By Short Track Manager
The ISU has published Communication No. 2806, the rulebook for the 2026/27 Short Track World Tour, and it brings the biggest structural change the circuit has seen: a season-long team title to sit alongside the individual one.
Alongside the individual Crystal Globe, the ISU will crown Season Team Champions and award the ISU Short Track World Tour Team Crystal Globe Trophy. The communication states it plainly: "For the season 2026/27, there will be an Overall World Team Classification."
The scoring net is cast wide. A nation's total is built by adding the World Tour points from every individual result of every team member, across both the women's and men's categories, plus points from all relay races at all seven World Tour stops.
There are no drop scores. In the ISU's words, "all the points from all events will count" — every World Tour point a nation's skaters collect over the season feeds the team total. That is a meaningful difference from the individual classifications, which discard a skater's weakest results.
Here is the mechanic that will shape the season: in the team classification, relay results are worth three times their individual value.
| Rank | Individual | Relay | Rank | Individual | Relay |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 100 | 300 | 13 | 18 | 54 |
| 2 | 80 | 240 | 14 | 16 | 48 |
| 3 | 70 | 210 | 15 | 14 | 42 |
| 4 | 60 | 180 | 16 | 12 | 36 |
| 5 | 50 | 150 | 17 | 10 | 30 |
| 6 | 44 | 132 | 18 | 8 | 24 |
| 7 | 40 | 120 | 19 | 6 | 18 |
| 8 | 36 | 108 | 20 | 5 | 15 |
| 9 | 32 | 96 | 21 | 4 | 12 |
| 10 | 28 | 84 | 22 | 3 | 9 |
| 11 | 24 | 72 | 23 | 2 | 6 |
| 12 | 20 | 60 | 24 | 1 | 3 |
A single relay win is worth 300 points to a nation — the same as three individual victories. With three relay events on the programme at every stop (women's 3000m, men's 5000m, and the mixed 2000m), a nation that sweeps all three collects 900 points in a weekend before a single individual result is counted.
Expect relay line-ups to be taken seriously at every stop rather than saved for championships.
The individual side of the rulebook is structurally unchanged:
Ties are broken by most first places, then second places, then thirds. If two skaters finish with identical counting results, no further tie-break is applied: both are declared Season Champions and both receive a Crystal Globe.
Day 1 at each stop is the Qualifying Session. Days 2 and 3 pair a Repechage Session with the World Tour Session, and the distance split is fixed across all seven stops:
| Day 2 | Day 3 |
|---|---|
| Men's 500m | Mixed Team Relay 2000m |
| Women's 1000m | Women's 500m |
| Men's 1500m | Men's 1000m |
| Women's 3000m Relay | Women's 1500m |
| Men's 5000m Relay (semi-finals) | Men's 5000m Relay (final) |
Mixed Team Relay semi-finals may be raced outside the World Tour session. There are no warm-up sessions.
On entries, each ISU Member may enter a maximum of six competitors per category, with up to three per individual distance — rising to four if that Member has three skaters inside the world ranking top 40 for the distance when confirmed entries are made.
After every World Tour stop, updated Overall and Team classifications will be published and promoted, so both title races stay visible through the winter rather than resolving quietly in March. The award ceremony for the Crystal Globe winners takes place at the final stop in Tilburg, Netherlands, on February 14, 2027.
Prize money is awarded on the final World Tour classifications once all seven stops are complete, with amounts to be confirmed in a separate ISU communication.
One clarification worth making: the tripled relay points apply to ISU's team standings, not to Short Track Manager scoring. Your three relay slots still score on the standard ranking-points formula applied to the relay finishing rank — nothing in your roster maths changes. See the game guide for the full scoring rules.
What does change is the incentive facing the nations you draft from. If a federation is chasing the Team Crystal Globe, it has a reason to send its best relay quartets to all seven stops and to enter full squads rather than partial ones. Relay teams that were inconsistent across a season because their strongest skaters sat out a stop may prove steadier this year — which makes the relay slots a more predictable place to spend budget than they have been.
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