On November 15, the International Swimming Federation (FINA) announced via social media that the Acrobatic Routine was added to the Olympic Games programme as part of the team event for 2024.

The team medal should now be determined by combining the scores of the technical routine, free routine, and acrobatic routine. Artistic swimming will still only have two medal events at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris: women’s duet and team.

The Acrobatic Routine is a fairly new event in artistic swimming. Formerly named Highlight, it made its first appearance at the World Championships in 2019 and at the European Championships in 2021.

The event will see major changes in 2023 as a result of the new rules and scoring system. The difficulty score of this routine will only be based on acrobatics. Overall, acrobatics have been split into four main groups: Airborne, Balance, Combined, Platform. For the Acrobatic Routine, a total of seven acrobatics are required, and at least one from each of these groups must be featured. Teams are free to do any hybrids, but these will not count towards the difficulty score.

The addition of this event may lead to changes in the 2024 Olympic qualification process.

The new FINA rules aim to:

• Simplify the process, define roles and divide tasks
• Calculate the difficulty using mathematical values and formulas
• Obtain objective and detailed measurement using technology
• Introduce well-balanced routines: set number of hybrids and acrobatics for each routine according to discipline and age group
• Athletes and coaches make strategic decisions about program composition
• Provide athletes and coaches with more specific feedback about all aspects of their performances

We now have two panels: Elements & Artistic impression (Ten judges, six technical controllers)

We have moved to a 0.25 marking scale.

National Federations have access to a detailed acrobatic catalogue of:

• Classification of acrobatic movements
• Acrobatic groups and subgroups
• Components and special elements
• Values and algorithm for the calculation of the Degree of Difficulty
• Tables, catalogue and code system

We have introduced the Coaches Card where Coaches will indicate all the elements of their routines in their order of performance in advance of the competition.