2026 USA Pan-Pacs Roster Still MIA, but Meet Expected to Run 4 Days Despite Inclusion of 50s

While we had hoped that the 2026 Pan-Pacific Championships Roster would have been released by now, as the Athlete Selection Procedure document states at the bottom of section 1.3.5 that “Those officially Selected to the Team will be announced on or before September 8, 2025”, meaning the announcement is now nearing a full four days past due (We have reached out to USA Swimming for an update, but at the time of publication, we have not heard back).

However, that said, we do have some updates on the 2026 Pan-Pacs meet as while never, explicitly confirmed in the selection procedure, the meet will contest the 50s of stroke. SwimSwam asked USA Swimming as to whether or not this decision was unilaterally made by the organization or in concert with the other Charter Nations (i.e., Australia, Canada, and Japan) and we were referred to the Pan Pacs Ops Manual, which states

• In 2010, the charter nations agreed to add the 50m Butterfly, 50m Backstroke and 50m Breaststroke to the event just for the 2010 championships.  The events did not count toward the team scores, although there was an awards ceremony for each of the events. In 2024 the Pan Pacific Charter Nations agreed to add the 50m stroke events into the program following their inclusion into the 2028 LA Olympic Games i.e. Men’s and Women’s 50m Butterfly, 50m Backstroke and 50m Breaststroke, they will now score points and be awarded medals.
• The event program was adapted from the previous Pan Pac Championships program (That has had some recent shift of events) and the 50m stroke events have been included based on their placement in the program from 2010.

From this information and from the 2026 Pan Pacific Event Summons, we have learned the swimming portion of the meet will run just four days, being held from Wednesday the 12th of August to Saturday the 15th, with the open water 10K to be held on Monday the 10th.

2026 Pan-Pacs Event Order and Schedule

Four day meets are not as unusual as one may expect as just recently, the 2025 USA Swimming Summer Championships, which were held in the same pool were contested over four days, as were the 2010 Pan-Pacs, a meet that saw the 50s of stroke being contested, albeit as non-medaling events.  In fact, the only difference from the 2010 event list to the 2026 list is the Mixed Medley relay, which is set to conclude the first evening session, meaning, that each finals session will be conclude with a relay.

While the 2010 Pan-Pacs schedule proves that the meet can be run over four days with the addition of the 50s, there is a worry about the condensed schedule affecting athletes potential line-ups. Pan-Pacs does not have a limit on the number of entrants allowed per nation meaning that for example any number of the US’ sprinters could enter the 100 free. While this doesn’t necessarily pose a problem and may in fact help alleviate some of the issues seen at the 2025 Summer Championships, which saw prelim sessions hovering around an hour in length, some swimmers like Regan Smith will have some very tough turnarounds. Smith, who made the US National team in seven events (50/100/200 Back, 50/100/200 Fly, and 200 IM), will likely swim both the 100 back and 200 fly on day one which are back to back, with the 50 fly kicking off the day. The 100 fly and 200 back are also back to back on day 3. While she may not swim all of the seven events, the schedule does mean having to make some tough decisions about what events she wishes to contest, especially as Summer McIntosh and Kaylee McKeown are expected to be competing in Irvine.

While we wait for the official US Pan-Pac Roster to be published, we have included our likely roster list below, which is takes into account Lilly King’s retirement (see * below), but as always there may be more retirements, yet unknown or other reasons for a swimmer to not accept a position on the team. All of math on the tiebreakers can be found here.