Dates
| Date | Location |
| 17th / 18th January 2026 | Winchester Sport & Leisure Park |
| 7th / 8th February 2026 | Winchester Sport & Leisure Park |
| 28th February 2026 / 1st March 2026 | Winchester Sport & Leisure Park |
Dates do not clash with half-term in Hampshire, Jersey or Guernsey.
Dates were set after contacting numerous other venues. In the end we had little choice over dates/venues. A number of pool operators declined to host counties, some will only provide hours that wouldn’t work for the county, some pools had to be ruled out on the grounds of safety (a growing issue as operators review poolside capacity limits) and some pools don’t meet recommended standards. Winchester Pool will only agree to dates that are three weeks apart.
Dates may change due to venue requirements, Swim England requirements or insufficient volunteers.
Schedule
The schedule is now available.
Qualifying Times
Qualifying times are now available.
Short course qualifying times are derived from the the long course times. The conversion is done using the Swim England Equivalent Times Converter. Please we aware that some websites (eg. Pullbuoy) may not use exactly the same conversion method as Swim England.
Note:
- Qualifying times are based on last year entries. The times are then compared with other years, against other counties, and with each other. The times are then adjusted and smoothed.
- The automatic times aim to fill 60% of the places available. A swimmer who sets an automatic time should be confident they will be accepted (baring circumstances beyond the county’s control).
- The consideration times aim to fill 110% of the places available. We expect that some swimmers who set a consideration time will not be accepted for counties.
- The approach of having consideration times aims to offer as many swimmers as possible the opportunity to swim. If we were to accepted all swimmers who set a qualification time then we would have to be conservative when setting times to ensure we could safely accommodate all the swimmers – this would result in faster qualification times.
- Many swimmers choose to stop swimming around age 15 and 16. We aim to ensure that enough swimmers qualify for each event at each age to create a competitive event. For this reason it is sometimes necessary for qualifying times to be slower when age increases around ages 15 and 16.
Target number of swimmers
Swimmers with automatic times will normally be accepted (even where the number exceeds the target number of swimmers). Where the number of swimmers with an automatic qualifying time is below the target number of swimmers then we normally accept the fastest swimmers with a consideration time to fill the remaining spaces up to the target number of swimmers.
| Distance | Age 10/11 | Age 12 | Age 13 | Age 14 | Age 15 | Age 16 | Age 17/Over |
| 50m | 16 | 24 | 24 | 24 | 24 | 24 | 24 |
| 100m | 14 | 22 | 22 | 22 | 22 | 22 | 22 |
| 100m FLY | 8 | 16 | 16 | 16 | 16 | 16 | 16 |
| 200m | 14 | 22 | 22 | 22 | 22 | 22 | 22 |
| 200m FLY | 8 | 14 | 14 | 14 | 14 | 14 | 14 |
| 400m | 8 | 12 | 16 | 16 | 16 | 16 | 16 |
| 800m | No event | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 |
| 1500m | No event | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 |
Closing Date
We expect closing date will be 18 December. Times set at meets on 13/14 December will be useable for counties (provided they are on rankings). Time set at any meets on 20/21 December will not be useable for counties.
Volunteering 2026
Hampshire ASA is a non-profit organisation whose sole purpose is to support swimming in the County. Everyone is a volunteer – expenses are reimbursed for parking and lunch is provided😊
We all started as swimming parents – its really not that scary! Follow this link
Email: Hampshiretechteam@gmail.com if you are interested in helping whether its for one session or the whole competition or even helping before the event.
Questions?
Please submit questions via your club.
FAQs
What does the age definition for counties mean?
All ages for counties refer to the swimmer age at the end of 31 December 2026.
For example if your 14th Birthday is in August 2026 then your age for counties will be 14. This means you must meet the age 14 qualifying times and you will compete in the age 14 age-group.
If you don’t fill the target number of swims in one event will you make more places available in another event
No. The target number of swims slightly exceeds the overall capacity of meet. This is done because we expect to not fill some events and we expect some swimmers to drop out. In addition whilst some events may be under-subscribed there may be other events where the number of entries with an automatic time exceeds the planned number of target swims and we have to accept all swimmers with automatic times.