Dressage scoring, rules and judging
Marks out of ten, doubled movements and a result published to three decimals
Dressage is scored movement by movement from 0 to 10 in half-mark steps, with difficult movements and the Harmony collective mark multiplied by a coefficient of 2. Each judge's total is divided by the maximum for the test — 460 for the FEI Grand Prix — and multiplied by 100, and the panel's percentages are then averaged and published to three decimal places.
Dressage Competition Formats & Judging
Competition Formats
Championships and the Olympic Games
A World or Continental Championship runs three tests and awards three sets of medals. The Grand Prix is the Team Championship, the Grand Prix Special is the first individual competition (open to the 30 best from the Grand Prix), and the Grand Prix Freestyle is the second (open to the 18 best from the Special, maximum three per nation).
Teams are three or four riders, and where four are entered only the three best scores count. Nothing carries over: under Art. 425.4.3 every competition starts from zero.
The Olympic format is different. There the Grand Prix is only a qualifier, the Grand Prix Special decides the team medals, and the Freestyle awards the single set of individual medals.
The CDI Circuit
International shows are graded from CDI1* to CDI5*, with CDI-W rounds feeding the FEI World Cup and CDIO events carrying a Nations Cup. The grading sets the size of the Ground Jury: a minimum of three judges at CDI1* and CDI2*, five at CDI3* and above, and seven permitted at CDI4*, CDI5* and CDI-W.
A Grand Prix Special at a CDI can only be scheduled after a Grand Prix, and is open to between 6 and 18 combinations from it. Where 30 or more contested the Grand Prix, the organiser may not run fewer than 15 starters in the Special.
How Dressage Is Scored: the Judge's Toolkit
Every movement gets its own mark from every judge, on a scale where each number carries a fixed FEI descriptor: 10 excellent, 8 good, 6 satisfactory, 0 not executed. Half marks are permitted from 0.5 to 9.5.
The weighting is set by the test sheet, not by the panel. In the 2026 Grand Prix, 11 of the 33 movements carry a coefficient of 2 — all three piaffes, both canter pirouettes, the one-tempi changes, the canter zig-zag, both trot half-passes, and the extended and collected walk. Passage and the extended trot do not.
**Marks 0-10 per movement** — each with a fixed FEI descriptor, half marks allowed from 0.5 to 9.5, and 0.1 steps reserved for the artistic marks in a Freestyle (Art. 423).
**Coefficient 2** — the only multiplier in current FEI tests, applied to eleven of the Grand Prix's 33 movements and to the collective mark (Art. 423.10, Art. 425.1).
**The Harmony mark** — the single surviving collective mark, renamed from General Impression on 1 January 2026, worth 10 × 2 = 20 points (Art. 423.9).
**Percentage per judge** — points divided by the test maximum, times 100; the panel's percentages are then averaged and published to three decimals (Art. 425.5).
**Penalties in percentage points** — two points for a first error of course and elimination for a second, 0.5 points for a technical fault, all deducted after conversion to a percentage (Art. 424).
Championship judges score from individual boxes wired to the Judges Signalling System (Art. 411.7.1), a discreet button that tells the judge at C about blood, lameness, an error of course or an equipment problem. Above them sits the three-member Judging Supervisory Panel, mandatory at the Olympic Games, at World and Continental Championships at Grand Prix level and at World Cup Finals. It watches live scores on individual screens with a rewindable video feed, may correct only definite technical mistakes and counting errors, and may never set a mark outside the range the judges themselves gave (Art. 442).
Dressage — a sport scored line by line
Dressage is the most literal scoring system in equestrian sport. The test is a written sequence of numbered movements, and every judge on the panel writes a mark from 0 to 10 against each of them, in half-mark steps, while the ride is still happening.
What turns those marks into a result is arithmetic that is fixed in the rulebook rather than left to the panel. Difficult movements are multiplied by a coefficient of 2, one collective mark — called Harmony since 1 January 2026 — is also doubled, and each judge's points are divided by the maximum for that test: 460 for the FEI Grand Prix.
Only then does the panel come together. Every judge is converted to a percentage first, and the final result is the average of those percentages, published to three decimal places. Because the rounding happens at the judge and not at the pool, the third decimal is doing real work — which is why dressage bothers to publish one at all.
The Biggest Dressage Competitions
Dressage's calendar is built around a four-year championship rhythm, an indoor World Cup season and the international CDI circuit that feeds both.
FEI World Championships
The sport's flagship title, ridden over three tests and awarding team, Special and Freestyle medals. The **2026 edition is in Aachen**, with the dressage running from **11 to 15 August** inside a championship covering six FEI disciplines.
Olympic Games
Three riders per nation with **no drop score**, a Grand Prix that only qualifies, a Grand Prix Special that decides the team medals and a Freestyle that decides the individual title. The next edition is Los Angeles 2028.
FEI Dressage World Cup Final
The indoor season's climax, decided on a Grand Prix and a Freestyle and judged by a Ground Jury of five plus a reserve. The FEI tightened the Freestyle **Degree of Difficulty** system in 2026, after the Fort Worth Final.
FEI European Championships
The continental title, run on the same three-test structure as a World Championship and judged by seven officials at Grand Prix level. Continental championships are the events where the Judging Supervisory Panel is compulsory rather than optional.
The Dressage Arena and the Judge's Tools
Dressage needs almost no equipment that affects scoring — but the arena itself is a measuring instrument, and the judge's position within it changes what can be marked.
The Arena and Its Letters
A senior international test is ridden in a 20 × 60 m arena marked with letters around the perimeter — A, K, E, H, C, M, B, F — plus the long-side letters V, P, R and S. Para dressage Grades I to III ride in a 20 × 40 m arena, Grades IV and V in the full size.
Judges' Boxes and the Signalling System
Judges sit 3 to 5 m outside the arena. Three take the short side behind C, two sit at B and E on the long sides, and on a seven-judge panel two more sit behind A. At championships each box carries a Judges Signalling System button linked to the judge at C.
The Test Sheet
Every mark, coefficient and maximum lives on the FEI test sheet rather than in the rulebook. The 2026 Grand Prix sheet lists 33 movements, prints the coefficient beside eleven of them, states the maximum as 460, and notes the 6:30 riding time as being for information only.
The History of Dressage Scoring
Why the Result Is a Percentage
Dressage tests do not all contain the same number of movements, and the FEI sets a different maximum for each: 460 points for the Grand Prix, 470 for the Grand Prix Special, and 200 plus 200 for the Freestyle. Expressing the total as a percentage of that maximum is what makes a Grand Prix score comparable with a Special score at all — and it is why a rider's result is quoted as 75.217% rather than as 346 points.
The Collective Marks, 2018
Dressage tests once ended with four collective marks. Effective 1 January 2018, following the FEI General Assembly of November 2017, the marks for paces, impulsion and submission were deleted — the Dressage Judging Working Group argued they gave judges room to adjust a result after the ride. Only the mark for the rider's seat and the effect of the aids survived. Later attempts to reintroduce a second collective, in 2021 and again in 2023, were rejected.
The 2026 Update and the 2027 Revision
The changes that took effect on 1 January 2026 were deliberately small: the surviving collective mark was renamed Harmony and re-scoped around cooperation, lightness and the Training Scale; the blood rule was tightened to cover the approach to the arena and to require the judge at C to stop and check on suspicion; and the rounding band in Art. 425.5.4 was closed. The substantial work is the full rulebook revision running through 2026 for 2027, in which moving four of the seven championship judges to the long sides and removing the collective mark altogether are both on the table.
Related Guides
Frequently Asked Questions About Dressage
Primary Sources
- FEI Dressage Rules, 26th edition, including updates effective 1 January 2026 — Fédération Equestre Internationale
- FEI Grand Prix test sheet 2026 — Fédération Equestre Internationale
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