Nationals 2026 planning is underway. The event is being brought to you by the Orienteering Hutt Valley, Orienteering Wellington, Red Kiwis, and the Wairarapa Orienteering Club, with Orienteering Wellington as the leading the organisation.
The weekend will contain the usual Sprint, Middle, Long, and Relay events. All will be based in the Wairarapa, with new maps projected for the Middle and Long events. 

Sprint – Friday, 3 April: Rathkeale College, Masterton. An old favourite not used for several years. A school campus in a park-like setting. Rathkeale is a little north of Masterton.

Middle – Saturday 4 April: Rewanui Forest Park. A new map, Rewanui. Rewanui Forest Park has a mix of mostly pine plantation, some open farmland and a light scattering of rock features. The forest has steep and thick sections to challenge route choices – although we will be planning not to force you through the most “fun” parts of the map!  

Long – Sunday 5 April: Coonoor. A new map, Coonoor. This is a mostly open farmland map with rock features and a lot of sunken features. We hope this will become a new favourite! Coonoor is about 40 minutes east of Paihatua, 90 minutes north of Masterton, or about 80 minutes from Palmerston North across the new Tararua Highway. If searching on maps, check the spelling with 4 ‘oooo’s in the name. Google maps annotates it as being in the Manawatū-Whanganui region, the event centre will be north of where Google maps drops a pin on Coonoor Road.

Relay –  Monday 6 April: Wairarapa farmland. This will be on fast and open farmland terrain, again with a scattering of rock features and enough interesting contour detail and native bush to keep you guessing. There will be lots of opportunities for forked legs, so you’ll have to keep your wits about you and navigate with accuracy..
As ever at this stage of organisation, there is potential that final details may change from what we anticipate now, but if there is a need to make a change, we will work hard to keep all events within the region.