Category: Events

2026 Deschutes Daze Event Recap

August 6-9, 2026

Host: Columbia River Orienteering Club (CROC)

Four events over four days, with one NRE and the annual Western States Orienteering Championships.

This year’s Deschutes Daze was impacted by wildfires and associated smoke in the area, with several venue changes. The event was able to take place, with four days of orienteering made possible by some last-minute course setting heroism on the part of the organizers!

Event website

Photos by Robert Rodriguez

Results, Maps, and Photos

2026 World Orienteering Championships Recap

July 7-11, 2026

This year’s the World Orienteering Championships took place in Genova, Italy. As a Sprint WOC, the schedule consisted entirely of urban sprint discipline races: Sprint, Knock-out Sprint, and Mixed Sprint Relay.

Top photo by Alexis Leonard. Remaining photos by Evalin Brautigam and Alexis Leonard.

Meet the team on the US Team blog!

Photos from all events from Alexis Leonard

2026 Junior World Orienteering Championships Recap

June 29-July 4, 2026

The US sent a full team of six young men and six young women to this year’s Junior World Orienteering Championships, which took place in Karlskrona, Sweden.

Read all about the event from the athletes’ perspective in the US Orienteering Team’s blog.

Sprint and Sprint Relay

All photos by Evalin Brautigam

The 2026 JWOC competition week kicked off with the Sprint competition in Trossö, the historic centre of Karlskrona. The courses proved challenging, as the organizers used artificial barriers to make selecting a route a little bit tricker.

The Mixed Sprint Relay is a race between teams of four athletes–two women and two men—in a fast, head-to-head competition with a total winning time of under one hour. The top US team was USA 2, with Sophie Howes, Mori Finlayson-Johnecheck, Mikhail Biryukov, and Anna Green, coming in 48th.

Long and Middle

The individual forest races took place in typical western Swedish terrain, which is to say that it was pretty tough! The women faced a 9.9 km course and the men a 12.6 km course, and the transition from sprint the day before to a long day in the forest was a challenging one for many.

Relay

The final race of 2026 JWOC was the forest relay, which consists of teams of three men and three women, racing separately. The best US women’s team finished 24th , while the best US men’s Team finished 21st.

2026 Pacific Northwest Orienteering Festival Event Recap

June 12-21, 2026

Photos by Robert Rodriguez, Amy Winston and John Crowther

Results, Maps, and Photos

46th Annual West Point NRE Event Recap

April 18-19, 2026

Organizer: US Military Academy Orienteering Club (USMAOC)

Saturday venue: Camp Buckner / Round Pond

Sunday venue: Round Pond / Black Rock Forest

Each year the cadets from the USMA Orienteering Team host an NRE weekend, inviting civilians from all over to enjoy (or curse) the hilly, rocky, and navigationally challenging terrain in the Hudson Highlands. This year’s event didn’t disappoint, with beautiful weather on Saturday and cold, chilly rain on Sunday to provide an extra challenge.

Photos by Griffin DeFoor, Ann MacMullan, and Tori Campbell

Results and Maps

Junior Nationals and Flying Pig XXVIII Event Recap

April 10-12, 2026

This year’s edition of the Flying Pig orienteering weekend was also host to Junior Nationals, where young orienteers competed in Interscholastic, Intercollegiate, and JROTC competitions.

  • Venues: Hueston Woods State Park (OH) and Mounds State Recreation Area (IN)

Team Champions

Teams of three to five athletes from each school earned points based on their results in Saturday and Sunday’s competition. This year there are several familiar names at the top of the lists, with the University of Montana taking back the IC Varsity trophy from USMAOC. The Interscholastic competition was once again dominated by the orienteers from Tahoma, in Washington state.

Congratulations to the champions from each school in the Interscholastic and Intercollegiate competitions!

  • Intercollegiate Varsity: University of Montana
  • Intercollegiate Junior Varsity: USMAOC
  • School Varsity: Tahoma
  • School Junior Varsity: Tahoma
  • School Intermediate: Summit Trail
  • Club Mixed: Evergreen Orienteers

For complete team results, including JROTC competitions, see here.

Results, Maps, and Photos

Team results for the Interscholastic and Intercollegiate competitions.

  • Friday Middle at Hueston Woods
  • Saturday Classic at Mounds State Recreation Area
  • Sunday Classic at Mounds State Recreation Area

All photos in this post by Jeanette Dunlap. More photos by Jeanette.

Photos from Mike Minium

Photos from OCIN.

Vancouver Sprint Camp Event Recap

March 13-15, 2026

The Vancouver Sprint Camp is a fast and furious weekend of sprint racing and training, gathering many of North America’s best orienteers in one place. Many Americans, especially those on the West Coast, make the trip over the border to British Columbia to get a heavy dose head-to-head racing with their Canadian friends and rivals.

This year’s edition included a Sprint WRE and Knockout Sprint WRE, in addition to training sessions.

Organizers: Greater Vancouver Orienteering Club (GVOC)

Event Site

All photos in this post are by Robert Rodriguez.

Results, Maps, and Photos

2026 Nationals Event Recap

March 19-22, 2026

This year’s Sprint, Middle, and Long Championships took place in Maryland in a great variety of terrain that provided orienteers with different challenges each day!

  • Host: Quantico Orienteering Club
  • Venue:
    • University of Maryland (Sprint), College Park, MD (Sprint)
    • Bowie State University, Bowie, MD (Middle)
    • Bacon Ridge Natural Area, Crownsville, MD (Long)
  • Personnel
    • Event Director: Don Fish
    • Registrar and timing: Valerie Meyer
    • Course Designers: Jon Torrance (Sprint), Mihai Sirbu (Middle), Ted Good (Long)

Event website

Results & Maps

Closing Remarks

In a world where it seems like there are many outside pressures and significant disagreement about just about everything, I truly appreciated the positive, joyful vibe of our community coming together this weekend.

The weekend was full of wonderful moments:

  • The smiles on people’s faces as they reconnected with friends from across the country and around the world.
  • The opportunity to hang around together in the arena and enjoy each other’s company.
  • The top-notch competition and event support.
  • The participation of a robust and mutually-supportive group of JWOC- and WUOC-hopeful team trialers.
  • The inspiration of so many sidebars with people taking steps to move our sport forward.

We come from many backgrounds, but our shared love of the sport makes orienteering events truly special. Thank you to QOC for hosting us and to the many volunteers that made this event possible. We appreciate you!

– OUSA President Tori Campbell

Media

All photos in this post are by Jeanette Dunlap.

Online Course Review for 2026 Nationals

As is now tradition, there will be an online course review of select legs from this past weekend’s US Sprint, Middle, and Long Championships this Wednesday evening at 9pm ET. The session will be hosted by Peter Gagarin and Caroline Sandbo, who will use Livelox and their own expertise to discuss different route choices, the difficulties runners faced, and how best to approach some of the legs that gave people trouble. This is worth attending whether or not you competed at Nationals!

Join the meeting on Google Meet at 9pm ET on Wednesday, March 25th.

If you have suggestions for particular legs you’d like to see discussed, please email caroline.sandbo@nullorienteeringusa.org.