How could the NCAA Auto-Qualification Times Change Next Year – And What Would It Mean?

A huge thanks to Daniel Jimar for the data here

The Auto-Qualification times have been one of the biggest changes for the NCAA Championships this season. While the system for relays stayed relatively similar – the main differences being that you now need fewer invited swimmers to swim ‘B’ cut relays, provided you have at least one ‘A’ cut – the system for individual qualification has not.

• New NCAA Qualifying Procedure: How Swimmers/Divers/and Relays Qualify

Conference champions now qualify by hitting the Automatic Qualification time, which is set as the three-year-average of the 72nd-fastest time in the NCAA.

2026 NCAA Division 1 Qualifying Times

Individual Events

Currently, the process for determining the Automatic Qualification time for the 2026/27 season is the same as for the 2025/26 season. However, considering the NCAA changes for this season were only announced in October 2025, that does not necessarily mean that there will not be any more changes leading into next year.

One change could be to move the AQ time “upwards”, to be something like the three-year-average of the 50th- or 60th-fastest time in the NCAA.

For the men especially, such a change looks almost inevitable. The fact that the AQ time is set at the same rank for both men and women, while there are an additional 46 spots for swimmers at women’s NCAAs, results in a system here more than double the number of male swimmers (34) than female swimmers (16) have qualified through the new process who would not have done under the old one.

If the women’s AQ line is kept the same, a more comparative line for the men would be at #60.

235 (number of men’s swimmers) ÷ 281 (number of women’s swimmers) x 72 = 60.21

That would have resulted in the following times for this year, and for 2027. We’ve outlined how many conference champions were slower than the 2026 cutline in each event, and how many of those would not have hit the stiffer qualifying times.

*The 2025/26 season has one more meet (NCAAs), but as this will mainly involve swimmers already in the top-48/54/60/72 these times should not change much. 

If the men’s side were kept the same at #72 for next year, the times still end up a fair bit quicker although relatively few of this year’s conference champions would have fallen outside of them. For example, of the 10 conference champions who qualified via this route in the 50 free, only one (Daniel Laureyssens) was slower than the 2027 time of 19.34 and he would have qualified automatically in the 200 free regardless.

Men’s Cutlines Based On #72 (2026 & 2027)

Women’s Cutlines Based On #72 (2026 & 2027)

*Note that the AQ time cannot get slower than previous years. In practice these would remain the same for 2027 as for 2026.

If the line were moved up to line 60 for next year, the Auto-Qualification times would be as follows. The majority of the Auto-qualified swimmers slower than the 2026 cutline would still have made the meet.

Men’s Cutlines Based On #60 (2026 & 2027)

Total 2026 AQ swimmers out of the meet: 8

Women’s Cutlines Based On #60 (2026 & 2027)

Total 2026 AQ swimmers out of the meet: 5

However, there is potential for the cutline to shift up even further; one Power Four coach has said that they would be happy with the AQ time being set at the #45 time but could also live with it being set at #55. Tailoring these lines slightly to keep up our divisible-by-six mantra, here’s what the AQ times for this year and next year would look like if set based on the #54 time and the #48 time.

Men’s Cutlines Based On #54 (2026 & 2027)

Total 2026 AQ swimmers out of the meet: 13

Women’s Cutlines Based On #54 (2026 & 2027)

Total 2026 AQ swimmers out of the meet: 12

Interestingly, the women’s 200 IM QT for 2026 under this scenario would have been just 0.03 seconds slower than the actual cutline, and faster than the cutline would have been under the old qualification system.

Men’s Cutlines Based On #48 (2026 & 2027)

Total 2026 AQ swimmers out of the meet: 23

Women’s Cutlines Based On #48 (2026 & 2027)

Total 2026 AQ swimmers out of the meet: 14

*The QT time would have been faster than the cutline ended up being in the women’s 500 free. Deniz Ertan would have qualified as a time-based qualifier even though she did not hit the #54 QT.  

Although there are only six spots between the two, ten fewer swimmers would have made the meet through auto-qualification if the AQ was set at #48 than if it were set at #54 for the men.

The line chosen for next season should change for the men at a minimum, to reflect the differing number of spots available, but it may be that it moves up for both men and women. Even in that case, the men’s line going forward should be set at the women’s line multiplied by the ratio of spots available – 83%, or ⅚.

This seems to lend itself to one of two options:

• Women at line #72, men at line #60
• Women at line #60, men at line #50

A change to the AQ time would also affect the ‘bonus’ events that swimmers can enter. Currently, any qualified individual swimmers at NCAAs can additionally choose to swim events in which they are under the AQ time in. Making the AQ’s more difficult to hit would likely require a specific ‘bonus’ cut, set at something like the AQ + 1%. 

With the apparent “sweet spot” of 10-20 for the number of conference champion auto-qualifiers added who would not otherwise make the meet, the latter option seems the better of the two. Qualification would become tougher for those from mid-major conferences and there may be a more even distribution of auto-qualifiers across events, although that would not have been the case based on this season.

A key difference between the old, rankings-based system, and the new, time-based system is that the new one is reactive – if there is an historically fast event like the 50 free this year, the AQ times are already set and the auto-qualifiers can stack up.

There will inevitably be a review of the qualification changes this summer, as any new system would be subject to, but adaptation should be the mindset heading into that. The first auto-qualifier to score points, which may well come this year, will certainly change some opinions, but it would be a mistake to double down on the exact details of an imperfect system. Change is not necessarily a bad thing, but that goes both ways.