IRONMAN New Zealand Kona 2026 qualifying

How it works

• Since the 2026 cycle, each age group winner gets an automatic slot (if declined, it rolls to 2nd and 3rd). The remaining slots are split between women and men by their share of starters.
• The remaining slots are offered by age-graded time: finish time times the official age group factor (Kona Standard). An M60-64 multiplies by 0.8262; an M30-34, by 1.
• IRONMAN doesn't publish who accepted each slot. We estimate it by matching results against the World Championship start list: we go through the season in order, and at each race a slot goes to whoever is on the start list and didn't already have one. That shows how far the roll down went.
• The cutoff is the time by which 90% of the pool slots were handed out, not the last athlete in: sometimes the last 2 or 3 slots roll very deep because almost nobody in that part of the ranking is on the start list, and that last time doesn't reflect what it took.
• Checked against the slots by gender published by IRONMAN: exact for Hawaii 70.3 and Jacksonville, within 1–2 for Texas and Brazil.
• * Approximate cutoff: we couldn't rebuild the whole pool (athletes who took a slot and aren't on the start list, or that we couldn't match). The real cutoff was probably a bit slower.
• For a cycle in progress there's no start list yet: we assume winners take their slot and the roll down goes as deep as it did at that race the year before.
• Qualifying races worldwide that we cover (a few without published results are missing). Age group winners qualify even if slower than the cutoff.

Sources: IRONMAN Age Group Qualification · IRONMAN World Championship slots

Guide: how to qualify for Kona and the easiest races →