Worlds is massive competition! Every year thousands of athletes come from across the globe to compete and take their shot at becoming World Champion! Our team works year round to plan for and accommodate the large pool of hopeful future champions. There are many factors at play when determining how athletes skill and course waves are assigned. Our team does our best to provide a similar experience for all athletes.

Below you can learn more about how each course and skill wave is determined.

Course Wave

Athlete Stage 1 course waves are determined by their best overall placement in either their regional standings or at their regional championship. 

Athletes with a better overall placement will run later then athletes with a worse overall placement. 

We will look at where the athlete's best overall placement came from when there are ties for best overall placement.

Athletes who are tied for best overall placement will be sorted by athletes who's regional championship placement is their best overall placement running earlier, followed by athletes who's regional standings overall placement is their best overall placement.

Remember to keep in mind our international competitions follow this rule as well! We anticipate hundreds of international qualifying athletes in attendance this year. 

Additionally, there will be reallocated spots for international athletes and staff attending our on-site qualifier at Level-Up.  Our on-site qualifier will be treated like it's own regional championship and spots will be allocated according to the rules above.
Another important detail to consider is athletes who are competing on courses that are shared across mutiple divisions. At worlds we will have 6 course for our 8 divisions. This means two divisions will be sharing a course! 

On these courses one age group will run all of the waves in their division before the course is switched to the next age group.

​Check the competition schedule to see which courses are shared by mutiple divisions.

On Stages 2 & 3  all athletes in the World Champion bracket will run the Stage second. After all athletes in only the World's Strongest Ninja bracket run the course.

Both groups will be sorted with the lowest placements from the previous stage running before the higher placed athletes.

Skills Wave

Skills are an exciting part of Worlds! Skills allow speciality athletes to show they are the world's best when it comes to a specific discipline in ninja! 

Unlike course waves, skill waves do not have a policy governing run order. Instead our team makes our best effort to provide a skills run order that allows athletes sufficent time between their course and skill waves.

Additionally, some skills waves will not be announced until Saturday evening. Since ninja can be unpredictable! It is impossible to know which athletes will be competing in Stage 2.
​Annoucing the skills waves for Sunday on Saturday evening allows our team an opprtunity to deconflict skills for athletes that moved on to stage 2 but still need to run skills on Sunday!