Swimming Australia recently revealed multiple changes to some of the nation’s biggest domestic competitions.
2026 Australian Age Championships
The 2026 Australian Age Championships, headed to the Gold Coast, will be extended by one day, now spanning April 11th to April 18th. The extension is due to the fact that all events for boys and girls aged 13 through 18 will be taking place in the same week of racing.
Additionally, following what Swimming Australia describes as ‘an in-depth review of current data, performance trends and athlete development needs’, the Age Championships reintroduces 13-year-old boys and 18-year-old girls age groups to the competition.
Gary Barclay, Executive GM High Performance Pathways, Coaching & Participation said: “Reintroducing 13-year-old boys and 18-year-old girls to the Australian Age Championships is about ensuring every young swimmer has the opportunity to stay motivated, stay in the sport, and reach their full potential.”
“It strengthens the national pathway, supports athlete development, and we foresee the changes keeping more swimmers engaged during those critical teenage years.”
You can read more about the expected benefits of the age group additions in Swimming Australia‘s release here.
2026 Australian Open
The 2026 Australian Open Championships will be renamed more concisely to the Australian Open.
The three-day competition is slated for April 6th through April 8th in the Gold Coast, now featuring A and B finals only. This means that the Age-specific finals have been removed.
Additionally, Swimming Australia revealed that the event will no longer be the Australian Long Course Championships event for swimmers. Instead, the Australian Long Course Championships will be recognized following Trials each year for able-bodied swimmers.
However, the Australian Open will still serve as the Australian Long Course Championships for multi-class swimmers as this event caters for the entire MC community (S1-S19), and not just the Para swimmers (S1-S14).
Great news all round! 🙌🏻 Now someone just needs to talk to Swimming QLD about their insane qualifying times lol
All good news! It was a mistake having different age groups for male/females at age nationals and it’s great to see the ‘age’ finals get taken out of OPEN nationals. It’s good to see some common sense has come to swimming Australia regarding the scheduling and organisation of events.
Good news!! Good riddance of those bizarre “age group” finals!!
definitely welcome changes, as the c finals always made this meet drag, and it was weird that national titles were not awarded at the biggest domestic competition.
sidenote, janelle pallister is moving to a victorian club
Pallister moving to Victoria is news I want to read about……..what club, do you know?
Poor Mel Marshall 😭😂 what is happening!
So going back to the way things were, with national champions recognised at trials.
It was an interesting experiment, and a long course national event before trials is great, but not awarding champions when half the top swimmers are missing.
The penultimate paragraph is weirdly written, does that mean they’re getting rid of the para events? Fingers crossed 🤞
3 days only for Opens?
Plus all the reasons they gave for including 13 year old boys again are so obvious! “Oh we’ve found that numbers of boys aged 14-16 swimming has dropped off”. Well who could have foreseen that Swimming Australia? Lol. When they can’t enter the main competition of the year then they find another sport.
Plus find a way to have medal ceremonies again! The kids deserve recognition. Shannon Rollason has been saying this for years.
Open has been reduced to 3 days because multi-class now has their own seperate meet held before opens instead of it being combined with open nationals, plus there’s no more age finals in opens so this frees up the timeline more
No multi class age is before open. Multi class open is during open