Kent County Swimming Championships 2026

Update 2 - Amended Qualifying Times (11 November 2025)

The qualifying times in Update 1 below were previous versions, so please use these links to access the correct ones:

Update 1 (7 November 2025)

Licensing & Important Dates

Now the licences for the Championships have been granted, we can release the Conditions, QTs and Programme. Links to the entry files are below.

Kent Champs 2026 Conditions
Male/Open Qualifying Times
Female Qualifying Times
Programme of Events

Please note the following important dates relating to entries:

Qualifying Window for 800m Freestyle – 1 January 2025 to 3 January 2026
Qualifying Window for all other events – 1 January 2025 to 13 January 2026
Closing date for 800m Freestyle at K2 Crawley – 4 January 2026
Payment of accepted entries invoice for 800m Freestyle to be made by – 11 January 2026
Closing date for all other events – 14 January 2026
Payment of accepted entries invoice for all other events to be made by – 20 January 2026

Entry Fees

There will be no increase in entry fees for the 2026 Champs, staying at £15 for the 800m and 1500m Freestyle, and £11 for all other events.

Sessions

Please see the linked schedule across the six days of competition. The programme itself follows last year’s. The most important change is that the LAC days are 30 minutes longer – this is partly due to the training pool being unavailable for warm down in the morning. To alleviate this, there will be a 15 minute warm down period after the final heats, before the finals begin. The diving pit will be open for warm down in the afternoons. Additionally, running for longer each day gives us the flexibility to run additional heats during sessions, and expand the quota accordingly.

Hosting

As in previous years, the County will be asking clubs to host individual days, including the long-distance events at Crawley. This involves providing volunteers across a standard set of roles for each day. If you want to volunteer your Club to host, please contact Jan Annan. The most crucial part of this is ensuring that each session has a dedicated Welfare Officer and a male and female changing room patrol for each session. These roles each require an Enhanced DBS, so please bear this in mind.

Qualifying Times

In addition to the Qualifying Times, there is an import file for clubs who use Swim Club Manager. Feedback on this file should be sent to Mark Leman as it is experimental.

You will notice that consideration times are (in many cases) slower than last year, as we were undersubscribed for some events over the past few years. As we expect more swimmers to meet these times, we anticipate that we will have to reject some entries so that we do not exceed the allotted time on each day. Nevertheless all swimmers who have consideration times should enter, as some swimmers with fast enough times will not enter due to injury or having moved out of Kent.

It's important to note that there are minimum entry numbers in each age group, so one age group having more potential qualifiers will not affect the minimum number of swimmers in other age groups.

Accreditation

All clubs should be aware that coaches and team managers will need to purchase new passes for the Championships – all passes for 2025 have now expired. Please contact John King to apply for new passes – these are at the same price as last year, at £10 per pass.

Spectator Tickets

Spectator tickets will be available in the New Year and will be the same price as last year.

Streaming

The LAC sessions will be streamed as in previous years. Details and links will be announced in the new year.

Photography

The County has also secured the services of Jason Shepherd Photography, to take photos in the same manner as previous Kent County meets. Details and booking info will be available at a later date.

Queries

General queries for the Championships should be sent to John Handley and Nathan Friend.

Entry queries for the Championships should be sent to Lynn Gates.

Nathan Friend

Events Manager – Kent Swimming