2026 Championships · Lakeland · October 3-4

A Look at the 2026 Playoff and Championship Match Formats

Each round of the 2026 United Grid League playoffs uses a different match format, which is the set of movements that make up the races in a match. The conference semifinals on Saturday, October 3, use Ascend. The conference finals on Sunday morning use Rope Swing, and the championship match at 4:00 p.m. Sunday uses Roll Up. All five matches are at the RP Funding Center in Lakeland, Florida.

Grid League is a coed team sport played as a series of head-to-head races on the Grid, an 80-foot floor with two parallel lanes. Every match runs the same lineup of races, from Partner Forward to the closing Sprint Relay, and the race rules and scoring stay the same from match to match. The format sets the movements inside each race.

All three playoff formats ran during the 2025 regular season, and none of them has been raced in 2026. The New York Wolves, in their first season, have never raced any of the three as a team.

The Playoff Schedule

Six teams qualified, three from each conference. The top seed in each conference earned a bye to Sunday, so the New York Wolves and Houston Bandits start their postseason in Rope Swing and do not race Ascend. A team that plays on Saturday has to win Ascend, Rope Swing and Roll Up to take the title.

Ascend: Saturday Conference Semifinals

Ascend puts heavy barbells on the Grid from the first race. In Partner Forward, one man and one woman alternate cleans and dumbbell thrusters for 8, 6, 4 and 2 reps, and the weight goes up as the reps come down. The final clean bar weighs 265 pounds for men and 165 for women, and the final dumbbells weigh 70 and 50 pounds. In Mirror, three men and three women share two barbells for 40 front squats at 255 and 170 pounds, and if a bar touches the Grid the whole group goes back to the start.

The Echo race, in which one man and one woman work one at a time, includes the handstand complex. Each rep is two shoulder taps, a full 360-degree turn on the hands and a freestanding handstand push-up, and if anything other than the hands touches the Grid, the rep starts over. Echo also calls for 30 barbell thrusters for men or front squats for women at 155 pounds, 15 ring muscle-ups and 15 flips of a 300-pound sled.

Jack and Jill, a race for one man and one woman, is all rope climbing. The pair completes 15 rope climbs, 10 legless rope climbs and 3 L-sit rope climbs. An L-sit rope climb starts from a seated position with the legs held straight out, and the player climbs with the arms alone. The Sprint Relay closes the match and pays 3 points to the winner. Each player takes one element, and the elements include 12 snatches at 165 pounds and 3 clusters at 250 pounds.

Rope Swing: Sunday Conference Finals

Rope Swing has the heaviest barbell squat of the weekend. Mirror gives three men and three women 2 minutes and 30 seconds to finish 40 back squats at 315 pounds for men and 210 for women, shared across two barbells. Partner Forward pairs thrusters at 185 pounds for men and 125 for women with a heavy jump rope, 2 inches thick for men and 1.5 inches for women, over 4, 6, 8 and 10 reps.

In the Echo race, players lift a 75-pound sandbag over a wall set at 6 feet 1 inch, and then the men go over the wall while the women crawl through the 19-inch gap underneath it. Echo also includes 8 aerials, which are cartwheels done without the hands touching the Grid, and 3 ring hang to handstands, in which the player swings from a hang into a handstand on top of the rings. New for 2026, the sled work in Echo is a single sled pull.

Both Triads, one for three women and one for three men, are raced in weighted vests of 14 pounds for women and 20 for men. The three players in a Triad work at separate stations and switch together, and their synchro burpee box jumps count only when all three are on top of the box at the same time. Jack and Jill brings 20 pullovers, 10 L-sit to handstands on parallettes and 5 rope climbs from an L-sit with a medicine ball held between the legs. The Sprint Relay includes 7 bar muscle-ups and 4 deadlifts at 330 pounds.

Roll Up: The Championship

The championship match uses Roll Up, and its Ladder is heavier for 2026. The Ladder is a four-minute race for all ten active players through a series of barbells that climb in weight, and the league raised the thruster weights this year. Men’s thrusters now run 225, 245, 265 and 285 pounds, and women’s run 145, 160, 175 and 190.

Partner Forward pairs double kettlebell ground to overhead with pistol stick jump-overs over 9, 7, 5 and 3 reps. The kettlebells climb to two 70-pound bells for men and two 53-pound bells for women. A pistol stick jump-over is a one-legged squat followed by a jump over a stick on the same leg, and the stick rises to 18 inches for men and 15 for women. Mirror follows with 28 hang snatches at 175 pounds for men and 115 for women.

Roll Up’s Jack and Jill asks one man and one woman for 30 bar muscle-ups, 20 ring muscle-ups and 5 backward rolls to support. A backward roll to support is a full backward rotation under the rings that finishes with the player held up on top of them. The championship Sprint Relay includes 3 cleans at 315 pounds and 4 back uprises to forward roll, in which the player swings up to the top of the rings, rolls forward through a full rotation and finishes back on top.

What Changed for 2026

The 2026 playoffs expanded to six teams, three per conference, and gave each conference’s top seed a bye. The league explained the expanded playoff and its seeding tiebreaker in June. Ascend, Rope Swing and Roll Up also moved from the regular season to the postseason, and two of the three formats changed.

Each format also has its own list of Ringer Point Race options. A Ringer Point Race is a short race in which each team sends one player. Two options are new for 2026. Rope Swing’s list adds a single heavy snatch at 275 pounds for men and 190 for women, and Ascend’s list adds a heavy sandbag carry at 200 and 150 pounds.

More on These Formats

The 2025 format posts lay out each format’s races in diagrams, and the player performance posts cover the top individual results from earlier seasons.

For how match formats work and how they got their current names, read Grid League Unveils Exciting Updates To Match Formats for 2023 Season.

Up Next

The 2026 Grid League Championships run Saturday, October 3, and Sunday, October 4, at the RP Funding Center in Lakeland, and the Master Pass covers both days of matches for $39.

Have a question? Email us at staff@unitedgridleague.com