CrossFit Quarterfinals Leaderboard Goes Live as 2026 Competition Window Opens

The Quarterfinals are the second stage of the 2026 CrossFit Games season, drawing the top 25% of individual and age-group athletes worldwide from the Open before the field narrows again heading into Semifinals. The official leaderboard went live on the CrossFit Games website when the competition window opened Thursday, and it is already the central place to track score movement and cutline pressure through the five-day window.

The 2026 Individual and Age-Group Quarterfinals run from Thursday, March 26, at 12 p.m. PT to Monday, March 30, at 12 p.m. PT, with scores required to be submitted inside that competition window and affiliate managers required to validate them by CrossFit's deadline. For athletes in Europe, the score submission window runs from Thursday, March 26, through Sunday, March 30, at 12 p.m. PT, with the CET-specific window opening Thursday, March 26, at 8:00 p.m. CET and closing Monday, March 30, at 9:00 p.m. CET. Each Affiliate Manager must complete validation before Wednesday, April 1, at 5 p.m. PT, and the final leaderboard is expected by April 10.

One of the defining features of Quarterfinals scoring this year: scores submitted early remain hidden from public view until the submission window closes, meaning an athlete can submit a score on Friday and competitors won't see it until the competition concludes. That is a different dynamic than how the Open leaderboard works. Affiliate Managers can view and validate results while scores are hidden, making the validation process invisible to the broader field until Monday.

The format is simple in theory and demanding in practice. Athletes who qualify receive an invite, register for the competition, complete the workouts during the competition window, and submit scores online. Workouts must be completed at a CrossFit affiliate in good standing, and athletes must use a registered judge who passed the 2026 Judges Course or holds a current Advanced Judges Course certificate.

The programming released March 23 already signals what CrossFit is testing. One individual workout opens with 10 fifty-foot shuttle runs, 20 overhead squats, and 30 burpees over the bar, a one-minute rest, then runs the sequence in reverse, all under a 12-minute cap at 115 lb for men and 80 lb for women. The obvious challenge is the combination of shuttle runs, overhead squats, and burpees; the less obvious challenge is transition management. Athletes who lose time in Quarterfinals usually do it in places that do not look dramatic on paper, and that is why Quarterfinal workouts often separate athletes with similar raw fitness but different levels of competition experience.

The age-group field faces its own test with a deadlift and double-under ladder: three rounds of 50 double-unders and 10 deadlifts at the lightest weight, two rounds at the middle weight, one round at the heaviest, all under a 12-minute cap. Women lift 155, 185, and 225 lb; men lift 225, 275, and 315 lb. Workout 4 goes a different direction entirely: 1,000-meter row, 30 clean and jerks, another 1,000-meter row, and 30 strict handstand push-ups under a 20-minute cap, prescribed at 95 lb for women and 135 lb for men.

The cutlines shaping the leaderboard are concrete. For individuals, the top 2,000 men and top 2,000 women from Quarterfinals advance to Semifinals. For age groups, the cutlines vary by division: the 35-54 Masters divisions advance the top 400 men and women, while the 14-17 and 55-plus divisions advance the top 300 men and women.

Any athlete who qualifies for both Individual and Age-Group can compete in both and only pays one registration fee, performing one set of programming. Notably, there is no Team Quarterfinal in 2026, a change that pushes all team attention directly to Semifinals.

Heading into Quarterfinals, Colten Mertens topped the men's Open leaderboard for the second year in a row, while Lucy Campbell had her best-ever start to a season and ranked first among the women. Their Quarterfinals scores, like everyone else's, won't surface publicly until the submission window closes Monday, at which point the leaderboard will populate in full and the race to Semifinals becomes visible.