Colten Mertens and Lucy Campbell Win the 2026 CrossFit Open

Colten Mertens claimed the men's overall title at the 2026 CrossFit Open by accumulating just 9 points under the competition's low-score format, finishing well clear of Peter Ellis at 20 points and Jeffrey Adler at 26. Lucy Campbell won the women's worldwide title with 16 points, edging Mirijam von Rohr by just two in one of the tighter women's races of the Open era. Leah Storen rounded out the top three at 48 points.

The three-week online competition, running workouts 26.1 through 26.3, concluded in mid-March before Quarterfinal invites were distributed. Mertens' consistency across all three tests was the defining story: he posted an 11:16 on the opening workout and closed the event with a 13:26 on 26.3, performances that bracketed a field full of specialists and made him nearly impossible to dislodge on aggregate.

Workout 26.1 set the tone with a wall-ball and box jump/step-over couplet under a 12-minute cap. Bjarni Leifs led the field with a 10:59 finish, with Mertens recording 11:16 among the leaders. The workout rewarded athletes who could sustain efficient cycling under fatigue, and the times at the top reflected how little room there was for pacing errors.

The middle test, 26.2, shifted the demands entirely. Built around a 50-pound dumbbell sequence combining walking lunges, snatches, and pull and chest-to-bar progressions under a 15-minute cap, the workout exposed athletes who lacked grip endurance or unilateral control. Colin Bosshard put up the standout performance of the event with a 6:03 finish, while Jonne Koski also posted a notable result.

Workout 26.3 closed the Open with a two-round, three-weight clean and thruster complex paired with burpee-over-bar reps under a 16-minute cap. Mertens' 13:26 effectively sealed the overall title, and it came in the format most likely to create variance at the top of the leaderboard.

For Campbell, the two-point margin over von Rohr tells the real story: there was no single blowout workout that separated them. Her 16-point total came from placing well across all three tests, a quality that tends to hold up once the field expands and workouts get more specific in Quarterfinals. Both Mertens and Campbell now head into that stage carrying the kind of momentum, seeding, and sponsor visibility that shapes the entire arc of a competitive season.