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2025 CrossFit Season Rulebook Released — Here’s What You Should Know

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Additional reporting by Nicky Freymond, Emily Beers, Mike Halpin, and Joe Genetin-Pilawa 

The 2025 CrossFit rulebook has been released. 

Remind Me

The release of this year’s rulebook came later than last year but is generally in line with past seasons, making 2023 an anomaly. 

CrossFit set its own deadline for the beginning of Open registration, which it met.

Here’s a list of when CrossFit HQ has dropped its rulebook in recent history:

*The Open took place in October in 2020 

What’s New in 2025?

As with every iteration of the CrossFit Games, there are both major and minor changes to this season’s rules. 

Here are five high-level takeaways. We’ll dig deeper below:

1. New Season Structure

The first big change, which was announced previously, is that there will be no more Quarterfinals. Instead, athletes will progress from the Open directly to Semifinals and then to the Crossfit Games. 

Most athletes who qualify for Semifinals will compete online via the virtual, In-Affiliate Semifinals. 

The new Community Cup will take the place of Quarterfinals for 99% of athletes who choose to participate. (See more on this below.)

2. Virtual, In-Affiliate Semifinals

The 2025 Semifinals is essentially an online competition, where athletes are required to complete the workouts at an affiliate in good standing and submit a video of each workout. 

There are additional criteria for in-affiliate judges during Semifinals. These include the designation of a Head Judge and a secondary judge, and that both must have a current L1 or higher and have completed both the 2025 Judges Course and Advanced Judges Course.

3. A New Way to Qualify to the CrossFit Games – In-Person Qualifying Events

This year also sees the introduction of another avenue to qualify to the CrossFit Games – through the 10 partnered CrossFit Games qualifying events.

4. Fewer Athletes at the Games

For the past four seasons, the CrossFit Games roster has featured 40 men and 40 women. This year’s CrossFit Games field will include just 30 men and 30 women. 

5. Prize Money

This year’s prize money will be determined based on Open registration, which has remained at $20 USD. The more people who do the Open, the greater the prize purse to fund each stage of competitions throughout the season. (See breakdown below.) 

In Appendix F of the rulebook, CrossFit gave an example of the breakdown should there be 300,000 Open participants. (Last year, 344,396 people registered for the Open.)

With 300,000 Open participants: 

In this same example with 300,000 Open participants, Semifinal winners would take home $11,250, while second place would earn $5,400 and third $4,950. Last year, Semifinals winners took home $10,000, while second place earned $7,000 and third place $5,000.

Here is what a single $20 Open Registration would look like, split between the multiple award opportunities during the 2025 season:

Notable Dates for the 2025 CrossFit Season

The CrossFit Open

Semifinals and In-Person Qualifying Events

Individual, Team, and Divisional CrossFit Games

A Closer Look at the Details

The 2025 CrossFit Open

1.08 Open Registration – Region Selection 

For the 2025 season, competitive regions will have no bearing on the competition. They will only serve as a filter on the leaderboard.

It should be noted that some In-Person Qualifying Events will use competitive regions as a requirement for registration, in addition to Open finish and online qualifier results. (E.g., Rebel Renegade Games, Syndicate Crown, and The Fittest Experience.)

1.33 Open – Prizes

A percentage of each Open registration fee will be used to fund the prize purse for each stage of competition throughout the season. 

During the Open, Individual athletes and affiliates will be awarded prizes. 

The value of each Individual prize is determined by total Open registration and will be announced at the close of the registration period. 

Semifinals

2.02 Semifinals – Judging and Video Requirements

Individual and Age-Group divisions will be required to submit videos of all workouts when they submit their scores. 

2.01 Semifinals

The second stage of the CrossFit Games season is now Semifinals. Based on the worldwide Open rank, the top 1%* (or a minimum of 1,200 athletes) in the Individual men’s and women’s divisions will qualify to participate in Semifinals. 

Age-Group athletes, 16-54, are eligible to compete in the Individual Semifinals should they qualify based on the Individual men’s and women’s worldwide leaderboards. They may also compete on a team during the Team Semifinal if they were listed on the team roster during the Open.

CrossFit will provide score submission instructions and event details leading up to and throughout the competition.

2.02 Semifinals – CrossFit Affiliate and Head Judge Requirement

All athletes (Individual, Age Group, and Teams) that have registered for Semifinals MUST complete the workouts at a CrossFit affiliate in good standing. 

In order to host Semifinals, the CrossFit affiliate will need to assign a Head Judge to oversee the competition.

The requirements for a Head Judge are:

The Head Judge must be on-site and introduced in each athlete’s video during each workout of the competition.

2.05 Semifinals – Selecting a Semifinal competition roster – Teams

During the registration process for Semifinals, teams will need to declare their Competition Team roster. 

A Competition Team roster will consist of:

These athletes will represent the team for the Semifinal. Athletes in the Individual and Age-Group divisions are eligible to be a member of a Competition Team roster. 

Any athlete who has qualified and chooses to compete in the Individual Semifinal is eligible to be listed on the Competition Team roster should they choose to compete in both divisions.

2.07 Semifinals – Judging and Video Requirement

In addition to the Head Judge mentioned in 2.02, all athletes (individual, age group, and teams) must use a second registered floor judge during each workout who holds the following:

Both the Head Judge and the Floor Judge will need to be named in the score submission. 

For Individual and Age Group athletes, ALL WORKOUTS are REQUIRED to be submitted with a publicly viewable YouTube link/URL. 

For teams, the rulebook notes that videos are not required at score submission but may be requested to submit videos of their performance. 

2.08 Semifinals – Event Format

Individual, Age-Group, and Team athletes will compete in a series of workouts throughout their competitions. 

The competition will take place over the course of one weekend in which athletes will need to perform workouts and submit scores. Scores will not populate on the public leaderboard until after the close of the competition window.

The 2025 Semifinals dates are:

The exact number of workouts to be completed will be released prior to the competition.

All scores will remain hidden from the public leaderboard until after the competition has concluded. Once the competition has concluded, the review period would occur where all videos, for Individuals and Age Groups, will be publicly available for review and penalties may be assessed.

2.13 Semifinals – Leaderboard Finalization

Leaderboards will not be final until after the review process is complete. Only after this time will athletes know if they are advancing to the next stage of competition. CrossFit will make an announcement when each leaderboard is final.

Note: In the case of Individuals who are planning to compete both in the In-Affiliate (online) Semifinal and in In-Person Qualifying Events, there are two in-person Qualifying Events—French Throwdown and TFX Invitational—that would occur after the In-Affiliate Semifinal weekend but before the leaderboard may be finalized.

2.14 Semifinals – Team Advancement

Unlike previous years, only one team per affiliate can advance to the CrossFit Games.

If an affiliate had multiple teams compete in Semifinals, they can rework their Games competition roster with any of the athletes from any of their teams.

2025 CrossFit Games Qualifying Events

3.01-3.02 – CrossFit Games Qualifying Event

An additional option for individual men and women to qualify for the CrossFit Games will be through a select number of Partnered CrossFit Games Qualifying Events.

Qualifying events are responsible to program and administer their own competitions. 

Athletes who earn a ticket to the Crossfit Games through a Qualifying Event must also have placed within the top 1% of the Open to advance.

There are currently 10 Qualifying Events in the 2025 CrossFit Games season and 18 CrossFit Games tickets available through this pathway.

If an athlete finishes in a qualifying position in multiple competitions, they will retain their Games invitation from the first competition from which they qualified. 

Each Qualifying Event will award its own prize money.

Community Cup

4.01, 4.02, 4.03 – Community Cup

After the Open, all competitors will have the chance to compete in a new competition: The Community Cup.

Athletes who choose to compete in the Community Cup will then compete against others of a similar level—there will be five different tiers, two levels each, during the Community Cup—determined during the Open.

The registration fee to participate is $30.

Gender Classification Policy

9.01 Gender Classification

For 2019 through 2024, the CrossFit Games rulebook contained a “Transgender Policy” that allowed an athlete to select a gender other than that assigned at birth when they registered to compete in the Open. 

That policy has now been replaced by the “Gender Classification Policy” that reads:

Drug Testing Policy 

1.03, 3.03, 5.18, and 8.01 – Drug Testing Policy

The Drug Testing Policy is mentioned through the rulebook with callouts in the Open, Semifinals, Qualifying Events, and the Games. 

In each case, CrossFit reiterates that all Individuals, Teams, Age Groups, and Adaptive athletes are subject to drug testing, especially those that may be awarded prize money and qualify to the CrossFit Games or Divisional Games. 

In section 5.18, CrossFit goes further into the drug testing that will occur at the CrossFit Games for Individual athletes and Team athletes as well as for Age-Group athletes at the Divisional Games. 

Athletes selected for drug testing will be notified by Athlete Control personnel. 

The following athletes will be selected for drug testing at the end of the competition:

All athletes are subject to drug testing at any time, but the top five individual men and women, all members of the top five teams and the top five in the Masters across all men’s and women’s divisions will be tested for sure. 

In the sections of the rulebook about prize money, CrossFit notes that drug testing must be completed before prize money would be issued. 

However, the rulebook appears to state that not all athletes and teams within a ranking of receiving prize money will be subject to required testing at the end of Games competition. 

The Appendices

Appendix D: Online/In-Affiliate Competition Guidelines

With a good portion of the Games season occurring virtually, CrossFit has added a set of “Online/In-Affiliate Competition Guidelines” 

These guidelines include:

Appendix E: Public Review Guidelines – Individual and Age-Group Semifinals 

New to the 2025 season is a public review process. “As part of the online Semifinal review process for the Individual and Age-Group divisions, videos of all workout performances will be made public on the leaderboard,” according to the rulebook. 

These guidelines include: 

More CrossFit News

Featured image: Mike Halpin

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