As we approach the end of the year, rumors have been circulating about what the 2025 CrossFit Games season will hold, both for everyday athletes and elites.
Here’s what we’ve heard.
The 2025 CrossFit season will have a qualification stage beginning with the Open and:
- May or may not include Quarterfinals
- May or may not have an in-person Semifinals stage;
- May or may not have in-person Semifinals mixed with online Semifinals;
- May or may not include direct qualification from the Open
The 2024 CrossFit season structure was announced on November 8, 2023.
- That announcement included the expansion of the Quarterfinals qualifying field from the top 10 percent of Open participants to the top 25 percent, along with the Semifinals dates and locations.
That date has passed now, and details of the 2025 season remain unknown. We may not hear anything official until we know the outcome of the investigation into the tragic death of Lazar Ðukić at the CrossFit Games.
Recent CrossFit Games Season Structures – A History
For the last four seasons (2021-2024), the CrossFit Games season has looked roughly the same:
- Open (online; 3 weeks, 3-4 workouts)
- Quarterfinals (online; 1 extended weekend, 4-5 workouts)
- Semifinals (in-person;’ 1 extended weekend per region, 6-7 workouts)
- CrossFit Games (in-person; 1 week, 12-15 workouts)
That’s true with a few exceptions, and those exceptions give way to some important details about CrossFit’s online qualifying process. But first, let’s look back one more year, to 2020.
That season (laid out in detail here) kicked off in October of 2019 and included a five-week Open (October 10-November 11) followed immediately by 28 Sanctionals (Crossfit-sanctioned events).
- The first Sanctional was the Filthy 150 in Dublin, Ireland, in late November 2019. Justin Medeiros and Sara Sigmundsdottir qualified on the individual side, as well as team ROMWOD Meatsquad – Christian Harris, Dex Hopkins, Kelly Baker, and Brooke Haas.
The way that the qualification process worked during the 2020 CrossFit Games season meant that those two individuals and that team immediately advanced to the Games, set to occur in August 2020.
Invitations to the 2020 CrossFit Games would have been awarded in multiple ways, including:
- Winning a Sanctionals competition.
- Being a CrossFit Open National Champion (top male and female in every nation with at least one affiliate in good standing).
- Finishing in the top 20 worldwide in the CrossFit Open.
- Earning a Wild Card invite (CrossFit reserved the right to give discretionary invites to up to four individual athletes who had not qualified another way).
In 2019, invites had been given to previous Games champion Ben Smith and to Hunter McIntyre, a world champion in Obstacle Course Racing at the time.
In total, 28 Sanctionals were scheduled to take place from November 2019 to July 2020, with each providing two individual qualifying spots (one each for men and women) and one team qualifying spot for the CrossFit Games in August 2020.
- That was the plan, at least, until COVID-19.
By March 2020, events were postponed and then canceled due to travel restrictions as state and local governments restricted or prohibited large group events and gatherings throughout the globe.
The 2020 season concluded with a two-part CrossFit Games in which 60 athletes (30 men and 30 women) competed in an online-only stage for five spots each in an in-person final at the Ranch in Aromas, CA.
- The experiment of inviting National Champions directly to the Games lasted only one season (2019) and was not re-instated after the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 2021 CrossFit Games season established the qualification system that has been in place ever since, although the lingering effects of pandemic regulations in different regions impacted the initial 2021 version.
The 2021 Season – A Deeper Dive
The 2021 qualification process began with the worldwide online CrossFit Open. The top 10 percent of finishers then advanced to an online Quarterfinals stage.
A smaller number of athletes in each region then advanced to one of 10 in-person Semifinal events. Finally, the top 40 men and top 40 women from the Semifinals continued on to the CrossFit Games.
- Due to ongoing COVID-19 restrictions, some of the Semifinals were held online, while the rest were held in person.
Of the 602 athletes that competed in a Semifinal across 10 Semifinals, 303 competed online (50.33 percent), while 299 competed in person (49.66 percent).
Online Semifinals
- North America – CrossFit Atlas Games
- Europe – CrossFit German Throwdown
- Europe – CrossFit Lowlands Throwdown
- Asia – CrossFit Asia Invitational
- South America – Brazil CrossFit Championship
In-Person Semifinals
- North America – West Coast Classic
- North America – Mid-Atlantic CrossFit Challenge (MACC)
- North America – Granite Games
- Oceania – Torian Pro
- Africa – CrossFit Fittest in Cape Town
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By the conclusion of the Semifinals, 19 men and 19 women had qualified for the 2021 CrossFit Games through an in-person event.
The other 19 men and 19 women who qualified for the 2021 CrossFit Games did so completely online.
Additionally, two men and two women qualified for the Games through the online Last Chance Qualifier.
- In total, 41 men and women (21 men and 20 women) qualified for the 2021 CrossFit Games through an entirely online process.
Note: Kristi Eramo-O’Connell, who qualified through the online Last Chance Qualifier, had placed seventh at the in-person Granite Games Semifinal. So, while she ultimately earned her ticket through an online event, she had competed in person during the season.
In both the men’s and women’s divisions, athletes who qualified online finished higher, on average, than athletes who qualified through an in-person event.
In both divisions, the Games champion qualified in-person, while the second and third-place athletes qualified online:
- Justin Medeiros – In-person, MACC | Tia-Clair Toomey – In-person, MACC
- Patrick Vellner – Online, Atlas Games | Laura Horvath – Online, Lowlands Throwdown
- Brent Fikowski – Online, Atlas Games | Annie Thorisdottir – Online, Lowlands Throwdown
All of the online Semifinals shared the same programming and the competition was administered by CrossFit.
- Adrian Bozman, Competition Director, laid out the online Semifinals process, and the same six workouts were used for all five online Semifinals.
That brings us to the season structure that has seemingly gone unchanged for the last three seasons – an online Open, online Quarterfinals, and in-person Semifinals (cut to seven total from the original 10) to culminate in 40 men and 40 women qualifying for the CrossFit Games.
The 2025 CrossFit Games Season Structure – A Theory
So, what now?
I have my theory. I could be wrong, but I believe this is where the wind is blowing.
- My theory: I don’t think CrossFit creates an entirely new qualifying system.
After qualifying athletes for the Games for 15 years, the team has learned what works and what doesn’t.
I believe we will see a season structure similar to 2021 (while under the lingering restrictions), with elements from the pre-pandemic structure for the 2020 season.
The Open/Quarterfinals
Starting in February, I could see an online Open or combined Open/Quarterfinals, where some small number of the top-ranked athletes qualify directly to the CrossFit Games. Let’s say about 10-20 invitations per division.
- It’s possible that there could be a direct qualification path for the Games as there was in 2019, but it is more likely (especially if we look at the Age Groups and Teens–now the “Divisional Games”) that there could be multiple online qualifying stages before securing a spot directly to an in-person CrossFit Games.
- A fully online qualifier for the Games has been done both before and recently:
- Individuals in 2019 and 2020 participated in over five to six weeks of online competition (see above).
- All 2024 age groups qualified for the Masters CrossFit Games by Legends and the Teen CrossFit Games by Pit Teen Throwdown via a fully online qualification path.
In the 2024 season, the Masters Age Groups and Teens qualified 23,973 athletes from the Open to Quarterfinals. Then, 3,191 athletes went from Quarterfinals to a completely online Semifinal stage that qualified 119 teen athletes and 437 Masters athletes to the finals.
Semifinals/Sanctionals
In my theoretical 2025 season structure, the athletes who don’t qualify directly to the CrossFit Games from the Open could qualify for online Semifinals / In-Person Sanctionals and earn a Games berth that way.
Flip a coin on which “s” word you want to use – Semifinals or Sanctionals.
Either way, the remaining Games spots could be filled out with either an in-person Sanctional-type qualifier, which would be programmed and administered by a third-party competition organizer (as in the 2019 Filthy 150 Sanctional described above), or an online Semifinal, which would be programmed and administered by CrossFit Games team directly (similar to the online Semifinals in 2021).
- Similar to 2019 and 2020, Sanctionals athletes could choose to compete at one in-person event or multiple (even if they’ve already earned a qualifying spot) and then similar to 2021, Semifinals athletes that qualify for the penultimate stage could have their Semifinal and/or Last Chance Qualifier online.
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In my theory, the Sanctionals would receive one spot each for men and women, while the online Semifinal events could receive multiple qualifying spots.
The qualification stages would culminate in 40 men and 40 women qualifying for the 2025 CrossFit Games, and it’s likely that the breakdown for how the field qualified, online vs. in-person, might look similar to the 2021 field.
Final Thoughts
While that sounds enticing, in-person Sanctionals, at least as we last saw them in 2020, are not something the CrossFit Games team can just prescribe. (And it’s worth noting that the pre-COVID-19 pandemic CrossFit ecosystem was much different and “healthier” than it is currently.)
This Sanctionals process would need buy-in from multiple competition organizers worldwide with their own budgets, schedules, venues, equipment rentals, prize purses, and possibly programming to own and adjudicate these events throughout the 2025 season.
Over the past two seasons, the Semifinals have, in some cases, been organized by CrossFit – the North America East and West Semifinals in Orlando and Pasadena in 2023, for example – and in other cases been planned and executed by third-party organizers.
- All of the 2024 Semifinals were operated by third-party event organizers but used the same programming for the Individual and Team divisions.
We have seen some third-party events do this fairly successfully year over year, like Torian Pro in Oceania, and some with less success and many empty seats.
I believe we will be hearing details on this very soon from CrossFit HQ so that everyday and elite athletes can start planning their 2025 season, event organizers can start planning their 2025 competitions, and affiliates can start preparing for the 15th annual Open to kick-off in late February 2025. A further announcement or conclusion to the investigation of Lazar Ðukić’s death should hopefully come first.
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Featured image: Nicky Freymond
