How to Judge a Skateboarding Competition
Overall impression, criteria, scoring systems, and best practices
World Skate publishes seven judging criteria for skateboarding runs — difficulty, variety, quality of execution and landing, use of the course, consistency, flow and repetition — with no weights and no percentages attached to any of them. Five judges each score a run or a trick on a 0.00-100.00 scale; the highest and lowest are dropped and the remaining three are averaged to two decimal places. Single-trick attempts are judged on a separate set of four criteria, and the published scale is divided into named bands — Elementary, Basic, Standard, Advanced, Expert, Master — with 0.00 reserved for a non-make or a score refusal. This guide is written against the World Skate Skateboarding Judging Criteria, Release 1.0 (2025), and the Street & Park Competition Rules updated in April 2025.
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What World Skate's Judging Criteria Actually Say (Release 1.0, 2025)
The skateboarding judging criteria live in one document: the Skateboarding Judging Criteria, Release 1.0 - 2025, updated in May 2025 and listed on the World Skate regulations page as the Street and Park Judging Criteria for the Los Angeles cycle. It names seven criteria for run performances, a separate set of four for single-trick attempts, and it divides the 0.00-100.00 scale into six named bands. It attaches no weights and no percentages to any criterion.
Three things in that list are routinely missed at contest level. Consistency is a named criterion, defined as the athlete's ability to keep landing tricks without coming off the board across the whole run. Flow is a named criterion, defined as connecting tricks in a continuous, fluent and aesthetically pleasing way. And repetition is a criterion too — a subtractive one: repeating tricks, trick components or the same obstacles inside one run performance or jam session is, in the document's words, "proportionally penalized".
Style is not on the list. That is not an argument that style does not matter — it is how skaters and commentators describe what separates two identical runs, and World Skate's own criteria absorb it inside quality of execution and flow. But a judge who defends a number by saying "that was 82 for style" is not citing a World Skate criterion, and a head judge is entitled to ask which of the seven the score came from.
The timing is immediate: the World Skate Games Asuncion 2026 run from 2 to 18 October, and the Park Skateboarding World Championship is scheduled for 3-10 October — judged under exactly these criteria. For the arithmetic behind the numbers rather than the judging vocabulary, see how skateboarding is scored.
Understanding Overall Impression Scoring
Overall Impression: the core concept. You watch the skater. You absorb what happens. You assign one score. That's it. No difficulty table. No components added together. One overall number representing what you saw.
This reflects how skateboarding works — it values originality, style, and risk alongside difficulty. A skater landing something no one's landed before with clean execution and flow deserves the reward, even if the individual tricks aren't the hardest available.
What this means in practice:
Don't mentally add up trick scores. Watch the run. A strong run builds momentum — each trick adds to the overall arc. A fall reduces it, but one mistake doesn't erase everything else. Context matters: the same kickflip backside lipslide scores differently on a low rail versus a big handrail. Same trick, different context. A score of 85 at a local contest isn't the same as 85 at the Olympics. You're always comparing relative to the level and field. When you score, you're asking: how good was this performance overall?
How that squares with the seven criteria. Overall Impression is about the output — one number, not a sum of parts. The criteria are the vocabulary for defending that number: difficulty, variety, quality of execution and landing, use of the course, consistency, flow and repetition. They are not boxes to be filled and totalled, but a score you cannot trace back to at least one of them is a score you cannot explain to a head judge.
Score skateboarding runs.
Judges' scores, best run and averages — no manual sheets.
The Seven Official Run Criteria
World Skate lists seven criteria for run performances. They are not separately weighted, not separately scored and never added together — the run still resolves to one number. What the list does is fix the vocabulary: these seven, under these names, are what a judge is accountable for.
| Criteria | Description |
|---|---|
| Difficulty of performed tricks | Called in the document "the most distinctive criterion by which skateboarding tricks are judged in any competition" — how hard the trick is to execute, considering the obstacle it is executed on. Flip tricks, grinds and slides, combinations in and out of grinds, and stance variations (switch, nollie, fakie) all raise difficulty. Difficulty only converts into score when the trick is landed. |
| Variety of performed tricks | Diversity of trick types across the run. A run mixing flips, grinds, slides, manuals and transition tricks scores above one built from variations of the same trick. Variety is also the positive counterpart of the repetition criterion below — the more of the course and the trick vocabulary a run covers, the less exposed it is to a repetition deduction. |
| Quality of trick execution and landing | Note that for runs the landing is written into the criterion's name. Clean pop, proper catch, locked-in position on a grind, stable landing and a controlled roll-away. A wobble, a foot drag, a hand down or a sketchy roll-away reduces this even when the trick is technically completed. |
| Use of the course and individual obstacles | Both the breadth of the course used and the way individual obstacles are attacked. In street: rails, stairs, ledges, gaps, banks, manual pads. In park: extensions, hips, deep and shallow sections, not only the same wall. Choosing the obstacle that fits the trick is part of this criterion, not a separate one. |
| Consistency | Defined by World Skate as the athlete's ability to continuously land tricks without falling off the skateboard throughout the run performance. This is where a fall is priced. It is also why a run of six landed tricks and one bail is not simply "the same run minus one trick" — consistency itself is being judged. |
| Flow | Defined as connecting the tricks of the performance in a continuous, fluent and aesthetically pleasing way. Maintained speed, no unnecessary pushes or resets, transitions that read as one line rather than a list. This is the criterion most of what is loosely called "style" actually belongs to. |
| Repetition | The only subtractive criterion on the list: repeating tricks, trick components, or continually using the same obstacles within one run performance or jam session is proportionally penalized. A judge should register it as a deduction against an otherwise strong run, not treat it as neutral. |
The Official Score Bands: What a Number on the 0.00-100.00 Scale Means
World Skate does not leave the scale open to interpretation. Scoring is on a 0-100 point range "using two decimal numbers/places", and the document publishes named bands for that range. Judges should calibrate against these bands rather than against privately invented thresholds, because the bands are not evenly sized — Standard is twenty points wide, Advanced and Expert only ten each.
The practical consequence: a run scored 68 is not "nearly advanced", it is mid-Standard, and moving it into Advanced means crossing 70.01. Two judges who both think a run was "advanced" but score it 69 and 74 do not disagree about the skating — they disagree about where the band starts.
| Score | Band | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 0.00 | Non-make or score refusal | The attempt was not landed, or the athlete declined to be scored (see the TNS procedure below). Not a low score - a nil. |
| 00.01 - 20.00 | Elementary | Fundamental skateboarding: the performance exists but shows little difficulty, variety or control. |
| 20.01 - 50.00 | Basic | Recognisable contest skating with limited difficulty, or harder content undermined by execution and consistency problems. |
| 50.01 - 70.00 | Standard | The widest band, and where most runs at most contests land. Competent difficulty and execution without a decisive strength. |
| 70.01 - 80.00 | Advanced | Real difficulty landed cleanly, with variety and flow. A single mistake in an otherwise strong run usually keeps it here. |
| 80.01 - 90.00 | Expert | High difficulty, clean throughout, strong use of the course - the level that wins and podiums at international events. |
| 90.01 - 100.00 | Master | Reserved: exceptional difficulty, executed without flaw, with flow and course use to match. Rare by design. |
Single-Trick Attempts Have Their Own Four Criteria
A single-trick attempt is not judged on the seven run criteria. World Skate gives it four of its own: difficulty, quality of trick execution (note: without "and landing" in the name, though a non-make is still 0.00), obstacle selection — the characteristics of the obstacle chosen for the attempt — and repetition.
Repetition is where the trick-phase formats genuinely differ, and it is the rule most often misapplied at contest level. In the 2/3/2 and 3/3/2 formats it is pure repetition: a trick already executed in the counted run and then repeated during the single-trick attempts on the same obstacle is scored with a zero (0.00). In the 2/5/3 format it is not zeroed — every trick already landed in the counted run performances and executed again in the single-trick phase of the same round counts as repetitive and is scored proportionally lower.
The format notation decodes cleanly once you read it as runs / single-trick attempts / scores that count. The third number is not a trick count.
| Format | Runs | Trick attempts | What counts | Repetition rule |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2/3/2 | 2 runs of 45 seconds | 3 attempts | Best run + best single trick (2 scores) | Pure repetition: a trick from the counted run, repeated on the same obstacle, scores 0.00 |
| 3/3/2 | 3 runs of 45 seconds | 3 attempts | Best run + best single trick (2 scores) | Pure repetition: a trick from the counted run, repeated on the same obstacle, scores 0.00 |
| 2/5/3 | 2 runs of 45 seconds | 5 attempts | Best run + best two single tricks (3 scores) | Proportional penalty, not a zero: any trick already landed in the counted runs and repeated in the trick phase of the same round is treated as repetitive |
Scoring Runs: 30-50 Seconds in Park, 45-60 in Street
Run length is not one number across the two disciplines, and the guide-level shorthand of "45 seconds" is only half right. Park runs are 30 to 50 seconds. Street runs are 45 to 60 seconds, with the runs inside the named trick formats written at 45 seconds. Judge the complete performance as a single unit and produce one score on the 0.00-100.00 scale.
What lifts a run through the bands:
A confident opening trick establishes the level you are being asked to score against. Progressive difficulty through the run shows the skater has margin in hand. Connections without pushes, resets or hesitation are literally the flow criterion. Moving across obstacles rather than working one corner is the course-use criterion, and it is also the cheapest protection against a repetition deduction. A clean final trick matters because it is the last evidence you have before entering a number.
Where falls are priced: in consistency, which World Skate defines as continuing to land tricks without coming off the board across the whole run. That framing is more useful than a flat "deduct for a fall": one bail in a run of otherwise landed, difficult tricks damages consistency without touching difficulty, variety or course use, which is why such a run typically stays in the Advanced band rather than dropping to Basic. Several bails damage consistency and flow at once, and the score falls accordingly.
Calibrate to the published bands, not to private thresholds. The bands above are World Skate's, and they are what a head judge will reference in the panel meeting. If your instinct says "strong run", the question to answer is whether it is Advanced (70.01-80.00) or Expert (80.01-90.00) — and the answer has to be defensible from the seven criteria.
Scoring Single-Trick Attempts (Best Trick)
A single-trick attempt is one trick, scored on its own, on the same 0.00-100.00 scale but against the four single-trick criteria. Nothing from the run carries over into it except the repetition rule.
How many attempts and how many count depends on the format, not on the event being "Olympic" or not. The 2/3/2 and 3/3/2 formats give three attempts, of which the best one counts. The 2/5/3 format gives five attempts, of which the best two count and are added to the best run. A skater with three non-makes in a 2/5/3 trick phase has lost nothing if the other two attempts landed, which is precisely what the format is designed to encourage.
Higher risk is structural, not a judging concession. Because non-makes are simply 0.00 and only the best attempts count, skaters go at harder tricks than they would in a run. Obstacle selection is a criterion in its own right here: the same trick on a taller, longer or kinked obstacle is a different attempt, and should be scored as one.
Score refusal (TNS). The Street & Park Competition Rules give athletes the right to decline being scored "by the gesture of 'both arms crossed above the athlete's head'". The attempt is then recorded as a Trick Not Scored (TNS) and assigned a value of zero, and 0.00 in the judging criteria's own scale covers both a non-make and a score refusal. From the judging seat: score what you saw, and let the refusal invalidate it. A TNS attempt was never a counted, landed trick, so it does not itself become the "already landed" trick for repetition purposes — but a trick the skater landed in the counted run and then repeats in the trick phase is repetitive, and that is a 0.00 in 2/3/2 and 3/3/2 if it is on the same obstacle, or a proportional reduction in 2/5/3.
JudgeMate's role: the system holds the format, so it knows whether one trick or two count and adds the right ones to the best run score. You score each attempt independently; the arithmetic and the counting are not your job.
Street vs Park: Different Formats, Same Criteria
The seven run criteria and the 0.00-100.00 scale are identical in both disciplines. The formats are not, and the format is what a judge has to know before the first drop-in.
Park
Park is run-only: athletes perform a minimum of two and up to four runs of 30 to 50 seconds, and the highest-scoring run determines the round ranking — the others are not averaged in. The typical progression is qualifier, semi-final, final, adjusted to the entry list. Two optional mechanisms change what you are watching:
First Wall Rebate. Where this option is in play, an athlete who bails on the first trick of a run may restart the run. The bailed opening does not become a scored performance.
Golden Run. Only the top 5 ranked athletes advance to perform one additional final run, a last opportunity at their highest score. Score it as its own performance, not as an improvement on what came before.
Judging emphasis follows the terrain: amplitude above the coping is the clearest visible difficulty differentiator, and carving and pumping that keeps speed through transitions is the flow criterion in its most literal form. Repeating the same aerial on the same wall is exactly what the repetition criterion penalises.
Street
Street uses two to three 45-60 second runs, and beyond the pure run format it uses the named combined formats (2/3/2, 3/3/2, 2/5/3) in which a trick phase is added. The standard progression is a qualifier in run format, a semi-final in either, and a final in runs plus tricks.
Judging emphasis is technical precision: exact pop, locked-in position on a grind, a stable landing on flat ground, and trick-to-obstacle fit — a smith grind on a kinked rail is a different proposition from the same grind on a flat bar, which is what obstacle selection means in the single-trick criteria.
The Trimmed Mean: How Individual Scores Become the Result
The Street & Park Competition Rules state it plainly: "The five judges will each use a 0.00-100-point scale. The highest and the lowest scores for each run are dropped, and the remaining three scores are added and then averaged to two decimal places."
Why it is built that way:
It removes outliers structurally. One judge far above or below the panel has no effect on the result, which protects against bias, national favouritism and simple entry errors. It also removes the incentive to score defensively — a judge who genuinely believes a run is Expert while the panel reads it Advanced loses nothing by saying so, because the mechanism absorbs the disagreement instead of averaging it in. At a well-calibrated panel the middle three scores usually sit within a few points of each other.
Worked calculation: Judge scores for one run: 78.50, 82.00, 80.00, 76.00, 77.50
- Drop the highest (82.00) and the lowest (76.00)
- Add the remaining three: 78.50 + 80.00 + 77.50 = 236.00
- Divide by three and round to two places: 236.00 / 3 = 78.67
That result sits in the Advanced band (70.01-80.00). JudgeMate performs the trim, the sum and the rounding in real time, so judges enter their own number and the leaderboard shows the panel's result without anyone doing arithmetic under pressure.
Best Practices for Skateboarding Judges
Before the contest:
Know the format, exactly. Park or street? How many runs, and of what length? If there is a trick phase, is it 2/3/2, 3/3/2 or 2/5/3 — because that decides how many tricks count and whether a repeated trick is a zero or a reduction. Are First Wall Rebate and Golden Run in play? Walk the course. You cannot judge obstacle selection or course use without knowing what the course offers. Attend the judges' meeting. The head judge is the highest authority on the panel and sets the calibration. Calibrate on the published bands. Watch practice as a panel and agree where Standard ends and Advanced begins, in World Skate's numbers rather than in adjectives.
During the contest:
Score independently — never look at another judge's number before entering yours. Use the whole scale. Bunching every run between 60 and 80 collapses two bands into one and destroys separation; Expert and Master exist to be used when the skating earns them. Score to the criteria, not to a feeling. If you cannot name which of the seven produced the number, the number is not yet defensible. Price falls in consistency rather than as a flat penalty. Do not chase consensus. The trimmed mean exists so that your honest 84.00 costs the result nothing.
Common mistakes:
Treating style as a criterion. It is not one of the seven; what you mean is quality of execution, or flow. Ignoring repetition. It is a published criterion in runs and a zero-scoring rule in two of the three trick formats — a panel that never deducts for it is not applying the criteria. Overweighting difficulty. Difficulty is called the most distinctive criterion, but a sloppy landing is priced in execution and consistency, and a sketchy hard trick can score below a clean easier one. Recency bias. The previous skater is not the benchmark; the bands are.
Worked Example: Scoring a Street Run Against the Seven Criteria
A 45-second street run, judged criterion by criterion, then taken through the panel arithmetic.
The run: The skater pushes into the 8-stair set and pops a clean kickflip down it — good height, caught properly, stable landing. Rolls to the flat bar, locks into a frontside boardslide and slides its full length before popping off cleanly. Moves to the hubba ledge for a backside smith grind, locked in, clean exit. Crosses to the manual pad, holds a long manual and kickflips out. Goes to the big rail for a backside 50-50 and steps off at the end, staying on the board. Finishes with a frontside 180 over the gap.
Criterion by criterion:
Difficulty: medium-high. Kickflip down eight stairs, a smith grind on a hubba, a manual with a kickflip out — consistently demanding content, nothing that redefines the level.
Variety: strong. Flip trick, boardslide, grind, manual, gap trick — five different trick families.
Quality of execution and landing: clean on five of six tricks. The catch on the opening kickflip and the length of the manual are the run's best execution; the step-off on the 50-50 is its only real blemish.
Use of the course and individual obstacles: stairs, flat bar, hubba, manual pad, big rail and gap — most of the course, with the trick chosen to fit each obstacle.
Consistency: reduced, not broken. One step-off, no fall off the board, no interrupted line.
Flow: good. Speed maintained across the course, no resets or recovery pushes.
Repetition: none. No trick, trick component or obstacle used twice — nothing to deduct.
The number: 78.50 — inside the Advanced band (70.01-80.00). Everything except consistency and one execution blemish argues for the band above, and that is exactly the distinction the bands are there to force: this is not Expert skating, because Expert (80.01-90.00) means the difficulty landed without the blemish. Had the 50-50 been clean, this run crosses 80.01 and becomes an Expert-band score.
And through the panel: Five judges: 78.50, 82.00, 80.00, 76.00, 77.50 → drop 82.00 and 76.00 → (78.50 + 80.00 + 77.50) / 3 = 236.00 / 3 = 78.67. The panel's result and the individual judgement land in the same band, which is what calibration is for.
Judging skateboarding? Averages and runs without spreadsheets.
Judges' scores, best run and averages computed live. Skaters and fans follow the results from their phones.
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