Dave Castro Announces New Regionals and Team Format for 2018 CrossFit Games

Leave it to Dave Castro to save the most exciting news for last.

During the post-competition Cooldown Show at the 2017 Reebok CrossFit Invitational, the longtime Games Director outlined some big changes for the upcoming CrossFit Games season. Castro’s announcements included some specific details along with hints to potentially even more changes we could see as early as next year’s CrossFit Open. We’ve outlined some of the bigger points below.

New Regions

For Individual athletes and fans, this one is big. Castro announced several massive shakeups to the geographic structure of qualifying regions.

1. South America will now have its own Regional competition with a single Games qualifying spot per division.

2. The Canada West, Pacific North West, and California Regions will be combined and consolidated into one for Regional competition. This Region will include five qualifying spots per division.

3. In a change that’s seemed like a long time coming to many fans and athletes, Europe will be split into two Regions. Northern Europe will be its own Region, and Southern Europe will be combined with Africa and the Middle East. Northern Europe will receive five qualifying spots per division, and Southern Europe/Africa/Middle East will receive four qualifying spots.

As of now, all other Regions will maintain five qualifying spots per division.

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Change to Team Size

The 2018 CrossFit Games will see Team sizes change from six competitors to four competitors per team. Castro said this change should make for more exciting competition and even more stacked “super teams.”

Open Changes to Come

Though he didn’t dive into specifics, Castro ended his announcement by suggesting the 2018 Open Season — which likely kicks off in February/March of next year — will be special. He didn’t give many more clues beyond that, so we’ll have to wait for further announcements to see any changes to what’s been a fairly consistent format the last several years.

Castro’s full recap and announcements can be seen at the end of the Invitational footage embedded below.

Featured image via The CrossFit Games on Facebook