The U.S. figure skating championships help select the 16 athletes who will represent Team USA at the 2026 Winter Olympics.
Selection for the Olympic team is based on a skater’s body of work over the past two seasons, not just their performance at the national championships.
Ilia Malinin and Amber Glenn are considered strong contenders for the Olympic team in the men’s and women’s singles events.
Veteran Jason Brown is likely to secure a spot, while the final men’s position is expected to be a contest between Andrew Torgashev and Max Naumov.
The U.S. figure skating championships can best be described as the final, dramatic step in the selection of the 16 skaters who will represent the country at the 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Milan, Italy.
Three men and three women singles skaters will be chosen, as will three ice dance teams and two pairs, 16 athletes in all. This very well could be the greatest U.S. figure skating team in history, with a fighting chance to win four of the five gold medals that will be given out in Italy. The previous best performances? Two golds each, all the way back at the 1956 and again at the 1960 Olympics, when there were only three figure skating events.
Over the next few days, there will be a lot of conversation about what’s at stake at the U.S. Olympic figure skating trials in St. Louis. The only problem is that the competition isn’t exactly an Olympic trials.
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We actually already know who some of the U.S. skaters will be at the Olympics. Let’s focus on the two singles categories, men and women.
Ilia Malinin and how US figure skating team is picked for Olympics
Two-time world champion and three-time national champion Ilia Malinin could fall five times at this week’s national championships and still make the Olympic team. That said, he won’t fall five times. He probably won’t fall at all. He is the self-proclaimed “Quad God,” the 21-year-old jumping dynamo from the Washington, D.C., suburbs who landed a record seven quadruple jumps in his long program at last month’s Grand Prix Final.
But were he to stumble, it won’t matter in terms of his Olympic berth; U.S. Figure Skating, like some other national governing bodies, does not use the familiar and strict placements of timed sports like swimming and track and field to pick its Olympic team. It’s not just about finishing in the top three. That’s helpful, but not the whole story. The USFS selection process includes past performances, focusing on the athlete’s body of work over the past two seasons. This isn’t cheating, or unfair. It’s often a smart way to pick an Olympic team.
But it can trigger some controversy. Four years ago, Malinin finished second in the men’s event at the U.S. nationals but was passed over for the Olympic team in favor of a more veteran skater. Giving a prodigy like Malinin Olympic experience at age 17 would have been a great gift for the youngster, but USFS chose a different path.
Now, four years later, the stakes are still high for Malinin as the pressure builds to Milan.
“Specifically in this year, being an Olympic year, I really don’t want to take any unnecessary risk, especially with me just having new skates right now,” he said, referring to the ritual of breaking in a new pair of skates for the rest of the season. “So I’m really trying to play it a little more safe and just think ahead for the Olympics, how I want to put myself at 100 percent for the Olympics.”
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Jason Brown’s Olympic chances
Veteran Jason Brown, 31, a magnificent stylist on the ice and trusted veteran of two previous Olympic teams (he was the skater chosen to go to the 2022 Olympics instead of Malinin), very likely will make the team unless he performs poorly at the nationals, but the third men’s spot is wide open.
Which US figure skater will nab final spot on men’s side?
Two 24-year-old skaters — Andrew Torgashev and Max Naumov — will likely vie for it. Torgashev finished second at last year’s national championships and third in 2023. Naumov finished fourth at the last three nationals.
But Naumov’s skating story took an awful turn when his parents, who also were his coaches, were killed in the mid-air collision over Washington Jan. 29, 2025, as they were returning home from the nationals. For months, Naumov was uncertain if he wanted to keep competing, but he ultimately returned to the sport. If he makes the U.S. team, there will be no more sentimental or emotional moment in this Olympic season.
Amber Glenn’s particularly meaningful US figure skating championships
In the women’s event, for Amber Glenn, the two-time defending women’s national champion, a spot on the Olympic team is all but certain, yet because she has had trouble putting together clean programs at key moments, this nationals is especially meaningful. At 26, the age by which some skating stars have long since retired, it would be her first Winter Games.
“I have to remind myself that my path has been so different that it’s going to be my story, which I’m writing right now, because of course my head automatically goes to this dream, standing in the Kiss and Cry: ‘Yes, I did it. I won nationals, and I’m going to the Olympics!’” Glenn said.
“Those are dream moments that I never thought I would experience. … And I have to remind myself, ‘Hey, you do what you need to do.’ I want to go out and have two performances that I enjoy and that I’m proud of, and wherever that lands me, I know that I feel good and that I’m happy about it, and I know if I do my job, then I will more than likely end up being in Milan, and that is more than I ever thought I could accomplish.”
There’s nothing wrong with not winning a national title in the Olympic year. In 2002, Sarah Hughes finished third behind perennial national champion Michelle Kwan and Sasha Cohen at the U.S. nationals. A month later, Hughes won the Olympic gold medal in Salt Lake City in a stunning upset.
Eight years later, Evan Lysacek finished second in the men’s competition at the nationals. But the next month, he won the gold medal at the 2010 Vancouver Games.