How Are the 2026 Gymnastics World Championships Scored?

The 54th Artistic Gymnastics World Championships are held at Rotterdam Ahoy in the Netherlands from October 17 to 25, 2026. It is the third time Rotterdam hosts the event, after 1987 and 2010, and the first Worlds of the Los Angeles 2028 cycle with a team competition.

The 2025 Worlds in Jakarta had no team event, as is usual in the year after the Olympics. Rotterdam is therefore the first time teams are ranked under the 2025–2028 Code of Points, and the first Worlds judged under both technical newsletters of the cycle: the men's MAG Newsletter No. 01 and the women's WAG Newsletter No. 01 of February 2026.

The team finals carry Olympic places. The gold, silver and bronze teams in each gender qualify for LA 2028, six teams in all, with five athletes each. The other nine team places per gender go out at the 2027 World Championships.

Several headline names are missing. Simone Biles and Suni Lee are not competing, and two-time world all-around champion Angelina Melnikova is absent after Dutch authorities refused her a visa. The U.S. women defend seven straight world team titles, a run that began in 2011.

Each routine in Rotterdam is scored as D-score + E-score − neutral deductions. The same score is used everywhere it counts: in the team total, in the all-around total and in the apparatus ranking.

The D-panel of two judges adds up the difficulty values of the counting elements, the composition requirements and the connection value. The D-score has no upper limit. The E-panel of seven judges starts at 10.0 and deducts for execution and artistry faults, from 0.1 for a small error up to 1.0 for a fall. The two highest and two lowest E-marks are dropped and the middle three are averaged.

Neutral deductions come off last. They cover stepping out of bounds on floor, time faults, attire and procedure. They do not depend on how well the skills were done.

Two 2026 clarifications reach a Worlds team competition for the first time. Since January 1, 2026, the men's D-panel credits the dismount first, then the seven next-highest elements, on all six apparatus. The women's newsletter of February 23, 2026 settled how several elements are valued; a double stretched salto dismount on bars, for example, is a D only if the stretch is held, otherwise a piked C.

The full scoring system, with the difficulty table from A to J and the deduction scale, is explained in our artistic gymnastics scoring guide.

In qualification, a team of up to five puts four gymnasts up on each apparatus and counts the best three scores. In the team final, it puts three up and counts all three. The difference decides how much a single mistake costs.

Under four up, three count, a fall can be dropped. If one of the four gymnasts on beam falls, her score is simply the one that does not count, and the team loses only the gap between her planned score and the fourth-best mark.

Under three up, three count, nothing is dropped. Every routine in the team final goes into the total, so one fall costs a full point of execution and often the difficulty value of the missed element as well. Team finals are often decided by which team avoids that one counting fall.

Qualification scores do not carry over. The eight teams start the team final at zero, and the team total is the sum of 12 scores for women (four apparatus × three) and 18 for men (six × three).

The all-around final takes the 24 best all-around totals from qualification, and each apparatus final takes the 8 best scores on that apparatus. In both, no more than two gymnasts per country may advance. This is the two-per-country rule.

The rule means a gymnast can finish in the top 24 and still miss the final, because two teammates scored higher. The next eligible gymnast moves up, and the reserves are ranked the same way.

Vault works differently. In qualification, only the first vault counts toward the team and all-around totals. A gymnast who wants the vault final performs a second vault from a different vault group, and the average of the two decides who reaches the final and who wins it.

As in the team final, nothing carries over. Every finalist starts again from zero, and the all-around final is decided on one new routine per apparatus.

When two gymnasts finish an apparatus final on the same total, the higher E-score wins. Execution is ranked above difficulty, so the gymnast with the harder routine loses the tie.

Three medals at the 2025 Worlds in Jakarta were decided this way. In each case both gymnasts had the same total, and the place went to the one with the cleaner routine.

If the D-score and the E-score are both identical, the tie cannot be broken. In floor qualification at the Paris 2024 Olympics, Rina Kishi and Ana Bărbosu both scored 13.600 with the same D of 5.6 and E of 8.000, so nine gymnasts went to the final instead of eight.

A coach can challenge only the D-score, through an inquiry filed by the federation's authorised representative. Execution marks cannot be inquired. The Superior Jury reviews the routine on video before the score is confirmed.

The deadline is strict. At the Paris 2024 Olympics, Jordan Chiles's floor score was raised by inquiry from 13.666 to 13.766, which moved her onto the podium. In August 2024 the Court of Arbitration for Sport found that the inquiry was lodged 4 seconds after the one-minute limit of the FIG Technical Regulations, restored the 13.666, and the bronze went to Ana Bărbosu. In January 2026 the Swiss Federal Supreme Court set that award aside because of newly found video and sent the case back to CAS; no new decision had been reported by August 2026.

The Judging Support System (JSS), built by World Gymnastics with Fujitsu, recognises elements and gives judges multi-angle video and body-angle measurements. It has been in official use on all ten apparatus since the 2023 Worlds in Antwerp. For Rotterdam, World Gymnastics plans to put it in the hands of its supervisors on all ten apparatus, after a trial on two apparatus in Jakarta.

JSS does not score routines. World Gymnastics states that it does not replace judges and does not make official judging decisions; the D and E scores still come from the human panels.

Club meets can run the same panel logic on a smaller scale. Our artistic gymnastics page shows how a multi-judge panel can be scored in JudgeMate on phones and tablets.