UKI US Open 2026, what to know before you enter

Entries for 2026 are already closed. UKI has listed the next two years as well, November 17 to 21 for 2027 and November 15 to 19 for 2028, so there’s time to plan for one of those.

UKI’s rules say entry is open to everyone, in every class except the Masters Series Final and the Challenger Round, with no qualifying needed first. It doesn’t matter which of the UKI levels your dog is in, from Beginners to Champion. That’s different from the AKC National Agility Championship, where a dog has to qualify first.

Your dog does have to be registered with UKI and at least 18 months old on the day. That age applies to every class at the Open, including Speedstakes, which lets 15 month old dogs run at regular trials.

You pick the classes you want, the same way you do at a local trial. These are the 2026 classes and fees.

Every class is its own competition at each jump height. If you enter everything you can, UKI says to be ready to run Wednesday through Sunday. This was the tentative order for 2026, and UKI notes that classes can move to a different day.

Here’s one dog entered in the six main classes, using the 2026 fees.

A few other costs come from the same UKI document:

• Crating is booked separately. A half stall in the horse barns is $60 for the event, a full stall is $120, and a small space inside the arena is $85.
• The practice ring is $65 for the week, or $60 if you pay ahead.
• Joining a team adds $36, split between the three of you.

Travel, a hotel or RV spot, and food are on top of that, and they’ll be the bigger part of the bill for most people.

The UKI US National Championship is three rounds, and each one is judged on its own. Your score doesn’t carry from one round to the next. The fewest faults wins, and time breaks a tie.

1. Round 1 is Agility. The top half of each jump height moves on, or the top 10 if that’s the bigger number.
2. Round 2 is Jumping. The top 8 in each jump height go to the final.
3. The Final is Agility. The dogs run in reverse order of their Round 2 results, so the best run from Round 2 goes last.

A dog that’s eliminated in a round doesn’t move on. There is one more way into the final, though. On Sunday, the dogs that ran in the championship and didn’t reach the final run the Challenger Round, and the winner of each height gets a place in the final.

A bye lets you skip an early round. The main one is the Round 2 bye in the National Championship. With it, your dog doesn’t run Round 1 and goes straight into Round 2.

You earn it at regular UKI trials during the qualifying period, which for the 2026 Open ran from September 30, 2025 to September 28, 2026. In that time your dog needs:

• One of the Agility clear rounds and one of the Jumping clear rounds have to come on the same day.
• Every run has to be by the same dog and handler who will run at the Open.
• Every run has to be at the jump height you enter at the Open. The one exception is moving from a regular height down to Select.
• A clear round means no course faults and no time faults. It can come from the level your dog is working at, and Masters heat classes count. Nursery runs don’t.
• UKI home video runs count for half, so it takes two of them to equal one regular run.
• Runs at the US Open itself don’t count toward next year’s bye.

Nobody adds this up for you. You fill in UKI’s bye tracker, a PDF form where you list each trial, date, and score, and email it to UKI by the entry deadline. UKI is firm about it. If you’re even one run short it isn’t a bye, and a bye that isn’t sent in by the deadline is void. So it’s worth writing down your clear rounds as you go through the year.

There are other byes too. Winning certain UKI tournaments during the year, like a US Cup or a US Classic, can earn a bye into Round 2, into the National final, or into the Speedstakes final. Those are listed on the same tracker form.

This is the one class you can’t just enter. A Masters heat is an agility round and a jumping round with the results added together, and you qualify for the final by doing well in heats during the qualifying period. The main ways in:

• Winning the Agility class or the Jumping class at a US Masters Series heat
• Finishing first or second overall at a US Masters Series heat
• Winning a US Cup overall, or winning the Pentathlon at a US Classic
• Winning the Agility round or the Jumping round of the Last Chance Heat at the Open, or finishing in its top four overall

The scoring is different from a regular class. Faults are turned into time, with 5 faults counted as 3 seconds, and the lowest combined score wins.

If you haven’t qualified by the time you enter, the Last Chance Heat is still open to you. If you earn your place there, you pay the final’s entry fee at the event. UKI warns that there’s no refund if you enter the final online without having qualified.

A team is any three dogs with three different handlers, from any mix of jump heights. Each dog’s results in US Open Agility and Winner Takes All Jumping are added up, and the top 15 teams run a relay final on Sunday with jumps, tunnels, and weaves, passing a baton between handlers.

Only the team captain enters the team. Every dog on it has to be entered in both of those classes, and UKI doesn’t refund a team entry if one isn’t.

• No training runs. Not For Competition and Repeat and Move On aren’t allowed in any run.
• Strict running order. If you aren’t at the line for your turn, you’re eliminated from that class.
• One height and one handler. Your dog runs at one jump height with one handler for the whole event.
• Longer courses. Courses can have up to 22 obstacles.
• No level points. Nothing you run at the Open counts toward your dog’s UKI titles.

The Open is also where the USA team for the World Agility Open holds its tryouts. That has its own application and its own selection document.

The rules only tell you so much. Here is what handlers who went have written about it.

It’s big. The Bad Dog Agility write-up of the 2023 Open counted 1,024 dogs across 6 rings, and says the event still ran on time or early every day, even with rough weather.

It isn’t only for the top teams. The same write-up says many of the people there were regular AKC or USDAA competitors trying UKI for the first time. One newer handler wrote about her 2023 trip and called it agility “on steroids.” She had one clean run all week and said she cried when it happened. She describes being put in a small group that stayed together for the whole event and cheered each other on.

First-timers go to learn. On Facebook, the handlers posting about their first Open mostly say the same thing: they went with no expectations and came home with a list of things to train. One brought a young dog that had only run at two local UKI trials and called the week an agility boot camp. Another said the event is hard on the nerves, and that making “have fun” the only goal is what got her through the five days.

The courses are long and hard. Both of those accounts say so. The finals often ran past 250 yards, and even the professionals had trouble getting through some of them.

The days are long too. Darcy Ernat, who ran the 2022 Open, described it as a marathon. Course walks started at 7 in the morning, the first dogs ran at 8, and finals could go until 9 or 10 at night. She stayed half an hour away and said she’d stay on site the next time, so she and her dogs could get more rest.

In person. The Jacksonville Equestrian Center has described the Open as open to the public and free to watch, and the 2025 event welcomed spectators. If you’re curious and live close enough, that’s an easy way to see it before you enter. Check with UKI for the current year first.

From home. 4LeggedFlix films the Open, and the 2026 event is already on its events list. In 2025 it offered a stream during the event and videos afterward. The price for 2026 wasn’t posted yet when this was written.

If you’d like to see the kind of courses to expect, UKI posts sample courses from each year’s judges on its US Open page.

The 2027 UKI US Open is November 17 to 21. UKI hasn’t published the 2027 rules yet, so the best guide is how 2026 went.

• Runs counted toward byes for a full year, from the end of September 2025 to the end of September 2026. If 2027 works the same way, the counting has already started.
• Entries opened on September 8 and closed on October 5, with no late entries.
• Bye forms were due on the same day entries closed.
• Crating requests opened on September 27 for one week, and spaces were given out by lottery.

The runs that count toward a Round 2 bye are regular clear rounds at local trials, so a dog that trials through the year may get most of the way there without doing anything special. The part that’s easy to miss is the pair of Agility and Jumping clear rounds on the same day.

UKI posts the dates and news on its US Open page, and the premium and bye tracker on the 2026 documents page. Fees, classes, and bye rules are set fresh each year, so read the current premium before you enter.