2026 National Team Program Policy Released
COLORADO SPRINGS—USA Weightlifting today released the 2026 National Team Program (NTP) Policy which details all aspects related to athlete eligibility and participation in the NTP. The NTP is designed to support the most competitive athletes at the senior international level while simultaneously developing a strong pipeline of promising athletes for the future. Many aspects of the 2026 policy were overhauled from last year’s version of the program, but those policy updates and revisions do not fundamentally change the mission of the NTP. They materially improve how the program is administered and enforced.
2026 National Team Program Policy
Key policy updates for 2026 include:
- An increase in USOPC Direct Athlete Support (DAS) from $1,000 per month to $1,500 per month for the top-three Gold-level athletes in each gender.
- The Introduction of Sporting Age to replace informal reliance on USAW membership age. This gives consistency across Bronze-level eligibility, Developmental rankings, and age-group carryover logic.
- Competition funding is reserved for the highest levels of the yearly competition calendar (Youth, Junior and Senior IWF World Championships and Senior Pan American Weightlifting Federation (PAWF) Championships).
- Clearly defined instances of noncompliance and cure timelines for various violations.
- Shift in tone and governance toward fewer discretionary clauses, more operational certainty, and clear expectations for athletes and coaches
“2026 marks the second year of the USA Weightlifting National Team Program, and we are excited for what this upcoming year holds,” Mike Gattone, Senior Director of Sport Performance, said. “In updating the program, we leaned hard into what has helped our athletes in delivering historic results—solid athlete support funding, performance services, and competition support—while creating a sense of team and accountability throughout the year. We are continuing to build a network of communication that allows us to plan performance with our amazing personal coaches, serve athletes through all periods of the year, and prepare our best athletes for Los Angeles and Brisbane.”
Period 1 of the 2026 National Team Program runs Jan. 1-June 30, 2026, and the Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Developmental rankings for Period 1 are based on results from the Jan. 1, 2025-Dec. 31, 2025 qualifying period. Period 2 runs July 1-Dec. 31-2026 and those rankings will be based on results from the July 1,2025-June 30, 2026 qualifying period.
Some aspects of the 2026 NTP policy will naturally bring forth question on how USA Weightlifting plans to manage the LA2028 Olympic qualifying cycle. The International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) has not yet announced the qualification process for LA28, and we need to see those details before we can comment on how we plan to support our athletes throughout the qualification cycle. Upon the release of the qualifying procedures, we’ll work diligently to define policies that help our athletes navigate what we expect to be a challenging qualifying process as they prepare to represent the United States in Los Angeles.
