State of Powerlifting 2026

Growth

The sport grew 9x in 20 years

In 2005 there were 31,571 competition entries across the entire dataset. In 2025 there were 272,066. That is roughly a 9-fold increase in two decades, and the curve is still climbing.

The growth is broad-based: more federations sanctioning more meets in more countries, with the steepest acceleration arriving after 2015 as raw lifting and women's participation both expanded the addressable base of the sport.

Participation

The women's surge: 17.3% to 36.1%

In 2005, women were 17.3% of all competition entries. By 2025 that share had more than doubled to 36.1%, and in the partial 2026 data it sits at 38.4%.

The line has two jumps caused by new sources entering the dataset. Texas high-school results arrived in 2010 (boys) and 2014 (girls), which pulled the women's share down and then up. Since 2015 it has climbed from 28.4% to 36.1%, with a few small dips along the way. At that pace, women's entries would match men's in about 19 years.

Equipment

The raw revolution: 8.6% to 63.5%

Two decades ago, raw lifting (no supportive squat suit or bench shirt) was a fringe of the sport at 8.6% of entries. In 2025 it was the default: 63.5% of all competition entries were raw.

The shift reflects both the rise of raw-focused federations and a cultural move away from equipped lifting's steep equipment learning curve. The practical effect: the records and totals most lifters compare themselves against today are raw numbers, which is a meaningful break from the equipped-dominated era that preceded it.

Records

Records are falling faster than ever

Of the 14,948 standing all-time records tracked in this dataset, 2,455 of them (16%) were set in just the last 24 months. The all-time record book is being rewritten in real time.

This concentration is what you would expect when a sport is both growing and getting deeper: a larger, more competitive field at the top means standing marks get challenged and broken far more often than in the sport's slower decades. The chart below counts records that currently stand, grouped by the year they were set.

Browse the full records database →

Global reach

From 35 countries to 88

In 2005, sanctioned meets in this dataset took place across 35 countries. By 2025 that had grown to 88 countries, with 133 countries represented across the full historical record.

The tables below show where the sport is densest today: the federations sanctioning the most entries, and the countries producing the most competition volume in the last full year of data.

The heaviest lifters

The biggest totals of the past 12 months

These are the largest competition totals recorded in the trailing 12 months of data, raw and equipped combined, separated by sex. They put the abstract growth numbers into human terms: this is what the very top of the sport looks like right now.

Where lifters compete

The most popular weight classes

Competition entries cluster heavily in a handful of weight classes. The most contested divisions in the last full year, by total entries, are below for each sex.

On the platform

How often lifters make their attempts

Every lifter gets three attempts on each lift. The table shows the share of attempts that were good lifts, by lift and attempt number, across the 1,970,900 entries whose attempts were recorded. Success falls with each attempt as lifters load heavier weights, and bench press third attempts succeed only 45.7% of the time.

Bombing out

How often lifters bomb out

A lifter who misses all three attempts on one lift has no total and cannot place. In full-power meets with recorded attempts, 3.0% of entries bombed out (36,582 of 1,208,768). The rows below add to more than 3.0% because some entries missed all three attempts on more than one lift. The bench press ends the most meets.

Who comes back

How many lifters compete only once

Of the 895,083 lifters whose first meet was at least two years ago, 44.1% never competed again. That figure covers every lifter back to 1964. The table follows new lifters by year from 2010 to 2023, the last class in which every lifter has had two full years to return. The highest share belongs to the class of 2019, whose first chance to return was 2020, when the pandemic cut the number of meets from 3,800 to 2,253.