How Are the 2026 Commonwealth Games Scored?

The Glasgow 2026 programme has 10 sports: athletics, swimming, artistic gymnastics, boxing, judo, weightlifting, bowls, track cycling, netball and 3x3 basketball. Only two of them hand the result to a panel of judges scoring on a scale — artistic gymnastics and boxing.

A second group is decided by referees applying fixed criteria rather than a 0–10 scale. In judo, referees award scores for the quality of a throw or a hold; in weightlifting, three referees simply rule each lift good or failed. The outcome is objective in principle, but a human official makes the call in real time.

Everything else is settled by counting, timing or measuring. Bowls counts bowls nearer the jack, 3x3 basketball and netball count baskets and goals, and athletics, swimming and track cycling are decided by the clock and the tape. No judge marks a performance out of ten.

This split — measure what you can, judge what you must — is the backbone of modern officiating, and it is the same logic behind how technology is entering judged sports. The rest of this guide takes the five sports where the scoring is least obvious to a casual viewer and shows exactly how a result is reached.

An artistic gymnastics score is the sum of two independent marks: the Difficulty score (D) and the Execution score (E). There is no single '10' anymore — the perfect-10 era ended in 2006. A strong routine on an apparatus typically finishes in the 13 to 15 range.

The D-score is open-ended. A dedicated panel adds up the difficulty values of the counted elements, plus credit for connections and for meeting the routine's composition requirements. A harder routine has a higher ceiling, which is why gymnasts keep upgrading their hardest skills.

The E-score starts at a perfect 10.0 and a separate execution panel deducts for every flaw — bent knees, steps on landing, form breaks — in increments of 0.1, 0.3, 0.5 or 1.0. The highest and lowest execution marks are dropped and the rest are averaged, so a single harsh or generous judge cannot swing the result.

The final apparatus score is D + E minus any neutral deductions (for stepping out of bounds or going over time). Under the FIG Code of Points 2025–2028, senior men's floor now counts 8 elements rather than 10, one of several tweaks to reward quality over quantity. For the full mechanics, see how artistic gymnastics is scored and the artistic gymnastics hub.

The artistic gymnastics programme finished on 28 July, and the pommel horse final showed exactly why the two marks are kept apart. Jordan Carroll (CAN) took gold with 15.000 — a 6.0 difficulty score plus a 9.0 execution score — ahead of Scotland's Reuben Ward on 14.966.

Ward's execution mark was the better of the two. He lost anyway, because Carroll's routine was harder. The E score is capped at 10.0 and pays for cleanliness, while the D score is open-ended and pays for risk, so a tidier routine with less content finishes behind a bolder one that survives.

The men's vault final produced the closest decision of the meet. Vault finalists must perform two vaults from different groups and the published result is the average of the two, which is why vault scores run to three decimals and why 0.017 separated gold from silver in Glasgow.

The all-around titles were settled over full totals rather than a single routine — six apparatus for the men, four for the women — and the winning margins still came in under a quarter of a point in both competitions.

The four closest gymnastics decisions in Glasgow

Final	Gold	Silver	Margin
Men's vault	Felix Dolci (CAN) 13.766	Luke Whitehouse (ENG) 13.749	0.017
Men's pommel horse	Jordan Carroll (CAN) 15.000	Reuben Ward (SCO) 14.966	0.034
Women's all-around	Ellie Black (CAN) 53.050	Breanna Scott (AUS) 52.900	0.150
Men's all-around	Reuben Ward (SCO) 79.650	Felix Dolci (CAN) 79.450	0.200

Glasgow also produced a reminder of what a coach can and cannot challenge. In the men's floor final, bronze medallist James Hardy (AUS) was charged 0.2 in out-of-bounds deductions, including a second 0.1 that reporters covering the final said they had not seen, and asked for the line deduction to be revised. The score stood at 13.433.

The FIG Technical Regulations 2026 keep those two routes separate: Art. 8.5 governs inquiries against a score, Art. 8.6 governs requests to revise time or line deductions, and the Superior Jury decides both. Neither route reaches the E score — execution deductions are treated as judgement and are not open to inquiry, so only the D score and the neutral deductions can move.

Boxing, the other judged sport in Glasgow, is not finished. The medal bouts are on 1 August and the Games close on 2 August, and those results are settled by the 10-point must system rather than by D and E scores. For the full apparatus mechanics, see how artistic gymnastics is scored.

Commonwealth Games boxing uses the 10-point must system, the same frame as the professional game, but under the rules of World Boxing, the federation the IOC brought in for Olympic-style boxing after withdrawing recognition from the IBA. In every round each judge must award 10 points to the boxer who won it and nine or fewer to the other (Rule 7.4.1).

A round cannot be tied. Rule 7.4.3 states that every round must have a declared winner and that no round may be scored as a draw — the clearest break from the professional codes, where a 10-10 round is permitted. Seven is the floor: Rule 7.4.2 leaves the loser of a round nine, eight or seven points, and nothing below.

The margin describes control, not damage. A 10-9 is the close round, 10-8 marks a clear winner and 10-7 is reserved for total dominance across every criterion. A knockdown does not force a wider score: Rule 7.3.1 says in terms that a round may still be judged close even if a boxer takes a standing eight count or is knocked down.

Five judges score every bout, and every card counts. Rule 6.1.1 assigns five judges to each bout and bars the referee from scoring at all. A verdict of 5:0 is a unanimous decision (Rule 9.1.2); 4:1 and 3:2 are both recorded as splits (Rule 9.1.3). The system that discarded two of the five cards at random belonged to AIBA and ended with Rio 2016 — our guide to the 10-point must system across the amateur and professional codes sets out why it was abandoned.

The criteria are ranked, and the scores are public. Rule 7.2.1 puts the number of scoring blows first — with their quality weighed inside that criterion under Rules 7.2.2.1–7.2.2.2 — then technical and tactical superiority, then competitiveness; a judge only moves down the list when the level above cannot separate the boxers, and advancing forward alone does not automatically qualify as effective aggression (Rule 7.2.3.1) or as superior competitiveness (Rule 7.2.4.1). Judges have five seconds after the bell to enter a score that can never afterwards be altered (Rule 7.4.4), and each score appears on a public display with the judge named while the bout is still running (Rule 7.4.5).

The boxing tournament closed at the Scottish Event Campus on 1 August with 14 finals — seven women's titles and seven men's, split evenly for the first time in Commonwealth Games history. India won seven of the ten finals it reached and topped the boxing medal table with seven golds and three silvers; England matched India's ten medals with four golds, Australia took two and Northern Ireland one.

The verdicts are the part worth reading. Of the twelve finals whose split World Boxing reported, seven were unanimous, four finished 4:1 and one finished 3:2. Those middle numbers are the proof of the mechanism: a 4:1 verdict cannot exist in a system that counts three cards. Every one of the five judges assigned under Rule 6.1.1 was still in the count when the result was read out.

One 3:2 among the twelve reported. India's Sachin beat Namibia's Tryagain Morning Ndevelo at 60 kg after a strong closing round that four of the five judges scored his way — and the bout still came back 3:2. At least one judge gave Sachin the final round and still finished with Ndevelo ahead, or level, on the full card. A round-level majority is not a bout-level verdict, because each judge adds up their own three rounds and nothing is pooled until the totals are read.

A round won 10-9 is worth one point, however it was won. England's Dimeji Shittu took the first round of the 80 kg final on all five cards and lost the bout 4:1 to India's Ankush. Sweeping a round buys a single point per card unless the margin reaches 10-8, which is why a fast start is worth far less than it looks.

The last round decided three of the four 4:1 verdicts. World Boxing's report identifies the closing round as the one that moved the panel in the men's 70 kg final (Jon McConnell over Orlando Holley-Sotomi), the women's 60 kg (Priya over Marie-Bathoul Al-Ahmadieh) and the women's 75 kg (Emma-Sue Greentree over Lovlina Borgohain). In a three-round bout there is no round left to answer with.

And none of it could be appealed. Rule 9.10.1 is one sentence: no protest or appeal is permitted in World Boxing competitions, and bout decisions are final. That is the sharpest contrast inside the Glasgow programme — a gymnast's difficulty score could be queried through a FIG inquiry the same week, while a boxing card could not be questioned in any part. The 187th and last bout of the Games was the men's 90 kg+ final, where England's Damar Thomas took all three rounds against India's Narender for a 5:0.

Judo has one score that ends the contest instantly — ippon — and lesser scores that build toward it. An ippon is awarded for throwing an opponent largely on their back with control, for a 20-second hold-down (osaekomi), or for a submission from an armlock or strangle. Score ippon and the contest is over.

Below it sits waza-ari, a half-score for a throw that lacks one of ippon's qualities or a hold of 10 to under 20 seconds. Two waza-ari equal an ippon and win the contest. A single waza-ari that is never matched still decides most bouts that go the distance.

New for this Olympic cycle, the yuko score has returned. The IJF reinstated yuko for the 2025–2028 rules cycle, having removed it in 2017. Yuko sits below waza-ari — awarded for smaller throws (landing on the side or the buttocks) and, in groundwork, for a hold of at least 5 seconds — and it does not accumulate into a waza-ari. It only counts if the scores above it are level.

Penalties (shido) matter too: a third shido means hansoku-make and loss of the contest. If scores are tied when time expires, the bout goes to golden score — sudden death, first score or third penalty wins. Full detail is in how judo is scored and the judo hub.

Weightlifting looks objective — heaviest bar wins — but a panel of referees decides whether each lift counts at all. Every athlete contests two lifts: the snatch, then the clean & jerk. They get three attempts at each, and only the best successful attempt in each lift counts.

An athlete's result is a single total: the best snatch plus the best clean & jerk. Miss all three snatches and you record no total and cannot place, however heavy your clean & jerk. This is why openers are chosen conservatively.

Each attempt is ruled on by three referees, who press a button for a good lift (white) or no lift (red). The majority decides — two whites and the lift stands, two reds and it does not. Common no-lift causes are a press-out, an unfinished lockout, or the bar not being controlled at the finish.

One rule has changed and often surprises viewers: the bodyweight tiebreaker is gone. The IWF's Executive Board removed it, so if two athletes finish on the same total, the one who reached that total first in the competition is ranked ahead — not the lighter athlete. That rewards lifting a weight earlier rather than saving it. See how weightlifting is judged for the full referee protocol.

Bowls is scored one end at a time. Both sides roll their bowls (woods) toward the small target ball, the jack. When every bowl has been played, whoever has a bowl nearest the jack scores — and scores one shot for each of their bowls that is closer than the opponent's nearest bowl.

That means a single end can yield one shot or several. If a player has the two closest bowls, they score two shots; if they have four closer than any opponent's, they score four. Only one side scores on any end. Play then moves to the next end, and the totals accumulate until the game's set number of ends is complete.

Glasgow 2026 makes history for the discipline: for the first time at a Commonwealth Games, bowls is played indoors, at a reduced programme in a controlled arena rather than on an outdoor green. Indoor surfaces are faster and more predictable than weather-exposed grass, which rewards precise weight (how hard a bowl is delivered) and line (the curved path a biased bowl follows).

The sport is governed by the World Bowls Laws of the Sport (Crystal Mark), and disputes over which bowl is nearer are settled by measuring. Unlike gymnastics or boxing, no one marks the performance — the result is simply a count of who is closer, confirmed end by end.

Here is how one judge's card fills up across a three-round Commonwealth Games bout between Boxer A and Boxer B.

Round 1 — close but A edges it. A lands the cleaner shots. The judge scores it 10-9 to A.

Round 2 — B responds. B takes control and outlands A without a knockdown. The judge scores it 10-9 to B.

Round 3 — A drops B. A is on top and scores a knockdown, and the judge sees a clear winner. The judge scores it 10-8 to A.

This judge's card: A = 10 + 9 + 10 = 29; B = 9 + 10 + 8 = 27. So this judge has it 29-27 to A.

Step 5 — the bout result. Five judges fill in a card like this one, and all five count. The boxer ahead on three, four or five of them wins the bout: 5:0 is announced as a unanimous decision, 4:1 and 3:2 as splits (Rules 9.1.2–9.1.3). There are no draws — if a judge's totals finish level and that card is decisive, Rule 9.1.4 asks that judge to nominate a winner. Note what the card above does not show: a round won by one punch and a round won by thirty are both 10-9, so the five cards usually part company at the point where one judge sees a 10-8 and another a 10-9.