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2026 Australian Mountain Bike Orienteering Championships – BEGINS TOMORROW!

The 2026 Australian Mountain Bike Orienteering Championship is from Thursday 8 October to Sunday 11 October 2026 in Ballarat & Creswick, Victoria.

The final bullet is out now! Read here: FINAL BULLETIN

Event schedule for Thu-Sun Oct 8-11 with times, events, and locations (Ballarat, Creswick, Melbourne) and a route map from Ballarat to Melbourne behind the schedule.

WORLD RANKING EVENTS (WRE)

The Middle Distance and Long Distance Australian Championship events have been approved by the IOF as World Ranking Events. This means that riders in M21 and W21 are eligible to earn points in the MTBO World Ranking list. To enter the WRE and earn world ranking points, you must have an IOF ID and provide it in Eventor as part of your entry for each WRE event. If you don’t have an IOF ID you can get one by creating an IOF Eventor Account.

WORLD MASTERS SERIES (WMS)

The Middle and Long events will be the first two scoring races in the 2027 World Masters MTBO Series. The WMS is scored in 5 year age classes from M/W35 up, so despite the Aus Champs events having 10 year classes, the WMS is scored for results in each 5 year age category.

AUSTRALIA-NEW ZEALAND MTBO CHALLENGE

These championships will also see keen competition between selected riders from Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand being the visiting country, has nominated W21, W40, W50, W60, M21, M40, M50, M60 and M70 as the classes to be contested. The times for the best two of the three selected riders from each country are totalled after each event to see which country won that class. The total class wins are scored over the championships program to find the winning country. After 13 challenges since 2003, New Zealand has 9 wins to Australia’s 4. Come on Aussies!

The ANZ MTBO Challenge rules can be found here.

NATIONAL MTBO SERIES

These events comprise the second round of the 2026 National MTBO Series for Junior, Senior and Masters classes. More information on the series here.

Points are awarded to individuals in each class (30 for first, 27 for second, 24 for third, down to 1 for 25th) over this year’s designated races. The best 5 accumulated points count for final individual result in each class. The person with the highest point total is the National MTBO Series champion in that age class.

The other rounds of this year’s series are:

QLD MTBO Championships 19-20 September
ACT & NSW MTBO Championships 17-18 October

CHAMPION STATE PLAQUE

A hotly contested annual competition to find the most successful state at the Australian MTBO Championships. Scored from the results of Australian riders in age classes M/W 14 to 80 at the four championships events – 5 points for first place, 3 points for second, 1 point for third. These points are summed for each state that riders are from to find the Champion State winner.

For more information, visit the carnival website: 2026 Australian Mountain Bike Orienteering Championships.

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Elizabeth L

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