T100 Gold Coast Women’s race on 21st March 2026 in Surfers Paradise, Queensland.
The Triathlon World Tour got its official launch today as the Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO) and World Triathlon announced the initial T50 and T100 World Championship Tour calendars.
“Our sport was really fragmented from a competition and commercial perspective, which was holding it back,” said World Triathlon President Antonio Arimany. “We could have waited until the end of the current Olympic qualification before making the changes, but the changes we’re making were too important to wait. By introducing the Triathlon World Tour now we are creating one unified structure and brand which can unify as many events as possible, creating a win-win situation for all of us in the sport.”
“This agreement matters because it’s about growing our sport for the long term,” Armimany continued. “Athletes and National Federations deserve more, and better, racing opportunities, and that’s exactly what the Triathlon World Tour is designed to deliver. World Triathlon has worked hand in hand with private event organisers since day one, and our partnership with the PTO is proof that this collaborative approach works. Bringing that same spirit to the whole Triathlon World Tour is how we make our sport bigger and better for everyone involved.”
We caught up with Mr. Arimany at the Wrold Triathlon Championship Series (WTCS) race in Hamburg – you can read that interview here.
World Triathlon and the PTO announced last December that they would be working together on the new World Tour, with the T50 series replacing the WTCS. World Cup and a number of Challenge Family races (the PTO acquired that series earlier this year) will serve as “Challenger” races that will allow athletes to qualify for the World Championship Tours.
According to today’s release, “the ambition is that all events on the Tour will incorporate a broadcast and a professional field as well as mass participation amateur races.”
More details on the “remaining Championship and Challenger events, alongside ruther details on qualifcation and prize money – inclucing increase prize money for the T50 World Championship Tour – will be announced at the World Triathlon Congress in Pontevedra in September.”
T50 World Championship Tour events in 2027
27-28 March – Abu Dhabi Triathlon
24-25 April – Samarkand Triathlon
15-16 May – Yokohama Triathlon
5-6 June – Rome Triathlon
16-18 July – Los Angeles Triathlon (Venice Beach)
21-22 August – London Triathlon
8-12 September – Hamburg Triathlon World Championship Finals
25-26 September– Weihai Triathlon
20-21 November – Tauranga Triathlon
T100 Race to Qatar World Championship Tour events in 2027:
20-21 March – Gold Coast Triathlon
10-11 April – Singapore Triathlon
5-6 June – Sokin San Francisco Triathlon
14-15 August – Vancouver Triathlon
18-19 September – Marbella Triathlon
26-27 November – Saudi Arabia Triathlon
10-11 December – Qatar Triathlon World Championship Finals
Date TBC – French Riviera Triathlon
“From a Triathlon World Tour perspective, this announcement is a significant step forwards towards the PTO’s mission of transforming triathlon and taking it mainstream. In order to do that, we need to get more people participating in the sport at every level, which is why creating one unified brand and competition structure is so important – to make it as simple and engaging as possible for everybody to understand and get involved,” said Sam Renouf, PTO CEO. “One of the interesting things we’re seeing at the moment is a huge growth in mass participation brands like the World Marathon Majors and HYROX, which reflects the changing habits of sports fans more generally, who want to do more than watch from the sidelines and are seeking active and immersive ways to become part of the experience. It also reinforces the importance of us introducing a powerful brand for our new world tour, with a clear intention to consolidate and simplify the sport. This comes alive today through the ’T-naming system’ – starting with T100 and T50 – and putting the ‘T’ of Triathlon at heart of the Triathlon World Tour.”
“This is about recalibrating the sport and creating a pathway for every professional and amateur athlete to experience, enjoy, as well as creating an attractive commercial platform to bring more sponsors and host cities into our great sport,” Renouf said.
Are my eyes deceiving me or is there no joint race locations between T100/T50. I guess that was all part of the rumors, I assumed that was the whole point of the merger.
How do you unify the 2 brands but have complete different schedules? Because it has a T in front of your racing name now?
It’s a giant L in my opinion to not have any joint events. When you have all the athletes, TV, support, etc. there, you could create awesome super weekends for the athletes and fans, and you as an organizer save a LOT on costs by not having entirely separate weekends. London is the biggest missed opportunity and could be a massive weekend of triathlon with the huge AG races, T50/WTCS, and T100 all together. Hamburg would be awesome to add a T100, or Vancouver would be awesome for a T50 alongside the pro and AG races.
I don’t want to hate on T100, because I think it’s valuable to the pro dynamic. But I swear to god anything t100 seems to touch fucks up everything. And how/why pto/wt merged so that wtcs and t100 are “unified” makes no f’ing sense if you then don’t share/merge resources.
Where is the prize money increase going to come from with wtcs when no joint costs are shared?
The only way I could see it making sense financially were if the T100 events had enough AG athletes to cover costs on their own without WTCS. But that’s clearly not the case with the cash burn the the T1000 is going though. Plus we’ve seen the T100 have the best success partnering on with established events like UAST Nats, Challenge Daytona, Escape from Alcatraz, and the London Triathlon. So like you I thought the easy answer would be to tack T100 onto the T50/WCTS events where you have the infrastructure and media coverage in place. Like you said, without doing that, the merger is really just a bailout of the T100 and doesn’t change anything.
This is a really bad idea keeping split gender. The downfall of supertri was after their partnership with World Triathlon. Same situation now with the PTO/T100… Crazy to watch how far they are from the US Open in Milwaukee..
That’s exactly what they DON’T want to do. They believe they need a bigger calendar to be able to sell a broadcasts rights package. I’m genuinely shocked that they think they’ll be able to do that.
I have a lot of opinions that don’t matter on the gender split and the naming and all the other buzzwords from PTO here, but is T50 draft legal or a 20m draft? Where does T50 fit in compared to WTCS/World Cup/Conti Cup? I swear I’ve looked in press releases, this article, all over and I am not finding it. Possible I am just dumb or lack reading comprehension skills.
I assume world cups / Conti Cups / Continental Champs will all stay the same, and just the wtcs is re-branded “unified” now. I’m still unsure how all this unified branding is going to raise the wtcs prize purse that hasn’t changed in 15+ years.
They will use the increased number of events and increase in profile as a justification to solicit more funding from investors and continue to operate even more events at a loss.
What concerns me are the two races in the T50 series after the Grand Final. If the rationale behind holding the T50 races later next year is that they’ll award points toward the Olympic ranking, then that’s fine. But what about the rolling ranking leading up to 2028? There are still a lot of unanswered questions.
Dragging my observations from the Triathlon World Tour 2027 thread:
Seven regular season T100 races plus the finals in December.
Men’s and women’s races will continue to be held separately (so maybe a further venue to be revealed, to make an even number, 4W and 4M).
Prize purse per single gender race this year is $275k. If, as we have heard from El Presidente World Triathlon, the T50 prize amounts are going to be levelled up to T100, that is a very challenging amount of revenue.
When is a ‘World Championship’ not a ‘Championship’? When it’s a ‘World Tour’.
No direct clash with Roth, Chattanooga or Kona.
T100 Spain in Marbella - only new venue (assumes Saudi race is in Jeddah same as planned this year (but we STILL don’t know the 2026 date).)
I guess they felt that after the finals in Hamburg there were months of opportunity: made no sense to stop all T50 racing in mid-September. Also offers a slot for a T50 race in Australasia. These races will score for World Tri Rankings (to get on start lists) and OQ ranking points, towards getting a third slot for LA (if a nation has three athletes in the first #30 come late May 2028).
[quote=“BDoughtie, post:15, topic:1299295”]
I assume world cups / Conti Cups / Continental Champs will all stay the same, and just the wtcs is re-branded
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This is the Challenge press release:
If you’ve been following this, believe they said that the ‘World Triathlon Cups’ will become/branded (T50?) Challenger Series, The ‘C’ races carry on as normal.
"The T50 and T100 World Championship Tours will be the highest tier of professional racing on the new Triathlon World Tour and culminate in official World Champions being crowned at World Championship Finals for both distances.
"Within the Triathlon World Tour framework, there will also be a tier of events branded ‘Challenger’ that provide a unified qualification pathway and act as the official feeder to the World Championship Tours. This tier will incorporate the former World Triathlon Cups and a number of Challenge Family events acquired by the PTO in February this year.
“The ambition is that all events on the Tour will incorporate a broadcast and a professional field as well as mass participation amateur races.”
A figure of 100 has been mentioned, To the races announced 19 (or 29 if M+W=2) one can add all the T50 Challenger races (?how many) and all the middle distance ex-Challenge Family races (?31 this year).
T100 Gold Coast Women’s race on 21st March 2026 in Surfers Paradise, Queensland.
