“Exactly 3️⃣ days to go for the BIGGEST RHYTHMIC GYMNASTICS WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS ever… and Rio de Janeiro is already BREATHING gymnastics! The signs are everywhere! And you… ARE YOU READY?! ☀️🌊🤸🏻‍♀️” This was the caption of a post on FIG’s Instagram 7 days ago. The 2025 Rhythmic Gymnastics World Championships were being hyped, and why not? This was the 41st edition and also the first ever to be held in South America. But meanwhile, FIG had to issue an apology.

The championships came to their conclusion today, and in the individual all-around, Germany’s Darja Varfolomeev defended her title, clinching gold ahead of Bulgaria’s Stiliana Nikolova and Italy’s Sofia Raffaeli. The U.S. squad, including Rin Keys, Megan Chu, and the Senior Group, earned 12th place in the team standings with a total of 253.600. In the Group All-Around, the U.S. Senior Group finished 31st, posting a combined score of 32.700, while Japan took the group title with 55.550. But Group All-Around is where the problem was.

The FIG wrote a letter today, addressed to the NFs participating in a Group in the RG WCH Rio de Janeiro 2025, stating, “We deeply regret the incident that occurred this afternoon during the group qualifications and extend our sincere apologies.” They also informed the President of the Superior Jury that during the break between Group A and Group B, some judges had raised concerns about the scoring system, as certain deductions didn’t appear to be reflected in the overall score.

This indeed turned out to be true. About three-quarters of the way through the competition, they discovered a computer glitch affecting the artistry scores. This caused a nearly 50-minute pause while they fixed the scores for all the teams in both rounds. How was it dealt with?

The governing body of gymnastics wrote, “Thanks to the entry logs, we were able to re-enter all the data initially recorded by each judge on their tablets and recalculate the scores. For this reason, your scores have been slightly adjusted.  However, we can confirm that they are now correct and accurately reflect what took place during the performance of your Group.”  So all in all, there was a computer malfunction discovered in the scoring, and they used the entry logs from the judges to reconstruct the proper scores.

This is not the first time this year that scoring has been under the light. At the 2025 U.S. Classic, Myli Lew’s uneven bars routine got a surprising 14.050 score despite repeated elements and composition errors. Fans and experts questioned the fairness, sparking debates about judging consistency and its impact on athletes.

But more interestingly, the 2024 Rhythmic Gymnastics World Championships faced scoring problems, too.

2024 Rhythmic Gymnastics World Championships on the same line

Last year, in May 2024, the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) identified a significant scoring error at the Rhythmic Gymnastics World Cup in Athens.

An internal review revealed that the scores from the A1 and E1 judges had been mistakenly reversed during the Individual Clubs and Ribbon qualification events. This error led to incorrect qualification rankings and finalists. Consequently, the World Cup ranking published after the event was also incorrect. What did FIG do?

The gymnastics governing body removed all results for this event from its website and later published corrected ones. Thanks to this, the right athlete won their event.

Darja Varfolomeev of Germany dominated, winning the all-around plus clubs and ball titles. China’s Wang Zilu took the hoop, and Italy’s Sofia Raffaeli won the ribbon. In group events, Italy won 5 hoops, and China won the combination routine. The final World Challenge Cup in Cluj added two more apparatus wins for Varfolomeev ahead of the Paris Olympics.

Additionally, the FIG announced that the scoring provider for this event, “Best Solutions International, Computer Systems & Software” (BUL), would no longer be accepted as a scoring and results partner for any FIG-approved or sanctioned events until further notice. The FIG strongly recommended that other competitions refrain from using the services of this provider.