What’s Up with the New Ironman WC and 70.3 WC Qualifying System?

As you may have heard, Ironman announced a new qualifying system for the Kona World Championship and 70.3 World Championship races, starting with the 2026 events.

This new system moves from the prior, participation-based system to a performance-based system. What does that mean, exactly? With the old system, “qualifying slots rolled down within gender and age group, and the number of slots allocated to each gender and age group was based on how many people were racing within that gender and age group. In some cases, highly competitive athletes were unable to earn a slot because their age group or gender was under-represented in a race.” With the new system, athletes are ranked “based on their performance relative to a global age-group standard. The athletes who perform the best on race day compared to this age-group standard, irrespective of age or gender, will rank the highest.” This new ranking system will mean that “irrespective of age or gender, the most competitive athletes on race day receive qualifying slots until all available slots for that race are claimed.”

Ironman’s new ranking system is based on an age-graded standard – a multiplier that converts each athlete’s finish time to an age-graded finish time. The multiplier is unique for each age group by gender, and is “created by averaging the top 20% of World Championship finish times over the past 5 editions for each age group.” Before the roll-down process begins, athletes are “ranked based on their age-graded finish time (i.e., their performance in the race relative to their own age-group standard); the athletes who are most competitive on race day relative to their age-group standard will rank highest.” The “Performance Pool” list of ranked age-graded finish times can be found on the Ironman app, within the Info tab of the race-specific content, typically one to two hours before the award ceremony begins.

Each athlete who wins their age group will automatically earn a qualifying spot; that spot can roll down as deep as third place, but no further. The remaining qualifying spots will be allocated to the “Performance Pool” using the familiar first-to-accept roll-down process.

Let’s look in detail at how the age-graded finish time calculation works. Ironman provides the example of Anne, 42, who finished IRONMAN Kalmar in 9:19:51, and John, 43, who finished in 8:50:31. John’s age-group standard, or multiplier, is 0.9683. To calculate John’s age-graded finish time, we:

• Convert John’s time from hh:mm:ss to seconds: 8*60*60+50*60+31=31,831
• Multiply that by his age-group standard: 31,831*0.9638=30,822
• Convert that from seconds back to h:mm:ss:
  • 30,822/3600=8.56 → 8 hours
  • subtract out the 8 hours: 30,822-(8*60*60)=2022
  • 2022/60=33.7 → 33 minutes
  • subtract out the 33 minutes: 2022-(33*60)=42
• John’s age-graded finish time is 8:33:42

Using the same method, we can adjust Anne’s time using her age-group standard of 0.8707. Anne’s age-graded finish time is 8:07:26, so Anne will be higher in the qualifying rankings than John.

The age-group standards will be updated annually. The 2026 standards (set in 2025, for qualification to the 2026 World Championships) are:

Kona Age Group Standards

*Note: the Women 80-84 and 85-89 age groups are TBD because, over the past 5 editions of racing the IRONMAN World Championship in Kona, there have not been any finishers in these age groups. The Kona Standard will be updated when we have finishers in these age groups.

70.3 Age Group Standards

*Note: the Women 80-84 and 85-89 age groups are TBD because, over the past 5 editions of racing the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship, there have not been any finishers in these age groups. The IRONMAN 70.3 Standard will be updated when we have finishers in these age groups.