What changed in the Hyrox rulebook for 2026/27

The 26/27 rulebooks are a couple of pages longer than last season's (singles 44 to 46, doubles 47 to 48), and the most important change is one sentence: a station you don't finish is now a disqualification, not a penalty. Below is every change that affects a racing athlete, checked line by line against both seasons' official PDFs rather than summarised from other people's summaries. One consequence of doing it that way: the single most-repeated claim about this season's doubles rules isn't in the rulebook at all.

An incomplete station now costs you the result

Last season, coming up short was expensive but survivable. A missed sled lane cost three minutes. A missed farmers carry lap, three minutes. Wall balls short of 100, fifteen seconds per missing rep. You finished with a slower time and a ranking.

This season the rulebook says: "Each workout station must be completed in full. Any failure to complete a workout station in its entirety will result in disqualification [Incomplete Station]." The did-not-finish section adds that you may carry on to the finish, but without a final time and excluded from every ranking and award.

Running laps are the one carve-out and they are unchanged: three minutes on a four-lap setup, five on a three-lap, seven on a two-lap, and a disqualification if it's a single lap.

The practical consequence is a mental one. Counting your lanes and laps is no longer bookkeeping, it's the whole race, and the rulebook is explicit that you alone are responsible for counting them. The venue lap screen is described as a non-official aid.

→ Do this. Count out loud. Two of the four disqualification triggers above are pure arithmetic done while your heart rate is at 180.

Wall balls: the screen is no longer the authority

Related, and easy to miss. Last season's book said you could proceed "once they confirm their digital interface shows that 100 valid Wall Ball repetitions have been completed." This season the screen is demoted:

"These displays do not determine the validity of repetitions. A Wall Ball rep is only valid when the athlete performs the correct movement standard and the ball makes proper contact with the correct physical target. [...] The physical target and judge confirmation remain the official standard for all repetitions."

The screen still turns green with a GO signal at 100 valid reps, so it's a useful aid. It's just no longer the authority. Combine that with the new disqualification rule and the stakes change shape: a screen you trusted plus a judge who disagrees is now a DQ risk rather than a fifteen-second one.

What has not changed: wall balls still carry no warning. Stations one through seven give you one first, with a few flat no-warning penalties on top (feet off the SkiErg base or rower footplates before you touch the handle is fifteen seconds, straight away). Here a rep is either a rep or a no-rep from the first one, depth is hips below knees, you must start standing tall, and you may not catch the ball after a bounce and continue. (The full wall ball guide covers the standards rep by rep.)

The standards that quietly got easier

Three real relaxations, none of which made the coverage.

The sandbag movement standard was rewritten, but read it carefully. Last season: "The sandbag must remain on both shoulders at all times." This season that sentence is gone from the standard, replaced by a requirement that it stay "fully supported by the working athlete" and not rest on the ground, barricades, feet or any other surface. Before you take that as licence to carry it in your arms: the penalty table in both books still lists "removal of sandbag from shoulders" at fifteen seconds per infringement, and the doubles book says so in the standard itself. Shoulders it stays.

Dropping it is no longer a disqualification. It was fifteen seconds for the first infringement and a DQ for the second. Now it's fifteen seconds per infringement, full stop.

Burpee broad jumps got a 5cm stagger tolerance. Last season demanded both feet parallel with "no staggered foot positions" at all. This season: "A maximum variance of 5 cm is permitted between the front of one foot and the front of the other foot during both take-off and landing." Extra steps and shuffles are still forbidden.

You can now rest on the rower with your feet out of the straps. Last season required feet on the plates at all times. This season lets you rack the handle and rest "with their feet on or off the foot plates." Two things tightened around it: feet must be on the footplates (and on the SkiErg base) before you touch the handle, fifteen seconds if not, and standing up or leaving the seat before 1000m is now a straight disqualification where last season it ran from ten seconds to a DQ by severity.

And jumping on the SkiErg is explicitly legal. Feet may leave the base plate mid-pull as long as they land back on it. A foot touching the floor is still an infringement.

The new penalties nobody mentions

Lingering in the start tunnel after your wave has gone can cost a minute. New code this season: athletes must move forward with the natural flow of their wave, and a one-minute penalty can apply if they don't.

Ear plugs and smart glasses are now explicitly forbidden. They join headphones, phones, VR headsets and body cameras on the banned list. The wording is broad, covering "any eyewear incorporating cameras, audio recording, live streaming, data transmission, or augmented reality functionality."

This is worth reading alongside a rule that has not changed but is widely misunderstood: the permitted-equipment list is closed. Knee sleeves, gloves (not grips), a weightlifting belt, wristbands, hydration packs, prescribed inhalers or similar respiratory devices. Then: "Any item not explicitly listed as permitted is, by default, prohibited." Anything else needs written permission from the Race Director before the start.

Worth knowing what that list doesn't say: compression sleeves and kinesio tape are named nowhere in either rulebook, neither permitted nor forbidden. On a literal reading of a closed list they'd be prohibited. In practice they're near-universal and we found no enforcement either way, so we're not going to tell you it's settled.

Overtaking is now allowed at three stations

Last season's permission to cross lanes and overtake lived only inside the burpee broad jump rules. This season it's stated up front for lunges, burpee broad jumps and farmers carry, "when safe to do so," with grid lines at those stations serving "as orientation only" and "not mandatory to follow."

Small change, real time, especially in a crowded wave.

Pro divisions now run to 80+

Last season, Pro ended at the 70-74 age group and athletes over 70 got no official ranking, flag or Worlds slot in Pro. This season athletes may race Pro "up to and including the 80+ Age Groups" at regular races, with normal rankings, podiums and flags. That's the singles book. The doubles book repeats the sentence and then footnotes, under its World Championship qualification rules, that Pro divisions end at the 55 to 59 age group, so if you race pro doubles and are older than that, check with the organizer before you plan a season around it.

There's a countervailing restriction for the World Championships: athletes 60 and above qualify via the Open Division only, and race Worlds using Open weights, reps and distances.

Doubles: the five-second rule was deleted, and the "ten seconds" you've read isn't real

This is the finding we'd most want you to have, because the widely-circulated version is wrong in both directions.

Last season's doubles rulebook contained an explicit definition: "'Remain together' is defined as being no more than five seconds apart at any time," along with the statement that "the automatic timing system continuously monitors partner proximity."

This season, that entire section is gone. Not amended, deleted: the five-second definition, the arm's-reach guidance, the described monitoring mechanism, and the dedicated penalty code, all removed.

What survives is the substance without the number. You must run each kilometre together, both partners must enter and leave every station together, running ahead draws a one-minute penalty, and more than three penalties means Out of Competition with no ranking.

Meanwhile, several published guides report that the permitted gap "drops to ten seconds as measured by Hyrox timing equipment." That figure appears nowhere in the 26/27 doubles rulebook. And it couldn't be a tightening even if it did: last season's threshold was five seconds, so ten would be a loosening. We can't tell you where the number came from. We can tell you not to plan around it.

→ Do this. Race to arm's reach, not to a number. That was last season's own best-practice line, and it's still the sensible target. The penalty and the three-strike ceiling are real and unchanged; the measurable definition is not published this season.

One genuinely new doubles rule: the resting partner must stay on their feet. Kneeling, sitting, lying down, or letting a knee or any body part touch the floor is not permitted, and they must stay inside the marked zone. The rulebook attaches no penalty duration to it, so we won't invent one. (The nine places doubles pairs win or lose time covers the rest of the doubles rulebook edges.)

What did not change

Almost everything physical. Every weight, distance, rep count and target height is identical to last season, across every division. Sled push 102/152/202kg including the sled. Sled pull 78/103/153kg. Farmers carry 2×16, 2×24, 2×32kg. Sandbag 10/20/30kg. Wall balls 4/6/9kg, 100 reps, targets at 2.70m and 3.00m. Mixed doubles still race the grey tier. (Every division's weights, side by side.)

Also unchanged, and worth re-reading because they're where ordinary races lose ordinary time:

• Two minutes for entering the roxzone through the OUT arch or leaving through the IN arch, and the same for exiting a station the wrong way. The arches are chip-detected, so there's nothing to argue. (The roxzone guide has the rest.)
• Chalk only at sled pull and farmers carry, event-provided only. Two minutes anywhere else, including powdered chalk at wall balls.
• Thirty seconds for kettlebells or a sandbag not returned correctly, waived entirely if you go back and fix it before leaving the roxzone. Very few athletes know this one.
• One warning per station at stations one through seven, then fifteen seconds per infringement, with a handful of flat no-warning codes on top. No warnings at wall balls.

And three things reported as new that simply are not: the sandbag lunge finish-line definition (word-identical to last season), the spitting penalty (already there, and it's two minutes or a DQ at the Race Director's discretion), and the chalk restrictions (same rules, better drafting).

How we checked this

We downloaded the official season 26/27 singles and doubles rulebooks and diffed them line by line against the season 25/26 versions. Everything above is quoted from those documents rather than from other coverage, which is how we found both the deleted doubles definition and the dropped both-shoulders requirement.

One trap worth flagging if you're checking for yourself: the URL on hyrox.com still titled 25_26_HYROX_RulebookSingles_EN.pdf now serves the 26/27 file. It's byte-identical to the current rulebook and its cover reads "Season 26/27". Anyone citing that link as last season's rules is quoting this season's.

The 26/27 PDFs carry no revision marker. If a revision lands mid-season, this post will be behind it, so check the current rulebook before race day. This post was re-checked against both seasons' English singles and doubles PDFs on September 4, 2026.

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