With pleasure, Archery NZ presents our updated Shooting Rules and Competition Rules (renamed from the Tournament Rules).
These take effect from 1 October 2025.
Please make yourselves familiar with them at our Rules and Regulations page.
The draft updates to these rules were available for your review and feedback from late June to 31 July, after which they were reviewed and redrafted. The rules were approved by the Board in early September. Thank you to all the members who took time to contribute to this process by making feedback or reviewing details.
Please note specific areas of change, particularly as the new competition season starts in earnest on 1 October:
- Inclusion of Interclub Challenge and Individual League rules in the Competition Rules, and the IC rounds now renamed and defined in the Shooting Rules. Only a couple of small changes to the IC rules: A distance change for longbow 65+ archers now shooting their “short” round (aligning with barebow, recurve, and traditional 65+ classes); clarification that the Interclub Challenge may only be contested by affiliated clubs using their own members.
- Inception of the Inamata Shield Challenge, joining the other divisions’ Shield Challenges – note these are coming up fast in October and November!
- Distance change: Barebow/Longbow/Traditional U14 and Novice round distances changed: 72-arrow round now at 30 m; 1440 round at 35 m. These rounds are new to NZ.
- Distance change: Longbow/Traditional adult men’s clout distances reduced to 120 m, now aligned with Longbow/Traditional adult women’s distances.
- Clarification about which records we maintain, and which World Archery rounds we can maintain records for based on our ability to register them with WA.
- Updates to the award pins section to include Youth, Schools, and Tertiary shoot pinscores.
And some rule updates that are of more interest to tournament organisers and officials:
- Tournaments must have equal pricing for all entrants (see rules for further details). Pricing details are now requested in the tournament registration form.
- Organisers must notify all entrants prior to the start of the tournament which round(s) comprise matchplay qualification.
- Organisers of indoor matchplay events may choose to offer spot faces in categories where these were not previously clearly able to be offered.
- Every entrant registered as of the day of the event must have a score value or zero recorded in ArcheryOSA so their participation or withdrawal is clear. Please don’t remove or un-approve any entries in ArcheryOSA for archers who were registered as of the day of the event.
- (A reminder from our previous rules update in early 2025 that organisers must publish matchplay brackets and results on ArcheryOSA for your events. We suggest combining these into a single PDF file which you can upload in ArcheryOSA on the Settings page for the event. This produces a link which can be viewed at the bottom of the main event page.)
- Removal of the Double 720 Round. We don’t have a way to register this specific round with World Archery for our events, making it an NZ-only round. Feedback from archers, organisers, officials, and selectors was that the Double 720 Round causes confusion and has some disadvantages compared to two 72-arrow rounds. Please register two 72-arrow rounds instead.
- Clarification about what to do when one or all appointed judges become unavailable during an event.
Thank you for your support. These rules are made by members for members based on member feedback and contributions.
Rules Committee including Meike Voigt (chair), Gordon Harris, Kelly Atkinson, Tahir Singh
(Photo by Gianni Stichbury at the 2025 National Indoor Championships)
