Just a few days to go until the start of the TrailBlaze National Orienteering League for 2025. Both the Forest and Sprint leagues kick off this weekend at the Oceania Orienteering NZ Championships with the Sprint, Middle, and Long events scoring points for the overall competitions. It’s also great to have TrailBlaze back as the naming sponsor of the competition!
There is some important information below regarding the competition that you need to be aware of, including some changes to the format from last year.

1. Direct selection for World Cup 2026
For 2025 the Trailblaze National Orienteering League will offer a direct selection pathway to the 2026 Orienteering World Cup. The Top 3 male and female athletes in the NOL and NSL standings at the end of the season will be offered direct selection for the New Zealand team at the respective 2026 World Cup Rounds.
For the NSL this is World Cup #1 (24-26 April – Switzerland) and World Cup #2 (27-31 May – Sweden), for the NOL this is World Cup #3 (13-16 August – Czechia) and World Cup #4 (24-27 September – Lithuania). Note that this selection is dependent on IOF keeping the 2025 World Cup team quotas in 2026 and athletes meeting the usual eligibility criteria.

2. Best scores count
Your best 6 of 8 scores count in the NOL, and best 4 of 5 count in the NSL. This means you can skip any single round (except NZOC) and still receive full points in both the NOL and NSL.

3. Regional team captains
We now have the following team captains for each region. Please get in touch with your captain if you have a question about racing in the NOL or NSL, or want to discuss training or travel.
Northern Knights – Neill McGowan
Central Scorchers – Lizzie Ingham
Southerly Storm – Joseph Lynch

4. Regional allegiances
Your team is based on your region, for 2025 you must be either a member or associate member of your selected region to be eligible to run for them. If you are a member of clubs in multiple regions it is your choice which team to be part of. You must stay in the same team for the whole season. See the spreadsheet in the comments below to check and/or change your team for 2025.

5. Regional points changes
The scoring system for the regional competition has been tweaked for 2025. Under the new system, team’s scores will be the average score of their Top 4 runners for national level races (Oceania, NZOC, KBD) and Top 3 for the travelling teams at regional level races (Southern, Northern, Central Champs etc.). The Home team will still be Top 4 for the regional round. For 2025 this only affects Round 2 at Waikaia where the Southerly Storm’s score will be based on Top 4 runners, and Northern Knights and Central Scorchers scores will be based on Top 3. The Men’s and Women’s average will added together to give the the teams total score for that round.

The NZOC Relay will also be used as a scoring event, with the top club from each region counting as the regional team. The winning region will receive 100 points, second 60 points, and third 40 points.
I hope you are as excited as I am for a huge year of orienteering for New Zealand. Hosting 9 World Ranking Events (WRE) plus the possibility of over 50 kiwis racing in representative teams in Europe, 2025 is going to be one to remember!

See the current NOL/ NSLpoints here