Artistic swimming changes rules ahead of LA28: free routines will get a new duration
World Aquatics is preparing a new package of rules for artistic swimming on the road to the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, and one of the most important announced changes will concern free routines and their duration. Lisa Schott, Chair of the World Aquatics Technical Artistic Swimming Committee, confirmed in an interview with the Chinese agency Xinhua that the details will be published very soon, but she did not reveal whether individual routines will be shortened, extended, or whether the duration will differ depending on the discipline. Because of this, it is not yet possible to assess precisely how the change will affect choreography design, the number of elements, and the distribution of difficulty within performances. It is clear, however, that the new intervention fits into a multi-year reform of the sport aimed at making judging more measurable, competition more open, and outcomes less predictable. The announcement comes at a time when national teams are already preparing for a cycle that will lead through the 2027 World Championships in Budapest toward Olympic qualification places for LA28.
Schott announced changes, but details have not yet been published
Schott made the announcement during the World Junior Artistic Swimming Championships, held from August 12 to 16, 2026, at the Duna Arena in Budapest. According to Xinhua's report, she said that the new rules would include changes to free routines and their length, while emphasizing that the rules would be published soon. As of August 23, 2026, World Aquatics had not publicly presented the final details of the announced change, so any claim about the exact new duration would be premature. The importance of this change is nevertheless significant because the time available for a performance directly affects the way coaches build the dramaturgy of a routine, distribute demanding hybrids and acrobatic elements, and balance technical risk with artistic impression. In a sport in which a performance is planned down to very small details, even a relatively minor change in duration can have consequences for conditioning, the rhythm of the choreography, and the strategy of declared difficulty.
The announcement is particularly interesting because World Aquatics has not treated the rules as a static system for years. The judging reform was developed with the intention of reducing room for ambiguity and giving the sport more precisely defined difficulty values, technical controls, and clearer performance criteria. Even before the major shift in 2022, World Aquatics explained that the new system would introduce more open scoring, pre-declared elements, and greater strategic choice for coaches, along with the possibility of adapting the system as the sport evolves. That same logic continues now: the rules are changed between Olympic cycles so that they can keep pace with what athletes and coaches are able to perform, while also making the result easier for judges and spectators to understand. In Budapest, Schott explicitly stated that artistic swimming remains in a period of evolution.
The new scoring system changed competition tactics
One of the biggest changes in recent years occurred in the judging system itself. In its explanations of the rules, World Aquatics states that the difficulty of elements is declared in advance, while technical controllers verify whether what was declared on the coach card was actually performed. If athletes fail to meet the criteria of the declared difficulty, an element can be downgraded to the basic, so-called base mark value, which can dramatically change the final score. Such a system gives coaches the option of choosing between a safer performance and greater difficulty with a potentially higher reward, but also greater risk. At the same time, artistic impression is evaluated separately, so a top-level routine must combine precision, synchronization, technical complexity, and a convincing choreographic whole.
Schott emphasized to Xinhua precisely the consequence of such an approach: competitions have become less predictable, and it is no longer clear in advance who will win. According to her, this gives every athlete and every team hope that they have a realistic chance of fighting for the top. However, she also warned about the other side of the system, namely the danger that coaches declare a level of difficulty that their athletes cannot reliably perform. If such risk is repeated throughout the routine, a series of base values can cancel out the benefit of a more aggressive strategy. Therefore, the announced changes to the duration of free routines will not be merely an aesthetic issue: depending on the final rules, they could change how much room there is for demanding elements, how much time remains for transitions, and how possible it is to maintain performance quality from beginning to end.
When introducing the new system, World Aquatics emphasized that it wanted to preserve the artistic dimension of the discipline while at the same time evaluating technical execution more clearly. This is an important balance because artistic swimming is not merely a sequence of isolated elements. The way athletes move through the water, their coordination with one another, the relationship between movement and music, the quality of transitions, the height and control of acrobatic elements, and the overall persuasiveness of the choreography are also judged. A change in the duration of free routines can therefore affect both sides of the equation: the amount and distribution of technical content, but also the space needed for a routine to develop a recognizable artistic identity. Until the final text of the rules is published, it is not known where World Aquatics will draw the new line.
Budapest brought together a record junior field
The announcement of the changes came at a championship that Schott described as the largest World Junior Championships in the history of the sport. According to Xinhua, almost 300 athletes from 35 federations gathered in Budapest, including delegations appearing at the event for the first time. In its official event preview, World Aquatics also listed almost 300 participants and more than 35 countries, and the competition was held over five days at the Duna Arena. The program included 11 disciplines, from women's and men's solo events to women's and mixed duets, as well as open team technical, free, and acrobatic routines. Such breadth of the program shows how much the junior base has expanded compared with the period when artistic swimming at the highest level was associated almost exclusively with women's competition.
The competition results additionally showed how quickly the new generation is developing. After the championship ended, World Aquatics reported that Russia won nine of the 11 titles, while Spain ended its winning streak with victories in the women's and mixed free duets. In his final analysis of the championship, former world champion Giorgio Minisini highlighted that young athletes are showing a good balance between technical level and artistic sensitivity, with well-constructed choreography becoming increasingly valuable. Such an assessment is important in the context of the new rules because it shows that younger generations are already growing up within a system in which technical difficulty alone is not enough. Many of the athletes now competing at junior level will enter senior national teams during the cycle toward Los Angeles.
A record number of men is changing the image of the sport
Another change that Schott highlighted in Budapest is the growth in the number of male competitors. She told Xinhua that the sport had never before had as many men as were visible at this junior championship and that they bring a different dynamic to team performances. Several national teams included men in team disciplines, and some competed with two male athletes in the lineup. In its review of the championship, World Aquatics cited specific examples: France used two men in the team technical routine, China two in the team free routine, and Italy two in the acrobatic team. Schott described this trend as the direction in which the international federation wants to move, emphasizing a new synergy and a more inclusive character of the discipline.
Men were granted the right to compete in Olympic team artistic swimming for Paris 2024 following a decision announced by World Aquatics and the International Olympic Committee at the end of 2022. The rules allowed a maximum of two men in a team of eight competitors, but in the end none were selected for the Olympic lineups that competed in Paris. World Aquatics later cited that fact in a profile of Spanish world champion Dennis Gonzalez, one of the leading advocates of male participation in teams. For Los Angeles 2028, the possibility remains: according to the confirmed qualification system, Olympic teams will again have eight athletes, of whom a maximum of two may be men. The women's duet remains a separate Olympic discipline and consists of two female athletes.
The growth of the men's field at junior level therefore has direct Olympic significance. If national federations want to use the possibility of including men at LA28, they need to develop them within team systems for years before the Games, rather than only through solo or mixed duet disciplines. After Budapest, Minisini also warned that simply inserting male athletes into choreographies originally designed for eight women may not automatically make use of their advantages. In his view, the next step should be to create choreographies that are conceived as mixed from the very beginning. This shows that changing team composition is not only a matter of rules but also of developing entirely new coaching and choreographic approaches.
Budapest 2027 opens the qualification path toward Los Angeles
The next World Aquatics Championships will be held in Budapest from June 26 to July 18, 2027, and according to the official World Aquatics qualification system, the road to Olympic artistic swimming in Los Angeles will begin there. Qualification will take place through the World Championships and continental championships, while the final qualification stop is scheduled for the Artistic Swimming World Cup Super Final in 2028. This means that national teams will have to adopt the new provisions on free routines early enough to apply them consistently in competitions that determine Olympic status. Given the complexity of declaring difficulty and the need for long-term synchronization training, a rule change one year before the start of qualification will have a direct impact on planning the entire cycle.
A total of 96 athlete quota places are planned for artistic swimming at LA28. World Aquatics lists two Olympic disciplines: the team event with ten teams and the women's duet with 18 pairs. The United States, as host, is automatically qualified in both disciplines, while the remaining places will be distributed according to the rules of the qualification system. Artistic swimming will be held in the second half of the Olympic Games at the Long Beach Aquatics Center, with competitions scheduled from July 25 to 29, 2028. According to the published schedule, the duet final will be held on July 26, while the team event will conclude with the final on July 29.
The total of 96 Olympic quota places is equal to the overall artistic swimming quota at the Paris 2024 Games, but the sport continues to change internally between the two Olympic cycles. The announced adjustments to free routines, the development of the difficulty and technical control system, the growing presence of men, and the desire for greater use of technology are all part of the same process. In Budapest, Schott stated that World Aquatics wants to use more technology in the sport, although she did not specify which technologies would be introduced or on what timeline. For that reason, it is currently reasonable to speak about the direction of development rather than specific new tools or procedures. The final picture will be provided by the official text of the rules that the federation has yet to publish.
A change in duration could have a greater impact than a few seconds suggest
In free routines, time is not merely a technical restriction but one of the fundamental resources of choreography. Coaches must fit declared elements, transitions, formation changes, moments of artistic emphasis, and a sufficiently controlled rhythm into it so that athletes can maintain precision under heavy physical strain. If World Aquatics shortens the routines, a larger amount of content might have to be performed within a more compact timeframe, potentially increasing intensity and reducing room for transitions. If it extends them, more space would open up for developing the choreographic idea, but endurance and control demands would increase. Neither of these scenarios has yet been officially confirmed, so the real effect will only be possible to assess after the publication of the new rules and the accompanying technical documents.
The transition period will be equally important for national teams. Major artistic swimming choreographies are not created immediately before a competition; they must be connected with physical preparation, declared difficulty, musical structure, and repetition to the point where eight athletes can perform complex elements almost simultaneously. If the duration or the number of permitted or required elements changes, coaches will have to redesign routines, while judges and technical controllers will have to align themselves with the new criteria. That is why Schott's message that details will arrive soon is important: the LA28 qualification cycle begins in 2027, and the room for experimentation is rapidly shrinking. In only ten months after the junior championship, Budapest will once again be at the center of world aquatics, this time as host of the championship at which the distribution of Olympic opportunities will begin.
Artistic swimming is thus entering another phase of transformation in which technique, strategy, and the composition of the competitive field are changing simultaneously. World Aquatics is trying to preserve the artistic character of the discipline while linking it with more precise evaluation of difficulty and execution, while the growth of the men's field further expands the possibilities for team lineups. The announced change in the duration of free routines will be the first concrete test of the next version of that system. Until the official document is published, the only confirmed fact is that changes are coming and that they will be important for free routines. For coaches and athletes targeting Budapest 2027 and Los Angeles 2028, every detail of the new rulebook could determine how much risk will be possible, what will have to be simplified, and how artistic impression can be turned into a competitive advantage.
Sources:
- Xinhua / China.org.cn – Lisa Schott's statement on the new rules, free routines, the record junior championship, the scoring system, male competitors, and technology (link)
- World Aquatics – official preview and information about the 2026 World Junior Championships in Budapest (link)
- World Aquatics – confirmed qualification system for LA28, 96 quota places, ten teams, 18 duets, and the start of qualification in Budapest in 2027 (link)
- World Aquatics – explanation of the difficulty system, technical control, and base values in the new scoring model (link)
- World Aquatics – Giorgio Minisini's review of the junior championship, results, and the inclusion of male athletes in team routines (link)
- World Aquatics – confirmation that men were permitted in Olympic teams for Paris 2024, but none were selected to compete (link)