Gym Wheel Code of Points 2026

Dear Wheel Gymnastics Community,

We are happy to announce the publication of the updated Gym Wheel Code of Points that will come into effect in January 2026.

There are four new documents:

We have also prepared a Deductions Overview with a summary of all neutral and execution deductions gathered together in one place for ease of use during competition.

Following the 2024 World Championships in Almere, we received a lot of feedback regarding inconsistencies, loopholes and other challenges associated with the Code of Points. Due to compounding circumstances leading to a delayed completion of the last update, it was not possible to include all the planned changes in the previous update. With this new update, we will implement many of these changes, including ones requested in the feedback received after the 2024 championships.

You will find a summary of the most significant changes below, but please refer to the full version of the Gym Wheel Code of Points 2026 for a complete overview.

General Regulations

In particular, deductions for incorrect positioning of coach and wheel will be moved to neutral deductions.

Furthermore, to reduce the mounting pressure on the head judge, it is no longer required for a head judge to have a fully fledged execution score for each gymnast. An estimate should be enough for an experienced head judge to lead a judges’ meeting. We trust that between four execution judges and the estimate of an experienced head judge, the execution score will continue to be judged fairly.

Finally, after noticing that many gymnasts performing a free-fly in straight position in spiral do not have their feet in the correct position, we have introduced a dedicated execution deduction for incorrect foot positioning when performing elements in a straight position in bindings. We hope that this will increase the focus on correct feet and body positioning in straight positions:

New neutral deductions for incorrect positioning of coach and wheel (moved from execution deductions)
The head judge should have an estimate instead of a full execution score for each routine (e.g. relative to the prior routines).
New execution deduction: Feet not parallel in straight positions in bindings

Straight-Line with music:

The categories for the evaluation of Artistic Impression have proven to be generally helpful and mostly intuitive, but also a bit confusing. In particular, there was an inconsistency between imposing fixed deductions for the first category “Technical quality of the music”, while awarding points in the other categories. It was also difficult to understand why some categories should be worth 1 point while others were worth 2 points.

As a result of the above, where feedback after the 2024 World Championships was largely in line with our own ideas, we have decided to move the category “Technical quality of the music” to the neutral deductions overseen by the head judge. Furthermore, we have consolidated three of the other categories into two, so that we now have 5 categories worth up to 2 points each.

New neutral deductions for technical quality of the music (moved from Artistic Impression)
5 consolidated categories for Artistic Impression (max. 2 points each)

Spiral:

To bring the recognition of changes into line with the general rules for repetition, changes will no longer lead to repetition if they have different difficulty values. We have also added transitions to the exception on repetition of moves, meaning they are counted similarly to changes.

Moving on to counting units of difficulty in big spiral, a move will now only be counted if the gymnast has completed more than ¾ of the second wheel rotation instead of more than ¾ of the move. This is to prevent difficulty from being counted if the second wheel rotation is only shown half-way.

Furthermore, a number of new elements have been added to the difficulty catalogue.

Difficulty skills in big spiral will only be recognised by the difficulty judges if the gymnast has completed more than ¾ of the second wheel rotation.
Changes will not lead to repetition if they have different difficulty values.
Performing different transitions with their own difficulty values will not lead to repetition, even if the accompanying wheel rotations are the same.
The SPI difficulty catalogue has been updated with new elements and re-evaluation of some existing elements.

Vault:

In vault, a neutral deduction has been added for incorrect positioning on the part of the coach, similar to the deductions made for a coach stepping into the competition area in straight-line or spiral.

New neutral deduction: Coach standing on the landing mat
New vaults have been added to the VLT difficulty catalogue, while the difficulties of some existing vaults have been modified accordingly.

Appendix:

The principles of body positioning were moved from the Straight-Line (STL) Appendix to a General Appendix, since they do not apply only to straight-line routines. After various discussions about standing swings and the beginning of a straight-line routine, this part of the Appendix was clarified. We are aware that the information on and definition of standing swings is still hard to read and understand, and we will be working on this more in the future.