Red Bull Rampage turns 25 this year, and both full rosters for the anniversary edition landed within the last 72 hours — the women’s field on Tuesday, September 8, the men’s on Thursday, September 10. That’s a strange gap to close this late in the season, honestly. We’ve written up Crankworx slopestyle, urban downhill in Stuttgart, Whistler’s first-ever World Cup DH date, and a photo-finish Crankworx DH final — nearly every corner of gravity racing this year — without once touching the event that arguably built the entire freeride category. That changes now.

The short version: 18 men and 12 women drop into the Utah desert October 8–10 for a course built on the exact ground where this whole thing started in 2001. Here’s who’s riding, when it airs, and how to watch it without a ticket.

Quick Take

Women’s competition	Thursday, October 8, 2026
Men’s competition	Saturday, October 10, 2026
Venue	Virgin, Utah — the original 2001 competition zone
Milestone	25th anniversary of Red Bull Rampage
Men’s field	18 riders — 8 pre-qualified, 10 wildcards, 5 alternates
Women’s field	12 riders — 4 pre-qualified, 8 wildcards, 5 alternates
Defending champs	Hayden Zablotny (men’s), Robin Goomes (women’s, 2x)
Broadcast	10:00am MT both days, Red Bull TV and the Red Bull Bike YouTube channel worldwide
US viewers	ESPN+ exclusive — Red Bull TV doesn’t carry it live in the US
Best for	Anyone who’s watched every other gravity discipline get covered here except this one
Skip if	You want a confirmed course video before the riders even see the venue — that’s not how Rampage works

Back to Where It Started

The 2026 course sits on the same Southern Utah ground used for the first four Rampage events, 2001 through 2004, before the competition moved to different zones nearby for the better part of two decades. That’s the anniversary move: not a bigger stage, not a new location, just a return to the dirt where Wade Simmons won the inaugural event in 2001 with a score of 78.4, back when freeride mountain biking as a judged competition barely existed as a concept.

According to Unofficial Networks’ coverage of the announcement, the competition zone now spans roughly 364,000 square meters — something like 51 soccer fields of sandstone ridgeline — and this year’s course has the longest vertical drop in the event’s history, over 206 meters from a start gate positioned about a third higher than the original layouts. Twenty-five years of dig crews, bigger bikes, and riders willing to point it further off the top of a cliff, and the terrain still has more to give. That tells you something about how much room the original zone actually had.

Men’s Field: 18 Riders, Three Ways In

The men’s roster fills the same way it usually does, and it’s worth knowing the mechanics because it explains why some very good riders aren’t on this list. Per SoCalCycling’s breakdown of the selection process, a committee of former Rampage competitors, pros, judges, and industry people picks the wildcards and alternates based on competition results, submitted riding videos, and overall level — not a single qualifying event, since Rampage doesn’t really have feeder races the way World Cup disciplines do.

Pre-qualified (top finishers from 2025):

• Hayden Zablotny (Canada) — defending champion
• Thomas Genon (Belgium)
• Tom Van Steenbergen (Canada)
• Tomas Lemoine (France)
• Reed Boggs (USA)
• Talus Turk (USA)
• Cam Zink (USA)
• Finley Kirschenmann (USA)

Wildcards (committee-selected):

• Carson Storch (USA)
• Szymon Godziek (Poland)
• Kade Edwards (UK)
• Tom Isted (UK)
• Paul Couderc (France)
• Bienvenido Aguado Alba (Spain)
• Connor Gallart (USA)
• Jaxson Riddle (USA)
• Johny Salido (Mexico)
• Kaidan Ingersoll (USA)

Alternates: Ryan McNulty, Aiden Howe, Ondra Slez, Louis Reboul, Nicholi Rogatkin.

Zink returning as a pre-qualified rider is its own small headline — he’s been building lines in Virgin since the early 2000s and won the event himself back in 2015, which makes him one of the few riders in this field who’s genuinely ridden both eras of the venue. Godziek’s presence is a nice bit of continuity too: his brother Dawid just won the first-ever Slopestyle Super League title on a pink Specialized P3, while Szymon’s own bike is built the opposite direction — a Demo set up for exactly the big-mountain freeride lines Rampage demands. And Nicholi Rogatkin, who finished seventh at that same Slopestyle Super League final behind Godziek, lands here as a Rampage alternate — proof that the line between slopestyle and big-mountain freeride is thinner than the disciplines’ separate contest formats suggest.

Women’s Field: 12 Riders, a Two-Time Champion Returning

The women’s competition runs the same selection structure, scaled to a smaller field. Four riders pre-qualify from 2025, eight get wildcard invitations, and five sit as alternates. Per Brujula Bike’s full roster report:

Pre-qualified:

• Robin Goomes (New Zealand) — two-time defending champion
• Georgia Astle (Canada)
• Hannah Bergemann (USA)
• Cami Nogueira (Argentina)

Wildcards:

• Casey Brown (Canada)
• Vaea Verbeeck (Canada)
• Vinny Armstrong (New Zealand)
• Harriet Burbidge-Smith (Australia)
• Chelsea Kimball (USA)
• Janelle Soukup (USA)
• Kirsten Van Horne (Canada)
• Mikayla Parton (UK)

Alternates: Natasha Bradley, CJ Selig, Dominique Ohaco, Lucy Van Eestreen, Kaia Jensen.

Goomes has won the last two editions outright, and going for a third straight title on the sport’s original venue is a genuinely different challenge than defending on a newer course — nobody in this field, herself included, has competitive data on how the 2026 layout rides. The women’s event has grown fast in a short window; a 12-rider field with real depth behind the pre-qualified four wasn’t a given a few years ago, and it is now.

How Does Red Bull Rampage Choose Its Riders?

Red Bull Rampage fills its field through three tracks, applied separately to the men’s and women’s competitions:

1. Pre-qualification — the top finishers from the previous year’s event earn an automatic return invite (8 men, 4 women for 2026).
2. Wildcards — a selection committee of former competitors, pro riders, judges, and industry figures reviews competition results and rider-submitted videos to fill the rest of the field (10 men, 8 women).
3. Alternates — five riders per gender sit as backups, ready to step in if a confirmed rider withdraws before or during the event.

There’s no points chase or qualifying series feeding into it, which is unusual for a sport at this level — Rampage is judged on committee consensus and a body of recent work, not a season-long ranking.

Race Weekend Schedule

Women go first this year: Thursday, October 8, 2026, in Virgin, Utah. The men follow two days later, Saturday, October 10. Both runs are single-day, single-run finals-format events — there’s no qualifying round the way World Cup downhill or slopestyle events run one. Riders get one shot down a line they’ve spent days building and walking, and that’s it. No re-runs, no second chances if a trick gets bobbled or a line choice doesn’t pan out.

How to Watch Red Bull Rampage 2026

Both days broadcast live starting at 10:00am Mountain Time. Outside the US, that’s Red Bull TV and the Red Bull Bike YouTube channel, free, worldwide, no subscription required. In the US specifically, Rampage streams exclusively on ESPN+ — Red Bull TV’s live coverage doesn’t carry over domestically the way it does for most of Red Bull’s other properties, so US viewers who assume they can just pull up the app on competition morning should check that before race day, not after.

Tickets for anyone watching in person went on sale August 26 through the event’s official ticketing partner. Given the venue’s return to the original zone this year, expect a different viewing layout than recent editions — the terrain and vantage points at the 2001-era site aren’t identical to wherever Rampage has run the last several seasons.

Who Should Watch This

Anyone who’s followed freeride or slopestyle at all this year. Between Godziek’s Slopestyle Super League title and this field, 2026 has been a genuinely deep season for big-air mountain biking, and Rampage is where it culminates — bigger drops, bigger consequences, no scoring format that rewards playing it safe.

Fans of the sport’s history. A 25th-anniversary return to the original 2001 venue, with Wade Simmons’ inaugural win as the reference point, is the kind of anniversary that actually means something rather than just a marketing number on a graphic.

Anyone curious what riders build for terrain like this. Big-mountain freeride bikes get set up differently than a park slopestyle rig or a World Cup DH sled — longer travel, different geometry priorities, built to survive a 20-plus-foot drop onto uneven sandstone rather than a manicured lip. Our Specialized Demo 11 review covers the DH side of that spectrum, though most Rampage builds diverge from a straight downhill setup in ways worth its own coverage.

Who Should Skip This

Anyone expecting a fixed course to study beforehand. Rampage riders build and dig their own lines into the mountain over the days leading into competition — there’s no set track to preview the way there is for a World Cup DH run. Line choice is part of the sport.

Viewers outside the US expecting a paywall. If you’re outside the States, don’t go looking for a subscription option — Red Bull TV and YouTube have you covered for free. That’s a US-specific wrinkle, not a global one.

The Bottom Line

Red Bull Rampage’s 25th anniversary lands where the event began — the original 2001 zone in Virgin, Utah — with 18 men and 12 women set to ride it October 8–10, 2026. Hayden Zablotny defends on the men’s side, Robin Goomes goes for a third straight women’s title, and the field around them runs deep enough that pre-qualification alone doesn’t guarantee a podium. It airs free worldwide on Red Bull TV and YouTube, ESPN+ exclusively in the US, both days at 10:00am Mountain Time. This site’s covered nearly everything else gravity racing threw at it this season. This is the one that was actually overdue.

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Reporting sourced from Red Bull’s official Rampage event page, the Red Bull Rampage 2026 guide, Unofficial Networks’ 25th-anniversary coverage, SoCalCycling’s athlete field breakdown, and Brujula Bike’s full participant roster.