In Dave Castro’s Week in Review today, we received some additional details around how Quarterfinals and Semifinals will work in the 2026 CrossFit Games season. The information comes a week after CrossFit published the framework and dates of the 2026 season.
Remind Me: In 2026, Quarterfinals are back after taking a hiatus in 2025. The top 25% in the CrossFit Open of men and women worldwide will be invited to compete in Quarterfinals next year.Â
The top 2,000 men and women in Quarterfinals will then be eligible to compete in Semifinals or the Online Semifinal.
Last week’s announcement, however, left many questions on how Quarterfinals and Semifinals would work…
Dave addressed some of those questions this week.
Semifinals will be operated by 3rd-party event organizers. The 2026 Semifinals will be hosted and run by third-party event organizers. That means competitions like Syndicate Crown, French Throwdown, Copa Sur, Torian Pro, etc will all likely be back for next season.
Semifinals will not be tied to geographic regions like pre-2025. Prior to 2025, Quarterfinals and Semifinals were region-based. That is, the top athletes from each region in Quarterfinals would advance to that region’s Semifinal.
In 2026, similar to 2025, the Semifinals will not be (completely) tied to geographic restrictions. Of course, some In-Person Qualifying Events in 2025 were geo-restricted. Syndicate Crown was tied to the old North America East region while the TFX Invitational was restricted to athletes from North America West.
It is unclear if CrossFit will continue to allow Semifinal event organizers to decide whether to geo-fence their events or if they will be required to open it up to anyone in the world.
Online Semifinals will act as Last Chance Qualifier. One of the criticisms of the 2025 season was that the In-Affiliate Semifinals were near the beginning of the In-Person Qualifying Events. This caused many of the top athletes to qualify via the online route, which meant the top athletes did not end up competing in-person to earn their spot at the CrossFit Games.
In 2026, the Online Semifinals will be after all of the in-person Semifinals. Based on last week’s announcement it sounds like all 2,000 men and women who qualify out of Quarterfinals can compete in the Online Semifinals, but that has not yet been clarified.
Number of qualifying spots via Online Semifinals still TBD. Maybe it has been decided and not officially announced, but the Online Semifinals will fill the gap between qualifying spots earned via the in-person Semifinals.
One of the criticisms last year was that only two spots were available at the IPQE’s. Could we see 3 (or more spots available) at the Semifinals this year? If so, there might be less than 11 spots up for grabs at the last chance Online Semifinals. All of this, however, has yet to be announced.
