 1 – Sweet Sixteen
  • March 8 – Elite Eight
  • March 15 – Final Four
  • March 22 – Championship
  • March 29 – Winner announced

The 16 London Bridges in this tournament are listed below. Click on the links to learn more about urbantraipsing’s encounter with each bridge.

Bridge Madness 2026 Map

Waterloo Bridge: The Finest Non-inspiration

To pick up where I left off with the London bridges I walked earlier this year, the next bridge is Waterloo Bridge.  (The last one I discussed was Jubilee Bridge on July 10.)  The Waterloo Bridge was the most boring bridge in London, though I didn’t realize it at the time.  When I got home however, I realized I only took two pictures from it and hadn’t taken any of the bridge itself.  The picture above was one I took from the Jubilee Bridge to show the downriver view from the bridge, which happens to include the Waterloo Bridge.

I was expecting that the London Bridge would be boring.  Sometime before my trip, I mistakenly identified the Tower Bridge as the London Bridge.  The discussion that ensued, in which I was corrected, led me to believe that the London Bridge was plain and uninteresting and as such, I was not the first to mistake the Tower Bridge for it.  While the London Bridge itself was boring and like the Waterloo Bridge lacked the colors and sculpture found on the other bridges (see the examples of the Albert Bridge and Vauxhall Bridge), it there were many interesting things to see from the London Bridge.  While crossing the Waterloo Bridge, I was only inspired to take shots of the downriver and upriver views.

The most interesting thing to note about these views, is in comparing the downriver view from the Jubilee Bridge with the downriver view from the Waterloo Bridge (pictured above) it appears that the new buildings are pushing the classical buildings such as St. Paul’s out of the frame.

When I come across a situation like this, where there isn’t much to say from my experience, I turn to the internet to give me something to fill out with.  I found two intriguing bits in my Google search.  First is that while I found the views from Waterloo Bridge uninspiring, Wikipedia suggests that the views of the city from this bridge “are widely held to be the finest from any spot at the ground level.”  The second is that Hollywood has made two films called “Waterloo Bridge” in 1931 and 1940 in which the main characters meet on the Waterloo Bridge.  The interesting part is that the movie Production Codes changed in between which resulted in two fairly different films–the first about a scarlet woman accidentally killed, the second about a proper woman who commits suicide to save the man she loves from scandal.