How do rhythmic and artistic gymnastics differ?

Both sit under the FIG, and that is where the overlap ends. Rhythmic gymnastics puts one gymnast, or a group of five, on a 13 × 13 m carpet with a hand apparatus and music. Artistic gymnastics puts a gymnast on fixed apparatus: a bar, a beam, a vaulting table. Only the women's floor exercise uses music at all.

The senior individual rhythmic programme for 2025-2028 is four apparatus — hoop, ball, clubs and ribbon. The rope is not part of it. Groups perform two routines with apparatus set by the FIG programme each year.

Artistic gymnastics is two codes, not one. Men contest six apparatus, women contest four, and each side has its own element tables and panel rules.

	Rhythmic gymnastics	Artistic gymnastics
FIG rulebook	RG Code of Points 2025-2028	Separate MAG and WAG Codes 2025-2028
Who competes	Women: individuals and groups of five	Men and women, in separate programmes
Apparatus	Hoop, ball, clubs, ribbon	Men: floor, pommel horse, rings, vault, parallel bars, horizontal bar. Women: vault, uneven bars, beam, floor
Surface	13 × 13 m carpet	12 × 12 m floor plus fixed apparatus
Routine length	1:15–1:30 individual, 2:15–2:30 group	Max 70 s men's floor; max 90 s beam and women's floor
Music	On every routine	Women's floor only
Score formula	D + A + E − penalties	D + E − penalties
Artistry	Separate score out of 10.00	Deducted inside the E score, on beam and floor
All-around	Sum of 4 routines	Sum of 4 (women) or 6 (men)
Olympic medal events	2	14

Routine length is the fastest tell without commentary. Rhythmic timing runs in full seconds, and every second over or under costs 0.05.

The confusion is linguistic, not technical. English calls the fixed-apparatus sport artistic gymnastics, while Polish calls the hand-apparatus sport gimnastyka artystyczna. Same adjective, different sport, and a mistranslation waiting in every entry list.

The Polish federation's own discipline list settles it: gimnastyka sportowa (men's and women's) is artistic gymnastics, and gimnastyka artystyczna is rhythmic gymnastics. The calque gimnastyka rytmiczna is not the federation's term.

German keeps them apart with no shared root at all: Rhythmische Sportgymnastik for rhythmic, Gerätturnen for artistic, both listed that way by the Deutscher Turner-Bund.

Language	Rhythmic gymnastics	Artistic gymnastics
English	rhythmic gymnastics	artistic gymnastics
Polish	gimnastyka artystyczna	gimnastyka sportowa
German	Rhythmische Sportgymnastik	Gerätturnen
French (FIG)	gymnastique rythmique	gymnastique artistique

The damage is practical. An organiser who imports a Polish entry list and maps gimnastyka artystyczna onto artistic gymnastics will build bars-and-beam categories for a hall full of gymnasts holding ribbons. When a discipline name arrives in a language you do not judge in, read the apparatus column.

Rhythmic adds three scores, artistic adds two. Rhythmic: D + A + E − penalties. Artistic: D + E − penalties. That one line drives everything else, including the size of the numbers.

In rhythmic, D is body difficulty plus apparatus difficulty with no upper limit. A starts at 10.00 and loses artistry deductions. E starts at 10.00 and loses technique deductions: 0.10 for a minor deviation, 0.30 for a distinct one, 0.50 or more for a severe one. Dropping the apparatus costs 0.50 with no travelling, 0.70 after one or two steps, 1.00 after three or more, and a flat 1.00 if it leaves the floor area. Crossing the boundary line costs 0.30 every time.

Artistic gymnastics has no A score. On beam and floor, artistry lives inside E as a deduction line; on bars the E-jury deducts for composition instead, and vault has neither. The Women's Code prints the arithmetic itself: difficulty 3.10 + composition requirements 2.00 + connection value 0.60 gives D 5.70; then 10.00 − 0.70 execution − 0.30 artistry gives E 9.00; final score 14.70. Artistry cost that gymnast 0.30, and it never appeared as a number anyone could read.

The difficulty maths differs too. On bars, beam and floor, women's artistic counts the 8 highest difficulty values including the dismount, valued from A = 0.10 up to J = 1.00; a vault carries one value from the table. Men count the best 7 elements plus the dismount, with a maximum of 4 from any single element group.

Component by component, our rhythmic scoring guide and artistic scoring guide work through each one.

Rhythmic runs three juries of four judges. Artistic runs two juries with a far heavier execution bench. A qualification in one sport buys nothing in the other.

In rhythmic the D-jury is four judges in two subgroups: DB1 and DB2 score body difficulty independently and then submit a common DB, while DA1 and DA2 do the same for apparatus difficulty. D is the sum of the two common scores. The A-jury and E-jury are four judges each, and in both the highest and lowest deductions are struck before the remaining two are averaged. On a jury of two or three, every deduction counts. Two line judges flag the boundary at 0.30 a time, and one or two time judges hold the stopwatch.

Women's artistic at a World Championships or Olympic Games uses a nine-judge apparatus panel: 2 difficulty judges and 7 execution judges. At an international invitational it shrinks to 2 difficulty and 2–4 execution judges.

	Rhythmic gymnastics	Women's artistic gymnastics
Difficulty	4 judges (2 body + 2 apparatus)	2 judges
Artistry	4 judges, separate jury	No separate jury
Execution	4 judges	7 judges at Worlds and Olympics
Trim rule	Drop highest and lowest, average 2	7 scores → average middle 3; 5 → middle 3; 4 → middle 2
Line and time	2 line judges, 1–2 time judges	Line and time judges report to the D-jury

Both sports allow an inquiry on the D-score content only, handled by the Superior Jury under FIG Technical Regulation 8.5. Execution and artistry judgements cannot be appealed. Line and time penalties sit outside that process; a coach asks for a review.

A medal-winning rhythmic routine sits near 30 points. A medal-winning artistic routine sits near 14 to 15. Both are true at the same competition level, which is exactly why the two numbers cannot be laid side by side.

Here is the 2025 season, the first under the current Codes:

2025 World Championships	Champion	All-around total	Routines counted
Rhythmic individual, Rio de Janeiro	Darja Varfolomeev (GER)	121.900	4
Artistic women, Jakarta	Angelina Melnikova (AIN)	55.066	4
Artistic men, Jakarta	Daiki Hashimoto (JPN)	85.131	6

Varfolomeev's four routines in Rio were hoop 30.100, ball 29.850, clubs 31.950 and ribbon 30.000. Melnikova averaged 13.767 per apparatus. The same phrase, all-around, describes two scales that differ by more than a factor of two.

Even inside rhythmic the numbers move between cycles. Varfolomeev won the Paris 2024 all-around with 142.850 under the previous Code; a year later the world title took 121.900, because the 2025-2028 Code cut how much difficulty a routine may count. A gymnastics score is readable only with its rulebook version attached, which is why the 2026 Worlds explainer states the cycle before it quotes a figure.

Both sports hold a World Championships every year except Olympic years, roughly two months apart in the calendar and with very different medal weight.

Rhythmic gymnastics held its 2025 Worlds in Rio de Janeiro, 20–24 August, and takes the 2026 edition to Frankfurt, 12–16 August. Artistic gymnastics held its 2025 Worlds in Jakarta and goes to Rotterdam, 17–25 October 2026. A rhythmic Worlds awards the individual all-around, four apparatus finals, the group all-around and group apparatus finals, plus a team ranking built from the 8 best individual scores and the 2 group routines.

At the Olympic Games the gap is stark. Artistic gymnastics awards 14 medal events, eight for men and six for women. Rhythmic gymnastics awards two: the individual all-around and the group all-around. That ratio shapes funding, staffing and TV coverage.

For a club that runs both, the consequences are logistical. The two sports need different judges, different equipment and different category structures, because the score formulas are not interchangeable. In JudgeMate a rhythmic category carries its own apparatus rotation and separate D, A and E panels, and the all-around is the sum of the routines inside that one category. Fixed-apparatus events, covered on our artistic gymnastics page, are set up as their own categories.