2026 – Newsletter 2

Welcome to our second newsletter for 2026!

2026 National Championships – An update on venue and dates

We are close to confirming a venue and location for the 2026 NZCAF National Championships.

Our preferred location is Dunedin, as the event hasn’t been held there for a number of years, and the last time it was in Dunedin it was impacted by COVID-19 restrictions. We feel it’s important to rotate the event around the regions, to give athletes and their supporters the benefits of a ‘local’ championships e.g. reduced travel, ease of attendance etc.

However, finding a suitable, affordable, and available venue in Dunedin for our traditional weekend is proving challenging. We have a team looking in to options, and hope to have something confirmed in a fortnight.

With the options we are exploring, there are two potential changes which we may need to make:

1. We may need to move the event to be a week earlier.
   Our traditional weekend is the last weekend of term three (19-20 September). Venue availability may mean we need to move the event to be a week earlier ; 12-13 September.
2. We may need to run over 3 days (Friday, Saturday, Sunday).
   Our event has grown to mean we can’t run all categories, on one stage, in two days. In 2025, we were able to operate to performance spaces on Saturday morning. If we can not find a venue which accommodates this, we may need to run some categories on Friday.

Updates to Technical Regulations Released

The technical committee has completed updates to the Technical Regulations. These are available now on the website https://nzcaf.com/technical-regulations/
In the coming weeks, the technical committee intends to release a summary of the changes. This will be shared on our Facebook page when available.

A huge thank you to the technical committee for the hours of work they’ve put in to developing these updates.

Updates to Competition Rules & Guidelines Released

The executive committee has updated our Competition Rules & Guidelines. These are available now on the website https://nzcaf.com/technical-regulations/

This is the largest update to this document in a number of years. Please make sure you are familiar with the changes, and the document in general, prior to the competition season starting.