Samson Dauda won Saturday night. Nick Walker won the Mr. Olympia.
Both of those things are true, and the official scorecard shows exactly how. Walker finished on 18 points and Dauda on 20, a two-point margin in a sport where the lowest score wins. Walker built his lead on Friday, and Dauda nearly erased it on Saturday.
Here is what the numbers say, and what the three men at the top said once the scores were in.
How the Mr. Olympia is scored
The Men’s Open is judged over two nights, and the IFBB Pro League rulebook is short on the subject: “The Judging and Finals are each valued at 50% of the final score.” Friday’s prejudging and Saturday’s finals count the same. In each round the judges rank the athletes, and a round score adds up the placings that count, so the lower the number, the more first-place votes behind it. The two round scores are then added together for the final total.
That split is unusual. In Men’s 212, Classic Physique, Men’s Physique, Wheelchair and Ms. Olympia, the rules value the prejudging at 100%, and the finals only count if the head judge calls a scored “confirmation round.” That is why the finals column is blank on those scorecards. Fitness goes the other way, with its finals, which include the routine, worth 67%. The Mr. Olympia is the only men’s title where Saturday night is worth exactly half.
The top three, round by round
These are the official round scores for the top three from the IFBB Pro League scorecard. Lower is better.
| Athlete | Prejudging (Friday) | Finals (Saturday) | Total | Place |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nick Walker | 8 | 10 | 18 | 1st |
| Samson Dauda | 15 | 5 | 20 | 2nd |
| Derek Lunsford | 9 | 15 | 24 | 3rd |
Walker won Friday by a single point over Lunsford, with Dauda well back in third. On Saturday the order flipped. Dauda’s finals score of 5 matched the lowest score recorded in any round all weekend, across all 12 divisions, and it was the only 5 in the Men’s Open. Walker’s 10 and Lunsford’s 15 put them second and third on the night.
Run the two nights separately and you get two different champions. On Friday’s scores alone, Walker wins by one point over Lunsford. On Saturday’s scores alone, Dauda wins. Added together, Walker’s seven-point lead from prejudging survived Dauda’s five-point win in the finals, and that left two points between them. The full card for every competitor is in our 2026 Mr. Olympia bodybuilding results.
Two years, the same story
This has happened before, and recently. At the 2025 Mr. Olympia, Hadi Choopan won the finals round and still finished second to Derek Lunsford by two points.
| Year | Champion (prejudging + finals) | Runner-up (prejudging + finals) | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Derek Lunsford (6 + 8 = 14) | Hadi Choopan (9 + 7 = 16) | 2 points |
| 2026 | Nick Walker (8 + 10 = 18) | Samson Dauda (15 + 5 = 20) | 2 points |
Two straight Olympias, two margins of two points, and both times the man who won Saturday night went home second. Both times the Sandow went to the athlete who won Friday.
What Walker said
Walker’s Friday was the foundation of everything. He told Tony Doherty of NPC News Online after the show that his plan had never changed.
“When I’m on and I’m 100%, nobody’s going to out-condition me, no one will outwork me and no one will out-pose me,” he said. “And that’s exactly what happened.”
He had nothing but praise for the man who nearly caught him. “That’s what you call a fighter,” Walker said of Dauda, who he felt had climbed from third to second overnight. “That’s how you fight.”
What Dauda said
Dauda was not surprised that his best came on Saturday.
“No matter how good I come out on Friday, Saturday, 24 hours of drying out, you’re going to look even drier,” he told Doherty. “It’s always the case with me.”
He also explained the physique behind the jump from fourth in 2025 to a close second. Last year, he said, he came down to 280 to 282 pounds, “a look that did not suit my frame at all.” This year, he said, he weighed 310 pounds. He and Walker, he added, had both left the 2025 show disappointed and had talked about making sure it never happened again. “To have both of us stand there, I couldn’t feel more prouder.”
More from Dauda on the rebuild: how he came back about 30 pounds heavier.
More from Dauda on the rebuild: how he came back about 30 pounds heavier.
What Lunsford said
Lunsford was one point off the lead on Friday and third on Saturday, and he did not argue with it.
“Even last night, it didn’t feel right,” he told Doherty. “I just felt like I was off. I was not at my best.”
He said his muscles did not feel like they were firing the right way, even at prejudging, and he did not look for excuses.
“No excuses. Just didn’t come together tonight. And I told Nick, ‘Hey, you earned it. Good job.'”
Lunsford’s full reaction: why he says he felt off, and why he offered no excuses.
Lunsford’s full reaction: why he says he felt off, and why he offered no excuses.
Down the rest of the card
The scorecard below the top three had its own stories, and several of them were career bests.
- Andrew Jacked finished fourth with 20 points in each round, 40 in total, six months after beating Walker by five points at the Arnold Classic.
- Tonio Burton took fifth, his best Olympia finish, after placing outside the top 15 in 2022 and eighth in 2023 and 2025.
- Michal Krizo placed sixth, his best Olympia result after 12th in 2022 and seventh in 2023.
- Regan Grimes finished seventh, his best Olympia finish after 15th, 15th, ninth and 14th.
- James Hollingshead cracked the top 10 in tenth place.
- Martin Fitzwater dropped to 12th, the lowest placing of his three Olympias after fourth in 2024 and fifth in 2025.
- William Bonac, competing in his final Olympia, was among the seven athletes tied outside the top 15.
From five points to two
Walker’s season began with a close loss. At the Arnold Classic in March he finished second to Andrew Jacked by five points and missed out on a $750,000 winner’s check. Six months later he won the biggest title in the sport by two points, and took home the $600,000 that comes with the Sandow, as our Mr. Olympia prize money breakdown shows.
He also joined a short list. A year after finishing sixth, Walker became only the second man, after Ronnie Coleman, to win the Sandow from outside the previous year’s top five. The full story of his win is in our Nick Walker feature, and every callout from Friday is in our prejudging report.
