World Aquatics hosted the experimental presentation of the ‘Acrobatic Showdown’ on 16 August during the closing gala of the World Aquatics Junior Artistic Swimming Championships – Budapest 2026. Developed by Giorgio Minisini, the demonstration at the Duna Arena brought a concept on which the Italian has worked for more than two years to an international competition, with the aim of changing how acrobatics are presented and compared.
The main innovation sees two teams enter the water simultaneously and perform three acrobatic movements to the same music. Instead of completing routines one after another and subsequently learning their positions through the scores, the two teams share the pool in a direct contest that produces one winner.
Two teams, one soundtrack
Each movement begins beneath the surface, where the base swimmers must coordinate to support or launch the featured athlete. The power of the lift, its height, body control in the air and entry into the water depend on teamwork in which reducing the risk of collisions is also essential. Placing two executions side by side allows the audience to observe these differences without losing the point of comparison between performances.
The official acrobatic routine was added to the World Cup programme in 2023 and made its Olympic debut at Paris 2024. Each team, composed of eight athletes and permitted to include up to two men, has three minutes to complete seven acrobatics: at least one from each of the four regulated groups — airborne, balance, combined and platform — plus three free choices. Each team uses its own music and choreography, while judging panels assess the elements and artistic impression. The ‘Acrobatic Showdown’ condenses the concept into three movements performed to a shared soundtrack.
Two years in development
Minisini, a 30-year-old multiple world and European champion, attended Budapest as an ambassador for the international federation after retiring in 2024. Alongside presenting the format, he delivered masterclasses, took part in a medal ceremony and worked with experts from the Technical Artistic Swimming Committee -TASC- on the new Artistic Impression scoring system for the men’s solo. “I’ve been working on it for over two years and I’ve loved how the athletes and the audiences reacted to it,” he said.
The Italian had already raised some of these issues through the Aquatic Games Show, an earlier project developed with Beatrice Zamberlan and separate from the format demonstrated in Budapest. Speaking to ‘La Gazzetta dello Sport’ in May 2025, Minisini said that when teams perform consecutively, “the audience loses track”. That proposal used head-to-head knockout rounds and assigned each judge a specific component of the performance to make “everything clearer, easier to understand and more useful”. It also sought to ensure that athletes “feel listened to, understood and central to the process”. Although the two concepts are not the same event, they demonstrate an approach intended to make competitions easier to follow and provide more specific assessments of each performance.
Truly mixed choreography
The concept is also connected to Minisini’s work to expand male participation in artistic swimming. During the Junior World Championships, he highlighted the inclusion of two men in several team routines, including the technical team from France, the free team from China and the acrobatic performance by Italy. In the latter, Filippo Pelati and Gabriele Minak competed in a routine originally designed for eight women, something the former swimmer believes prevents a mixed line-up from reaching its full potential.
The Paris 2024 rules allowed teams to include up to two men, but no nation used that option. Minisini was in contention to become the first male artistic swimmer to compete at an Olympic Games, although the Italian selectors considered his inclusion too great a risk under the scoring system. “I’m really eager to see the moment where every mixed team will swim an actual mixed choreography. That’s the next step our sport needs: and for this, maybe the new Acrobatic Showdown format could help!” he said.
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