Everything You Need to Know About the 2026 CrossFit Quarterfinals

The competition window that decides who survives the 2026 CrossFit Games season opens Thursday, March 26, at 12 p.m. PT, and closes Monday, March 30, at the same time. Four days. Four workouts. And a leaderboard that will cut the field down to numbers that actually sting to think about.

Why Quarterfinals Are Back — and Why It Matters

The Quarterfinals were not part of the 2025 CrossFit Games season, but when organizers reviewed plans for 2026, they decided to bring the stage back. Many in the community welcomed the return, seeing it as another stage for athletes to prove themselves and a proper filter before Semifinals. CrossFit reinstated the Quarterfinals stage so that the top 25% of individuals and age-group athletes worldwide advance from the Open. For many, that shift is significant: it bridges the gap between the participatory energy of the Open and the outright seriousness of the Semifinals.

The workouts themselves have already landed. Adrian Bozman joined Chase Ingraham on the Sport of Fitness Podcast to reveal the year's Quarterfinals programming, and there are four workouts in total. CrossFit published them on March 23, 2026, when registration opened.

The Competition Window: Dates and Deadlines

Every workout must be completed inside a CrossFit affiliate in good standing and receive validation from the affiliate manager at that affiliate. All scores will remain hidden until the score submission window closes on Monday, March 30, at 12 p.m. Pacific. That means athletes who go early in the weekend get no psychological edge from the leaderboard — scores are invisible to competitors until the window shuts.

Scores submitted early will be hidden from public view until the competition has concluded. An athlete can submit a score on Friday and it will not be visible to their competitors until the competition is over. That is different from how the Open leaderboard works.

Affiliate managers should be aware that the individual and age-group leaderboards will be finalized by no later than April 10, 2026, per CrossFit's rulebook.

The Format: What Athletes Must Do

Unlike the CrossFit Open, athletes must complete each Quarterfinals workout inside a CrossFit affiliate in good standing. Athletes are not permitted to do workouts elsewhere and simply submit a video, as they could in the Open. Each athlete must also use a registered judge who has either passed the 2026 Judges Course or holds a current Advanced Judges Course certificate.

The question of video submission comes up every year. This year's Quarterfinals will not have a mandatory video submission requirement. However, athletes who think they may have one of the top performances in the world should have a video available in case CrossFit requests it. The video review process will be primarily used for prize money purposes, and if a video is requested and an athlete cannot provide one, that score may be adjusted to zero.

The Workouts

The four-workout lineup tests a wide range of capacities. Workout 1 is a palindrome-style chipper: for time, athletes complete 10 shuttle runs (50 ft), 20 overhead squats (115/80 lb), and 30 lateral burpees over the bar, then rest one minute before running the sequence back in reverse.

Workout 2 leans into gymnastics and dumbbell cycling. The score is the total time taken to complete the workout, with time stopping at the lockout of the final rep after completing 80 dumbbell hang squat cleans and 40 bar muscle-ups. There is no minimum or maximum number of reps that must be completed before alternating movements.

Workout 3 is a pacing trap dressed up as a deadlift ladder. Athletes complete three rounds of 50 double-unders and 10 deadlifts at the lightest weight, then increase to the middle weight for two rounds of the same couplet, and finish with a final round of 50 double-unders and 10 deadlifts at the heaviest weight. The first three rounds are the setup. The workout is really decided in rounds four, five, and six, when the deadlift gets heavier and the margin for error gets smaller.

Workout 4 combines monostructural work with barbell cycling and strict gymnastics. Athletes complete 1,000 meters of rowing, then move to the barbell for 30 clean and jerks, row another 1,000 meters, then finish with 30 strict handstand push-ups. Time stops at the lockout of the final handstand push-up. Going hard on the row versus going controlled usually only changes finishing time by roughly 15 to 20 seconds, but going out too hot there can absolutely wreck the clean and jerks and strict handstand push-ups, costing athletes minutes.

Who Advances: The Cutlines

This is where Quarterfinals earns its reputation as the filter. For individuals, the top 2,000 men and top 2,000 women advance to Semifinals. That's 4,000 spots from a global pool.

Age-group cutlines vary by division:

• 35-54 divisions: top 400 men and top 400 women advance
• 14-17 division: top 300 men and top 300 women advance
• 55+ divisions: top 300 men and top 300 women advance

The Age-Group and Individual Quarterfinals are held on the same weekend. Any athlete who qualifies for both competitions may compete in both and will only be asked to pay one registration fee. All workouts for individuals and select age groups will be the same, so athletes who qualify for both competitions will perform one set of programming.

How to Qualify for Quarterfinals

The top 25% of individuals worldwide advance from the Open to the Quarterfinals in 2026. The same applies to age groups: the top 25% of athletes worldwide from each age-group division advance from the Open to Quarterfinals. In the 2026 Open, Colten Mertens topped the men's 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.

Where to Check Results

All scores will remain hidden from public view until the score submission window closes. Once it does, results live on the official CrossFit Games leaderboard. The individual and age-group leaderboards will be finalized by no later than April 10, 2026.

What's at Stake

Quarterfinals is where the season stops being about participation and starts being about survival. The field that started the Open numbered in the tens of thousands globally. By the time the March 30 deadline passes and the leaderboard goes live, four workouts will have decided who keeps competing in 2026 and who packs away their gear until next season. Semifinals are the final qualifying stage for athletes hoping to compete at the CrossFit Games, with the top 20 teams in the world set to compete at the 2026 CrossFit Games, taking place from July 24 to 26 at the SAP Center in San Jose, California. Quarterfinals is the gate they all have to pass through first.