BREAKING: CrossFit Announces New 2025 Games Season Structure — Big Changes for Individual Division

Following the announcement of the conclusion of its third-party investigation into Lazar Ðukić’s death at the 2024 CrossFit Games, CrossFit HQ today revealed some details about the 2025 Games season structure, including a few big changes.

• For planning purposes at the affiliate level, the most important information in this announcement are the dates of the 2025 CrossFit Open. 

We now know that the Open will take place from February 27 to March 17 and will serve as the first stage of the qualifying process for the Individual, Team, and Age Group Divisions. (The Adaptive Division will compete in the WheelWOD, which will take place simultaneously.)

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While CrossFit’s announcement starts with “we’re making a few changes,” there are some pretty major changes coming, including: 

• No Quarterfinals.
• A “virtual in-affiliate Semifinals.” 
• A set of in-person qualifying events for the Individual Division.
• A 25% reduction in the Crossfit Games field for the elite men and women.
  • The field will decrease from 40 men and 40 women to 30 each. 
  • The Teams field will go from 30 to 20.

Let’s break it down.

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3 Things That Will Stay the Same

With all the changes on tap, let’s start with what will stay the same.

1. All divisions will start with an “Open” and proceed to a mid-season qualifying stage (even though the details of that stage are different).

2. The CrossFit Open will remain three weeks long. The Adaptive Division will compete in the WheelWOD Open on the same dates as the CrossFit Open.

3. The CrossFit Games will conclude the 2025 season in August for the Individual and Team Divisions. The Teenage, Masters, and Adaptive CrossFit Games will conclude the season for those divisions at dates yet to be determined. 

A World of Changes for 2025 

There is a lot to unpack here, so let’s start with the CrossFit Games and work back. 

CrossFit Games

For the Individuals, the 2025 field is being reduced by 25 percent from 40 Men and 40 Women to 30 each. 

A similar reduction is seen on the Team’s side. The total field for Teams is reduced by 33% from 30 teams to 20 total teams.

• The announcement made today also mentions a new stipulation not seen in previous years: “An affiliate can only qualify one team per gym for the final Games.”

Semifinals

The Semifinals, specifically in the Individual Division, are now split into two parallel paths to qualify for the CrossFit Games. 

• Worth noting: Neither of these paths, at least as laid out in the announcement, are based upon Competitive Regions as in recent years.  

There is now a “virtual in-affiliate Semifinal,” which, for individuals, will be the first weekend of May. The Age Groups and Teams will compete in their Semifinals in April and Adaptive the weekend after the Individuals.

In-Affiliate Semifinals Dates:

• Age-Group: April 3-6
• Team: April 24-27
• Individual: May 1-4
• Adaptive: May 8-11

For everyone outside of the Individual division, the “virtual in-affiliate Semifinal” is the only option to attempt to qualify for the Games. 

• For Individuals, though, the CrossFit announcement states it is “recognizing multiple premier events around the world as official qualifiers — giving our athletes more places and more time to qualify.” 

These in-person qualifying events are slated to take place from April to June.

The announcement mentions that Individual Semifinal qualifiers will have the opportunity “to compete at virtual in-affiliate Semifinals and/or in-person qualifying events.”

• As described in the announcement, this means an athlete may participate in an in-person qualifying event in April before then doing the virtual in-affiliate Semifinal in early May and/or compete in multiple in-person qualifying events after. 
• Thirty total men and women will qualify for the CrossFit Games from the dual-path Semifinals stage. However, the announcement didn’t specify how many Games spots each in-person qualifying event would award versus how many would qualify from the virtual in-affiliate Semifinals.

Beyond the dates, CrossFit also shared the percentages or numbers of athletes who can qualify for the Semifinal stage across all divisions.

• Individuals: Top 1% after the three-week Open.
• Teams: All Teams registered during the Open can participate in Semifinals.
• Age Groups: Top 2% after the three-week Open.
• Adaptive: Top 20 from each division.

The last detail the announcement describes about the in-affiliate Semifinals is who can be a judge. 

For the 2025 season:

• A judge must have a current CF-L1 CrossFit Level 1 certification. 
• To judge Open workouts, the judge must complete the 2025 Judges Course.
• To judge in-affiliate Semifinals workouts, the judge must also complete a new Advanced Judges Course, which CrossFit states “will be released soon and will be valid for three years.”

Quarterfinals

The Quarterfinals are gone across all divisions. 

While the Quarterfinals qualification line was moved from the top 10% to the top 25% this past season, that stage is now completely removed, and athletes advance directly from the Open to Semifinals. 

• The top 1% of Individuals and the top 2% for Age Groups in the Open qualify for Semifinals.

2 Things That Are Brand New

In addition to all the changes CrossFit is making to the qualification process for the CrossFit Games, it is also introducing two brand-new competition options.

1. The Community Cup: CrossFit will now give athletes the opportunity to extend their seasons by first completing the Open. Then, after receiving a ranking or “Level,” the athlete can compete against their peers at affiliates in June.

• The announcement mentions that affiliates will be able to register interest in hosting a Community Cup event at their gym. More to come on that.

2. Pairs: This is an in-person competition hosted by the Masters Fitness Championship in October 2025. While the details are sparse so far, CrossFit has provided an overall framework that gives a high level of the qualification process and who can compete. They also announced that the Masters Fitness Championship will be added to the list as a new partner for in-person competitions, joining the Legends, Pit Teen Throwdown, and WheelWOD.

Some details:

• Individual and Master athletes who complete the Open can now partner with another athlete from anywhere in the world. Both partners will use their Open scores to qualify for the in-person event. 
• The top-ranked pairs will then qualify for an in-person competition hosted by the Masters Fitness Championship.

The Bottom Line on the 2025 CrossFit Games Season

As announced, the season looks a lot like we speculated it would earlier this week. This streamlined, three-part qualification process is more uniform across all divisions than previous systems, which makes following the season easier as a whole.

• Semifinals and Games-level athletes will likely be glad to see the Quarterfinals go, and for the rest of us who wish to extend our competitive seasons, we will now have the Community Cup.

For Individuals and Teams, the reduction of the CrossFit Games field is significant, as is the new “one-team-per-affiliate” rule for Games qualification. 

• Both of these changes restrict the total number of athletes who have an opportunity to qualify for the final stage of the season.

There will be mixed feelings about these extensive changes at a time when enticing athletes to participate in CrossFit’s season is of great importance to the brand. 

For some, this could be freedom from a nonstop seven-month season that takes them from the Open to the Quarterfinals to the Semifinals and finally to the Games. This may give them more opportunities to choose their path to the Games on their terms. 

For others, this could be a tipping point. Too much; too late. 

After a tragic end to the 2024 season that left athletes looking for a strong foundation matched with strong leadership, some may see this as another season far different than the last in a six-year stretch where no two seasons have been the same.

What was once a singular pathway to the pinnacle of the Sport of Fitness at the CrossFit Games has now splintered again into multiple paths to ever-smaller in-person competitions.

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