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Sports

Shooting sport

Eight finalists start again from zero and the lowest drops out every few shots: shooting's finals are easy to follow once you know how a shot is scored.

A shooting sport evening

One path through the page, in order. Nothing is saved: it is only the order of this page's parts.

  1. Get it: how it works, in about 2 minutes.
  2. A final to watch: Livestream - 10m Air Rifle Women Final - ISSF World Cup Rifle/Pistol, Cairo, EGY 2026, on ISSF - International Shooting Sport Federation's own channel, played in YouTube's player on its page.
  3. The videogames: others about shooting sport.

Get it

Answered from this page's own claims, words and competitions, word for word, with their sources. Nothing about your question is kept.

New to shooting about 2 minutes

What you are watching

  • Olympic shooting has 15 events, five each in rifle, pistol and shotgun.26
  • Rifle and pistol athletes aim at a fixed target of rings: the centre ring scores 10 and the outer ring 1. The rapid-fire pistol target has only rings 5 to 10.21
  • Electronic targets can split each ring into tenths, so a shot in the 10 is worth from 10.0 to 10.9: 10.9 is the most a single shot can score.15

Trap and skeet

  • Shotgun athletes fire at clay discs 110 mm across thrown into the air. A target counts as hit when at least one visible piece breaks off it.12
  • In trap the targets fly away from a trench in front of the athletes, set to carry 76 metres. Each athlete moves along five stations, 25 targets a round, and may fire twice at a target in qualification but only once in the final.18
  • In skeet the targets cross in front of the athlete from two houses, a high one and a low one, singly or two at a time, from eight stations, with one shot per target. The gun is held low until the target appears, up to three seconds after the call.129

How an event is won

  • The best eight from qualification go to the final, where everyone starts again from zero.12
  • A final is a knock-out: at set points the lowest-ranked finalist goes out, until the last two decide gold and silver.21
  • The 10 m air rifle and air pistol finals have 24 shots: two series of five in 250 seconds each, then single shots in 50 seconds each, with one finalist out every two shots from the 12th.1

What to watch for

  • In the 25 m rapid fire pistol final, each series is one shot at each of five targets in four seconds, and only a shot worth 9.7 or more counts as a hit.1
  • In shotgun finals the clay targets are filled with powder, so a hit shows as a puff that referees and spectators can see.21
Following it about 4 minutes

From qualification to the final

  • Qualification is 60 shots in 10 m air rifle and 10 m air pistol. In 50 m rifle 3 positions it is 20 shots in each position, always kneeling, then prone, then standing.1
  • The 25 m events are 60 shots in two stages of 30. Men's rapid fire is shot in series of five in 8, 6 and 4 seconds; the women's 25 m pistol has a precision stage, five shots in 240 seconds a series, then a rapid-fire stage with 3 seconds for each shot.1
  • In qualification only air rifle is scored in tenths; the other Olympic rifle and pistol events count whole rings. All rifle and pistol finals use tenths, except the 25 m pistol finals, which count hits.1

The finals, event by event

  • The 50 m rifle 3 positions final has 35 shots: ten kneeling and ten prone in 22 minutes, then standing. Two finalists go out after 30 shots, then one after every shot.1
  • The 25 m pistol finals count hits, not points. The men's rapid fire final is eight four-second series, with the bottom two out after three series and then one per series; the women's final is ten series, and a hit there must be worth 10.2 or more.1
  • Trap finals last up to 30 targets and skeet finals up to 36. A tie for any place from third to eighth goes to the finalist ranked higher in qualification; a tie for gold goes to a shoot-off.1

Mixed teams

  • A mixed team is one man and one woman from the same nation, their scores added together. In the 10 m events each fires 30 qualification shots; in the final of the top four teams, the fourth team goes out after 18 shots each, the bronze is decided after 21 and gold after 24.1
  • At Paris 2024 the three mixed events were 10 m air rifle, 10 m air pistol and skeet; skeet had replaced Tokyo 2020's mixed trap. The rules allow either skeet or trap as the Olympic shotgun mixed event.71

The season

  • World Cups are held every year, in stages hosted by member federations. The World Championship for all events comes every four years, two years after each Olympic Games; the 2026 rifle, pistol and shotgun World Championship is in Doha, 1 to 14 November.24
  • The year ends with the World Cup Final: a gold medal at one of the year's World Cups earns a place, as do the top two of the World Cup ranking. The 2026 final is in Rome, 3 to 8 December.34

Disciplines and Olympic events

Rifle: 10 m air rifle
Fired standing at 10 metres with a 4.5 mm air rifle: 60 shots in qualification and 24 in the final.1
Rifle: 50 m rifle 3 positions
A 5.6 mm (.22) rifle at 50 metres, fired kneeling, prone and standing: 20 shots in each position in qualification and 35 in the final.12
Pistol: 10 m air pistol
Fired standing, with one hand, at 10 metres: 60 shots in qualification and 24 in the final.12
Pistol: 25 m rapid fire pistol (men)
One shot at each of five targets in a series of 8, 6 or 4 seconds: 60 shots in qualification and 40 in the final.1
Pistol: 25 m pistol (women)
Thirty precision shots and thirty rapid-fire shots in qualification, then 50 shots in the final.1
Shotgun: trap
Clay targets thrown away from a trench in front of the athletes: 125 targets in qualification and up to 30 in the final.18
Shotgun: skeet
Clay targets from a high and a low house, crossing in front of eight stations: 125 targets in qualification and up to 36 in the final.12
Mixed team
One man and one woman from the same nation; the Olympic mixed events are 10 m air rifle, 10 m air pistol and one shotgun event, skeet or trap.17
The words
Qualification
The first stage: every athlete fires the full course of fire, and the best eight go to the final.1
Final
The last stage, in which the eight best start again from zero to decide the places and medals.1
Inner ten
A smaller ring inside the 10; in qualification the athlete with more inner tens wins a tie.15
Decimal scoring
Scoring each ring in tenths, so a shot in the 10 is worth from 10.0 to 10.9.1
Sighting shots
Practice shots fired before the shots that count.1
Match shots
All the shots that count in an athlete's score.1
Series
A run of shots fired together within a stage, such as five shots in 250 seconds in a 10 m final.1
Stage
A part of an event: 3 positions has one stage for each position, and the women's 25 m pistol a precision and a rapid-fire stage.1
Electronic scoring target (EST)
A target that scores each shot itself and shows where it hit and its value on a monitor at the athlete's firing point.1
Ready position
In the 25 m rapid-fire events, the pistol arm held pointing down at no more than 45 degrees until the series starts.1
Double
In skeet, two targets thrown at the same moment, one from each house.19
High house and low house
The two skeet houses at either end of the semicircle of stations; one throws its targets from higher up than the other.92
Flash target
A clay target filled with coloured powder, used in finals so that a hit is easy to see.21
Shoot-off
Extra shots or targets fired only by tied athletes until the tie is broken.1

Sources

Facts from the governing body's pages are stated in this site's own words. The claims that cite Wikipedia are adapted (changed) from the cited articles, and those claims are offered under CC BY-SA 4.0.

  1. ISSF Rule Book 2026: Official Statutes, Rules and Regulations, Edition 2025 (Third Print 10/2026), effective 19 October 2026 (6 General Technical Rules, 7 Rifle, 8 Pistol, 9 Shotgun), International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) (The official rules; nothing of it is copied here), read 2026-11-05
  2. Championships, International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) (© ISSF; facts stated in this site's own words), read 2026-11-05
  3. ISSF World Cup Final, International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) (© ISSF; facts stated in this site's own words), read 2026-11-05
  4. Events & Results, International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) (© ISSF; facts stated in this site's own words), read 2026-11-05
  5. ISSF shooting events, Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), read 2026-11-05
  6. Shooting sports, Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), read 2026-11-05
  7. Shooting at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), read 2026-11-05
  8. Trap shooting, Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), read 2026-11-05
  9. Skeet shooting, Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), read 2026-11-05
  10. shooting sports (Q206989), Wikidata (CC0), read 2026-11-05

Watch

From the channels of shooting sport's own rights holders: bodies whose Wikidata record names the sport, each checked by the rights holders' rule. Their videos play in YouTube's player, with YouTube's ads, on each video's own page once you press Play.

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  • Bangladesh Shooting Sport Federation's channel appears here once its check completes.

Starting within 48 hours

Later

3 of the sport's videos and broadcasts are not shown where you are: their rights holders limit them to other countries on YouTube, and YouTube's region for each one decides.

From Asian Shooting Confederation, International Shooting Sport Federation, KOREA SHOOTING FEDERATION, National Rifle Association, Schweizer Schiesssportverband, International University Sports Federation (its shooting sport videos, by their own titles) and XVIII Juegos Bolivarianos (its shooting sport videos, by their own titles).

From the world's archives: search their films for “shooting sport”, which finds the films whose records hold the word, as each archive files them.

Play: the videogames

None of the site's own games is about shooting sport.

Elsewhere

Videogames whose Wikidata record names shooting sport as their sport or subject, as their records state them (read 2026-11-05). Information only: each links to its official page where its record names one. They are not played here.

Follow: what's on next

No competition to come is dated yet.

Later, dates to come

The full calendar, national competitions included, is the ISSF's calendar of competitions.