Each year in November, IOF Foot Orienteering Commission invites the event advisers for a seminar to support them in their work with IOF events throughout the work. This year was no exception – like in 2024, around 70 foot orienteering event advisers took part in the 2025 edition, that was held online during the weekend.
Since orienteering is a true global sport, participants from 5 continents were present and to try to not be too tough on anyone, the seminar had a morning session on Thursday 15th November and an afternoon session on Sunday the 16th November. This would also allow the most active European participants to both do an afternoon exercise on the Saturday and a morning exercise on the Sunday before coming back to the computer.
For those who would like to see recordings of the presentations, they are available here in IOFs High Level Event YouTube site. If you would like to only study the slides, they are found here in IOF Web Page. Everyone with interest in organising events are encouraged to study the material.
Experiences from EYOC, JWOC and World Cup
And there is a lot of good stuff to study. As has now been kind of a tradition, IOF WOC Project Manager, Áron Less from Hungary managed a presentation where the Senior Event Advisers of EYOC, JWOC and the three World Cup rounds were asked to present selected issues from the events in 2025 and what could be learned from them – before Áron presented important learnings from this year’s World Orienteering Championships.
Then Foot Orienteering Commissions WRE responsible, David Roach, provided the Event advisers with a checklist for what to look for in their daily work with World Ranking Events. Following this, IOF CEO Henrik Eliasson, among other things, presented the new exciting Gold World Ranking Event concept that will kick off at the Portugal O-Meeting in February.
The start of the Sunday session was a feast for the sprint enthusiasts. EOC course setter Fabien Pasquasy showed what was behind the scene of the highly praised individual sprint courses in Lier in Belgium. Especially the use of a Geographical Information System to manage taping, guards and gates was listened to with great enthusiasm.
Then Daniel Wolf from Czech Republic and IOFs Sprint Specialist Team guided the participants through a session with evaluation of the complexity of legs in sprint courses. From being very sprint specialised, IOF Secretary General, Sondre Sandre Gullord, took the audience back to the impact from the World around us when giving a status for the work to implement IOFs Heat Policy.
The last presentation of the day was given by IOF Rules Commission Chair, Dr. David Rosen introducing the rules updates for 2026 along with a guidance as to where to find useful information in IOFs web page.
Finally, Foot Orienteering Commission chair, Helge Lang Pedersen, brought the attention of the audience to the IOF High Level Event Seminar in Vilnius, 7th and 8th February 2026. The invitation is available here: Invitation to IOF High Level Event Seminar 2026
The links
Recordings of presentations in Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPkGy7X1239Lo2MVBJZ_oyomOdujOlBNI
Slides in orienteering.sport: https://orienteering.sport/orienteering/internal/event-advising/footo-event-adviser-clinics/