The 2026 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, held in St. Louis in January, were the last stop before the Milano Cortina Olympics. Ilia Malinin won his fourth straight title, Amber Glenn won her third, and Madison Chock and Evan Bates won a record seventh in ice dance. The pairs champions couldn't go to the Olympics because of a citizenship rule, and the 16-skater Olympic team was named on January 11.
Key takeaways
- Malinin won the men's title by 57 points with 324.88, even with a deliberately cautious free skate.
- Glenn became the first woman to win three U.S. titles in a row since Michelle Kwan, after a national-record 83.05 in the short program.
- Chock and Bates won their seventh U.S. ice dance title, one more than Meryl Davis and Charlie White.
- Pairs champions Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov, and bronze medalists Katie McBeath and Daniil Parkman, weren't eligible for the Olympics, so the second- and fourth-place teams went to Milan.
- In Milan, Team USA won the team event, Alysa Liu won women's gold, and Chock and Bates won silver.
In an Olympic season, the U.S. Championships are the last big test before the Olympic team is picked. The 2026 edition, at the Enterprise Center in St. Louis, had a bit of everything: records, a comeback in the men's event and a pairs result decided as much by paperwork as by skating. Here's how it played out, and how the team it produced did a month later in Milan.
The podiums at a glance
These are the senior medalists and their total scores. In figure skating, each total is the short program (or rhythm dance) plus the free skate (or free dance).
| Event | Gold | Silver | Bronze |
|---|---|---|---|
| Men | Ilia Malinin, 324.88 | Andrew Torgashev, 267.62 | Maxim Naumov, 249.16 |
| Women | Amber Glenn, 233.55 | Alysa Liu, 228.91 | Isabeau Levito, 224.45 |
| Pairs | Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov, 207.71 | Ellie Kam and Danny O'Shea, 197.12 | Katie McBeath and Daniil Parkman, 187.45 |
| Ice dance | Madison Chock and Evan Bates, 228.87 | Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik, 213.65 | Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko, 206.95 |
Men: Malinin plays it safe and still wins big
Ilia Malinin won his fourth straight U.S. title with 324.88 points, 57 ahead of the field, and kept an unbeaten run of more than two years going. He led the short program with 115.10, then skated a deliberately toned-down free skate with three quads while breaking in new skates. "I decided not to go for any risks. I wanted to play it safe, because hopefully in a few weeks I have to go again," he said.
Andrew Torgashev took silver with 267.62 after a big comeback. He fell on a quad toe loop in the short program and sat fifth, then landed two quad toe loops and two triple Axels in the free skate to climb to second.
The bronze went to Maxim Naumov, by less than a tenth of a point over Jacob Sanchez, after three seasons of finishing fourth. Jason Brown, third after the short program at 31, finished off the podium.
Naumov's medal meant a lot to the people watching. A year earlier, his parents and coaches, 1994 world pairs champions Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, were killed when the American Eagle flight from Wichita collided with an Army helicopter over the Potomac River. After his short program in St. Louis, he waited for his scores holding a childhood photo of the three of them at the rink.
Women: Glenn makes it three in a row
Amber Glenn won her third straight U.S. title with 233.55, the first woman to do that since Michelle Kwan won eight in a row from 1998 to 2005. The short program set the tone. Alysa Liu broke the U.S. Championships record with 81.11, skating to Laufey's "Promise", and minutes later Glenn topped it with 83.05 to Madonna's "Like a Prayer", opening with a triple Axel.
Liu, the reigning world champion, finished second with 228.91, and Isabeau Levito, the 2023 U.S. champion and 2024 world silver medalist, took bronze with 224.45. Bradie Tennell was fourth with 211.48 and Sarah Everhardt fifth. Sixteen-year-old Sophie Joline von Felten landed two triple Axels on her way to sixth, though she was too young for the Olympics.
Glenn, Liu and Levito made up the Olympic team. At 26, Glenn became the oldest American woman named to an Olympic singles team in nearly a century.
Pairs: champions who couldn't go to the Games
Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov won their second straight U.S. pairs title with 207.71, more than 10 points clear. They couldn't be picked for the Olympics, though, because only citizens can represent a country at the Games. Efimova, who was born in Finland, has a green card but hadn't yet received a U.S. passport. The couple said they didn't see it as a failure and hadn't ruled out trying for 2030.
The bronze medalists, Katie McBeath and Daniil Parkman, were in the same position: Parkman is a citizen of Georgia and had only recently been approved for his green card. Ellie Kam and Danny O'Shea took silver with 197.12, and Emily Chan and Spencer Akira Howe finished fourth with 186.52, less than a point behind McBeath and Parkman.
On January 11, the selection committee named Kam and O'Shea and Chan and Howe to the Olympic team. For O'Shea, it capped a comeback we covered in our story on how Danny O'Shea went from real estate to Olympic gold.
Ice dance: a record seventh title
Madison Chock and Evan Bates won both segments and the title with 228.87, including a personal-best 137.17 in the free dance. It was their seventh U.S. title, the most by any ice dance team, one more than Meryl Davis and Charlie White.
Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik took silver with 213.65, skating their Romeo and Juliet free dance, and edged out Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko, who won bronze with 206.95. All three teams were named to the Olympic team.
The Olympic team
U.S. Figure Skating's selection committee announced the team on January 11, 2026, at the end of the championships. Sixteen skaters were picked for Milano Cortina.
| Event | Skaters |
|---|---|
| Men | Ilia Malinin, Andrew Torgashev, Maxim Naumov |
| Women | Amber Glenn, Alysa Liu, Isabeau Levito |
| Pairs | Ellie Kam and Danny O'Shea; Emily Chan and Spencer Akira Howe |
| Ice dance | Madison Chock and Evan Bates; Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik; Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko |
How it went in Milan
The Olympics turned some of the St. Louis story lines upside down. The U.S. won the team event by one point over Japan, 69 to 68, with Malinin, Liu, Glenn, Kam and O'Shea, and Chock and Bates among the skaters who scored points. In the women's event, Liu came from third after the short program to win gold, the first Olympic women's title for an American since Sarah Hughes in 2002, while Glenn finished fifth and Levito twelfth.
Malinin led the men's short program but had a tough free skate and finished eighth, as Kazakhstan's Mikhail Shaidorov won gold. Chock and Bates took silver in ice dance, 1.43 points behind France's Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron, which kept alive a run of U.S. ice dance medals at every Olympics since 2006. In pairs, Chan and Howe finished seventh and Kam and O'Shea ninth.
Our roundup of figure skating at the 2026 Olympics has every result, and we have longer stories on Alysa Liu's comeback, Amber Glenn and Ilia Malinin. If you're new to the scoring, our guide to every Olympic figure skating event explains what the judges are looking for.
Sources
We checked the results, scores and quotes in this recap in October 2026 through web search, reading each source as it appeared in search results. Details that sources disagreed on, or that we couldn't find in a second source, were left out.
- U.S. Figure Skating news releases from the 2026 Prevagen U.S. Figure Skating Championships (January 2026): Glenn's third straight title, the short program records and Chock and Bates's seventh title.
- The Associated Press, via its member stations and newspapers (January 2026): scores and placings in all four events, Malinin's quote, Torgashev's free skate, Naumov's margin and the citizenship of both pairs teams.
- Golden Skate, NBC Olympics and ice-dance.com event reports (January 2026): Kam and O'Shea's rise to silver, the women's top six and the ice dance scores.
- NBC News, WBUR and The Boston Globe (January 2026): Maxim Naumov and his parents; AP (January 2025): the plane crash.
- NBC Sports and Wikipedia, cross-checked: Glenn as the oldest American woman on an Olympic singles team since 1928.
- For Milan: AP, U.S. Figure Skating and the sources listed in our 2026 Olympics roundup.
