A. Eligibility
1. The competition is open to any player in the world who fulfills the respective division prerequisites.
2. Registration
Pre-registration online is required.
Deadline to pre-register is:
October 17th for Open Division, October 10th for Artistic division.
Registration Form
3. Cost
Registration for the Open Division and the Artistic Showcase is free for ITSA members. If not a current full ITSA member, registration is $10 US dollars or equivalent.
4. Qualification
Open Division: Japanese players should have competed in the 2026 online contest. The winners of previous ITSA world contests (in-person and online) are exonerated of this requirement. International players are automatically qualified.
Artistic Division: Teams competing should either: 1) have competed on the 2026 online contest, or 2) send a video with at least 1.5 minute of the show they plan to perform. This will be used by the organizers to decide the order of the performances. The deadline is October 17th.

B. Divisions
1- Open freestyle (World Champion title)
2- Artistic Showcase Division
Players will be able too register to more than one division (just one registration fee).

C. Music
1. Players in the Open Division should provide a music track up to 3-minute long. Please, email an mp3 file to worlds2026@spintops.org. Deadline is October 20th for Open and October 17th for Artistic. Also bring music in person in a flash drive to the contest. The music should be appropriate for all audiences.
2. Artistic Showcase Division teams should coordinate their needs with the organizers.

D. Copyright and liability
1. The player grants ITSA the irrevocable and unlimited right, without compensation, to broadcast and use video of the performance, as well as photos taken during the contest, to promote the association goals.
2. The player acknowledges that this is a physical activity and as such involves the risk of injury and exonerates the organizers of liability for accidents that might occur during the contest.

E. Open Freestyle Rules
1. It consists of a freestyle to music with a duration of up to 3 minutes.
2. Any spinning top will be permitted, including fixed-tip, bearing-tip and one-way bearing tip, as well as over-sized tops. The number of spintops used or available for back-up is not limited, but if they exit the stage they cannot be used again. All tops used must be wound by the player, no assistance will be permitted.
3. The winner will be the 2026 ITSA World Spintop Champion.

F. Artistic Showcase Division
1. Teams from 1 to 4 players can participate.
2. The theme of the routine should have a clear relation to spintop play but this can be interpreted very creatively. There is no limit on props used.
3. The performance will consist of a routine between 3 and 7 minutes long.
4. The organizers will only provide the music system, basic lighting and, if requested, electricity, a table and up to 4 chairs. It’s the team’s responsibility to set up the stage with any props required and clean the stage afterwards. Setup and cleanup should not take more than 5 minutes each. Exceptions may be granted by coordinating with the organizers.
5. The performance should be appropriate for public of all ages.

G. Open Freestyle Judging
1. Routines will be given a technical score of up to 85 points and a performance score of up to 15 points.
2. The raw technical score will be calculated by adding the difficulty, originality and risk of each trick completed in the routine. It’s the judge decision if a combo trick qualifies as two tricks or one more difficult trick.
3. Each trick will typically score between 1 and 6 points. But because the scores of each individual judge will be normalized, it’s not important what scale the judges use, as long as they are consistent from player to player.
4. Repeated tricks are defined as the same trick performed at different times of the routine, with other tricks in between. Repeated tricks score 100% the first time they are performed, 50% the second time, and don’t score anymore. On the other hand, the same trick performed consecutively with no other tricks in between will not fall under this definition. These consecutive tricks can be considered a single more difficult trick where the repetitions might increase the score.
5. The raw technical scores of each judge will be normalized so the player that has the highest normalized score for that judge has 85 points. Therefore, the scores of the other players will be divided by the highest raw score and multiplied by 85.
6. The performance score will be divided into 3 different sub-scores, with up to 5 pts each (these are not normalized):
a) Musicality
This score is given for the routines which use music effectively and impressively. Just dancing with no spintop’s technique cannot get any musicality score.
0 point: just playing the music with no purpose
1 point: paying attention to the beginning and end of the music
2 points: doing tricks while hitting musical cues such as sound effects, beats, musical accents, etc. several times in addition to 1 point criteria
3 points: doing tricks with phrase several times in addition to 1 and 2 points criteria
4 points: doing tricks while hitting sound, beats, cues, phrase, etc. many times
5 points: doing tricks while hitting sound, beats, cues, phrase, etc. a lot of times
b) Control
This score is given for a well-controlled routine. The routine with control of tops, strings, line of string, trajectory of tops, even player’s body such as legs and arms.
0 point: just standing with no purpose
1 point: moving smoothly without tripping over player’s own feet
2 points: moving smoothly without the strings getting tangled up in addition to 1 point criteria
3 points: moving spintops and strings smoothly in addition to 1 and 2 points criteria
4 points: moving efficiently and effectively in addition to 1,2 and 3 points criteria
5 points: doing what a player have planned to do almost completely in addition to 1,2,3 and 4 points criteria
c) Showmanship
This score is given for the routines which attract to audience.
0 point: rough
1 point: attract positive attention to the player standing on the stage
2 points: using expression to try to express what the player wants to do on the stage in addition to 1 point criteria
3 points: would attract the audience to some parts of the routine in addition to 1 and 2 points criteria
4 points: the routine would attract many people in addition to 1, 2 and 3 points criteria
5 points: the routine would attract almost all people in addition to 1, 2, 3 and 4 points criteria

J. Artistic Showcase Judging
A. Guiding principle
The performance is centered on the top and should not be able to exist without it. It means in practice that if what a performer does on stage helps the audience understand the top-centred story, it counts as top-related, even when the top is not being manipulated at that moment. A dance that adds nothing to the top story, and could have been left out, is not credited. A further test for judges: if the remove the spinning top from this routine, how much of what they scored would survive? The more that survives, the lower the score.
B. The five criteria
1. Originality
New thinking in how the top is used — tricks, handling, props, staging, concept. This is not difficulty, and not novelty for its own sake. An idea counts here when it is something the audience has not seen done with a top before.
2. Composition & Coherence
Whether the routine is built around the top as its core, and whether it holds together from beginning to end: structure, pacing, transitions, a clear through-line. A sequence of unrelated good tricks scores low here.
3. Sound & Musicality
How the performance relates to what is heard. This includes music, but also silence and the sound of the top itself. A routine performed without a music track is not disadvantaged — it is judged on this same criterion, by what it does with sound.
4. Execution
Quality of the performance as delivered: control, cleanliness, confidence. Mistakes and drops are reflected here, inside the judge’s overall reading of the criterion. There is no fixed per-drop deduction.
5. Impact
The impression the routine leaves on those watching: memorability, emotional effect, presence, its entertainment value and its engagement with the audience. Expressive skill is judged here through its effect.
C. What is deliberately left out
Difficulty. It belongs to the Open division. A trick that is both hard and right for the routine already earns its reward through Originality, Composition and Execution.
D. Scoring and aggregation
Each judge scores each of the five criteria on a scale of 1 to 10, in whole points. Fractional values are not used.
Within each judge’s sheet, the five scores are summed and the competitors are ranked by that total. If two competitors have identical totals, that judge breaks the tie themselves before their ranking is submitted.
The final result is the average of the ranks across judges. The lowest average wins.
The judges will be briefed to use the whole scale from 1 to 10 as much as possible: a 10 does not require a Cirque du Soleil performance, and a 1 should be given where a routine really is poor in that criterion. This is important for breaking ties in ranking.
E. Ties
If two or more competitors have the same average rank, the tie is broken in this order:
1. The competitor with the higher total of all raw scores from all judges wins.
2. If those totals are equal, the competitor with the higher total Impact score wins. Impact is the criterion closest to the purpose of the division, since the point of a show is its effect on the audience.
3. If those are equal as well, a tie is recorded.
F. Judging panel
Seven or nine judges
The head judge should be an experienced spinning top player. The other judges need not be players, and need not be performers of any kind. Panels should therefore vary in age, gender and nationality, and should include people whose background is outside the spintop world.
G. Transparency
Per-criterion scores are published for all competitors after the event, together with the name of the judge who gave them. Judges are told before they accept the role that their scores will be published under their name.
H. Routine length
The routine must last between 3 and 7 minutes.
A routine that exceeds the maximum is stopped at the limit and evaluated only on the part performed. A routine shorter than the minimum is not penalized mechanically; the judges evaluate it as it stands, which will normally be reflected in Composition & Coherence.
I. Repeating routines
A routine that repeats the one the same competitor presented at the previous year’s contest is judged accordingly under Originality, where it is treated as an absence of new thinking. A routine the competitor has already used in that year’s online contest is still considered original.

K. Situations not covered by the rules
The Judging Panel will make decisions on situations not covered by these rules.