World Rowing has announced the 16 teams that will compete in next year’s two-round beach sprint series. The series will actually include athletes from more than 16 countries, with the African continent fielding a combined South Africa-Tunisia team, and with World Rowing itself taking the 16th spot with a combined team. Additionally, the first stage in Turkey will be open to even more teams, with a preliminary qualification regatta used to select the extra competitors.
As stage hosts, both China and Turkey were given automatic entry to the world series. The other national (or combined national) teams were selected according to their results in the senior men’s and women’s solos and mixed double at this years world championships. Australia, Germany, Lithuania, Portugal, Spain and the USA all qualified by finishing within the top seven teams in Qingdao (that group also included China). Continental representatives from the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania were then selected from the countries that ranked next best: Brazil, Thailand, Poland and New Zealand.
No African teams won ranking points via World Rowing’s announced system, based on top-16 finishes in the Olympic events. However, World Rowing determined that South Africa and Tunisia tied based on other results, and so assigned the two countries to a combined team. With each team’s quota consisting of two male and two female athletes, plus two support staff (one male, one female), the fairest allocation might see this team including three members from each country.
Two wildcard entries were then given out to Austria and Great Britain, both of whom were ranked in the Olympic events, but didn’t receive automatic qualification because of the depth of European success at the 2026 World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals. And a third wildcard will mean the inclusion of a World Rowing team that, according to the global federation, will feature athletes from “non-qualified development teams.”
The exact team lineups have yet to be confirmed, but several athletes already won individual qualification via their personal results in Qingdao. Every athlete from a qualified national team who also finished on the podium in the men’s solo, women’s solo or mixed double automatically gains a place. This means that the lineups of some of the countries are now partially confirmed:
- Australia:
- Isabella Scammell (CW1x: 1st)
- Samuel Forbes (CM1x: 2nd)
- Austria:
- Magdalena Lobnig (CW1x: 3rd)
- China:
- Wenjie Zhu (CW1x: 2nd)
- Jiayu Liu (CM1x: 1st)
- Germany:
- Moritz Wolff (CM1x: 3rd)
- Franz Werner (CMix2x: 1st)
- Sophie Leupold (CMix2x: 1st)
- Lithuania:
- Dominykas Jancionis (CMix2x: 2nd)
- Martyna Kazlauskaite (CMix2x: 2nd)
- Poland:
- Adam Bujnowski (CMix2x: 3rd)
- Dominika Baranowska (CMix2x: 3rd)
Within each stage, all four athletes from each team will compete in the solos events and the mixed double, and these races will be used to calculate series standings that will ultimately decide how much prize money they win. World Rowing is also planning a mixed relay event, similar to the mixed relay that was used to finish competition at Dakar 2026.
At the Youth Olympic Games, teams raced back-to-back in a solo, mixed double, and then again in a solo, in a variation to the usual beach sprint format. The teams were also made up by mixing athletes from different countries and because there weren’t any medals on offer, the goal was more than just winning. Perhaps World Rowing might consider the same idea in the world series: mixing up the national teams. After all, the results also won’t count towards final standings.