9th March 2026

The SSL Charity of the Year for 2026 will be the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Air Ambulance. Serving the local region with over 2,500 deployments in 2025, the Hampshire and IOW Air Ambulance are a team of passionate, dedicated team of doctors, dispatchers, paramedics and pilots. Their simple mission is to save lives; by bringing expert clinical care to local people who have suffered extreme injury or trauma, or who have experienced cardiac arrest.

They are, effectively, a mobile Emergency Department in the sky. If they can reach critically ill or injured people in time, they have a high chance of keeping them alive by delivering hospital level care at the scene and on the move. Their highly experienced doctors and paramedics, who often have decades of experience, can be the difference between surviving and not surviving.

The Air Ambulance are in the middle of a large drive to raise funds to relocate their base of operations from north Hampshire to a site in Southampton, cutting down flight times for the majority of the region.

The first fund-raising event of the year is almost upon us: the Charity Indoor Tournament is just a couple of weeks away. Last year's charity, the Samaritans, received over £1,100 from the softball community.