IRONMAN have announced what they call an “evolution” to the 2026 IRONMAN World Championship age-group qualification system for Kona next year.
The headline news is that the performance pool slots will now be awarded separately for men and women – though the number of places available will match age group representation on the start line. Women currently make up around 20% of starters in global IRONMAN races.
And automatic qualifying spots which roll down to the performance pool will also now be kept separate in terms of gender.
We’ll first explain how we’ve got to this point before running through the changes in full.
The qualifying system up to now
Both the women and men will race at the IRONMAN World Championships in Kona on the same day in 2026 for the first time in four years – there’s more background on how that came about here.
That makes it a very different scenario to the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championships which take place on separate days and do have the same number of male / female age-group places even though participation rates there are around 74% to 26%.
But once that was decided it prompted the big question as to how the Kona age-group spots – likely to be a little under 3,000 – would be split between the genders. IRONMAN initially said at the time they would be “mostly proportionate”, bearing in mind that 20% figure we mentioned with regard to the participants on IRONMAN start lines – though there were also calls for a 50:50 split.
And then in July IRONMAN unveiled a new performance-based age group qualification system. IRONMAN Group CEO Scott DeRue, when speaking to TRI247 and others in a media briefing, suggested the actual number of women likely to gain a place based on that new system would be between 30-40%.
But the first third of the qualifying process didn’t work out anywhere near those numbers, with the performance pool slots (96% men, 4% women), the one under most scrutiny. And last week six-time Kona winner Mark Allen, who has been inextricably linked with the IRONMAN brand in recent years as an ambassador, commentator and much more, called for a change and unveiled a petition asking others to join him.
The timing was just before the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championships in Marbella, where IRONMAN were also speaking to interested parties and focus groups, having said from the outset that the system would be reviewed and evolve over time.
A week on and over 4,000 people have signed the petition – and Allen and DeRue have spoken to each other at length.
All of which gets us to where we are with today’s news – and the release of the qualification data and insights which IRONMAN had always promised.
‘Retroactive and forward-looking changes’
IRONMAN’s statement today began by saying: “The system was designed with a commitment to ongoing monitoring, with the intention of evolving it as needed.
“Following an in-depth review of the results from the first third of qualifying races for the 2026 cycle which has been in progress for the past month, IRONMAN, in consultation with the athlete-led IRONMAN Championship Competition Advisory Group (ICCAG), will be making retroactive and forward-looking changes to the 2026 IRONMAN World Championship slot allocation system, including splitting the performance pool slots by gender and keeping Automatic Qualifying Slots roll down within gender.
“The changes will be focused on further ensuring access to and representation at the IRONMAN World Championship, while maintaining a performance-based philosophy.”
‘Not playing out as we expected’
DeRue explained: “When we launched our qualifying system earlier this year, the goal was simple; to give every athlete the same opportunity to qualify based on performance.
“Early feedback on this approach was met favorably, and we continue to believe in the foundation of this philosophy. However, there are certain elements of the new system that are not playing out as we expected, and we now have sufficient data to make informed decisions – for the overall health and long-term growth of the sport.”
IRONMAN have released all the data they have gathered so far, confirming that just 4% of the performance pool slots have gone to women. But it should be pointed out that in terms of the automatic qualifying slots, approximately 24% of those slots were offered to women, with a 20.3% acceptance figure. Women represented 15.6% of finishers in that sample.
And IRONMAN have also highlighted what they feel is a ‘Kona effect’ in the first three months of this 2026 qualifying cycle, given that race took place right in the middle of that spell.
Their statement explains: “This year, around 60% of the top-performing women (based on global rankings) competed in the 2025 IRONMAN World Championship in Kona. In comparison, around 20% of the top-performing men raced in the 2025 IRONMAN World Championship in Nice. As a result, a greater majority of the fastest women have not yet entered qualification races for 2026.
“This dynamic may have suppressed aggregated performance in female age groups at qualifying races to date (i.e. a higher index of the fastest/strongest female athletes were not racing compared to men, and thus resulting in a larger performance pool gap). While future events may help rebalance this, there’s no guarantee.”
They also revealed that far more women than men are declining slots.
Those changes in full
So in response to all of that, IRONMAN will be making the following updates to the system, starting with IRONMAN Arizona this weekend:
Performance pool split by gender: Performance pool slots will now be awarded separately for men and women. Men and women will have their own performance pools, and the number of slots in each gender’s pool will match eligible age group starter representation in that race, thus preserving our performance-based allocation principles while supporting distribution across men and women.
Automatic qualifying (age group winner) slots will remain within gender: Winner slots that previously rolled within the podium of the respective age group prior to moving into the overall performance pool, will now roll down within the respective gender’s performance pool.
Provide retroactive winner slots to performance pool: For IRONMAN races already completed in the 2026 qualifying cycle, IRONMAN will retroactively apply these changes and offer slots to any athlete – women and men – who would have earned a slot had these changes been implemented initially. This means the 24 women’s automatic qualifying slots and 8 men’s automatic qualifying slots that rolled into the combined performance pool so far this season will be retroactively offered to the men and women who would have earned these slots. In addition, IRONMAN will retroactively allocate performance pool slots from past races to athletes who would have qualified if the performance pools had been split between men and women from the beginning (44 slots will be retroactively awarded to women). Retroactive slot allocation will be made automatically in the coming days to eligible athletes. If the slot is not taken, it will continue to be offered to the next highest-ranked athlete within the respective gender.
Ongoing monitoring and transparent reporting: IRONMAN say they will continue to closely track slots offered and acceptance patterns at upcoming qualifying events, periodically meet with the ICCAG to evaluate, and publish updates on slot allocation and acceptance rates as the qualifying season progresses.
In a letter to the IRONMAN community which was also shared today, DeRue added: “Our collective aim is to inspire athletes globally to experience the joy, the sense of belonging, and the feeling of personal achievement that are woven through the sport of triathlon. Triathlon is life-changing for so many people around the world, and we are committed to a system that ensures athletes have an opportunity to live their IRONMAN World Championship dreams.”
And Women In Tri UK gave their reaction to the news as follows: “We welcome IRONMAN’s steps to refine the performance model, especially the move to separate the men’s and women’s slot-pool allocations. This is meaningful progress, and we appreciate the willingness to evolve the system. Our early independent estimations also show a more balanced outcome for women.
“We recognise there are still challenges, but this is a clear step forward. We remain committed to working collaboratively to ensure the model continues to reward the most competitive athletes fairly.”
TRI247’s view
IRONMAN were clearly unhappy with both the timing of Allen’s petition last week just before the 70.3 Worlds and what they felt were potentially misleading figures. But credit to him for taking a stand and also to them – and DeRue in particular – for reaching out and talking things through.
We spoke to DeRue last week and he told us then: “I fully respect that people have differing opinions and that there’s a lot of differing opinions.
“Ultimately I would say one of the most important things that we as a community can do is to grow the sport and women’s participation in it so that the 16% [of female IRONMAN finishers in the qualifying cycle so far] becomes much, much higher than that.”
For all the focus on the qualifying system, as DeRue says that is the metric which most needs to change.
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