Cal Expo will host ‘best athletes in the world’ starting tonight, X Games CEO says
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- Cal Expo will host the first stop of the new MoonPay X Games League this weekend.
- X Games CEO Jeremy Bloom said qualifying is harder than for the Olympics.
- Four teams of five women and five men will compete across three events for $500,000.
The first thing X Games CEO Jeremy Bloom wanted to tell the 50,000 fans he expects to flood Cal Expo for the first-ever Sacramento games this weekend might come as a shock.
Qualifying for the X Games, Bloom said, is significantly harder than qualifying for the Olympics, because only between six and eight athletes compete in any given event.
“That’s just math,” Bloom said Friday in an introductory news conference for the Sacramento X Games, which begin late that afternoon. “This truly is the best athletes in the world.”
Beyond the three-day event being the first X Games in Sacramento, the games also hold added significance as the first-ever stop on the new MoonPay X Games League.
In the new league, four teams of five women and five men will compete across three events for a $500,000 prize, unlike than the individual, isolated format of prior X Games. On top of the 40 drafted athletes, nearly 50 free agents will also compete at Cal Expo from Friday to Sunday, hoping for individual glory and the chance to make it onto a roster by the end of the season.
“To (have) the first stop on this in Sacramento is such a big deal,” Mike Testa, president and CEO of Visit Sacramento, said in the news conference. “We’re grateful to have you here. The weather is going to be perfect this weekend. It’s going to be a phenomenal time. Thank you for trusting Sacramento.”
Previous concerns about X Games having to contend with extreme heat in Northern California have disappeared, with forecasts topping out in the low 80s Friday through Sunday as Sacramento enjoys an unseasonably cool end of June.
Tickets are still available on the X Games website, ranging from single-day viewing beginning at $19 to three-day premium tickets with access to all three music performances — Kaskade on Friday and Mustard and Subtronics on Saturday — for more than $400.
How will the format work?
Athletes will compete in 18 different events across the three days, beginning with men’s BMX park at 5 p.m. Friday and concluding with women’s skateboard vertical at 6:45 p.m. Sunday.
Events kick off in the late morning Saturday and Sunday, with competition ending about 8 p.m. each of the three days.
The full schedule of events and when they will take place can be found on the X Games’ Sacramento website, xgames.com/events/sacramento-2026.
Most events involve skateboards or BMX bikes, with male and female athletes competing separately.
Athletes will perform routes involving jumps, flips, twists and more in park events and will do the same through city-inspired tracks in street contests.
There is also the vertical, which sees competitors go up and down a halfpipe performing tricks and flips at the top; and dirt courses, where athletes fly over large dirt hills while performing tricks.
There are also two motocross events, though they are not divided by gender and will not be counted as part of the team format.
Many events have best trick variants, where athletes perform just their most difficult stunt, or are exclusively competed in this style, like the two motocross events.
Points are awarded to the four clubs — representing New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo and São Paulo, Brazil — based on the placement of that team’s competitor at any given event, or the best-performing one if multiple from one team are entered in the same event. Podium finishes are rewarded, though officials said they made the scoring to “create the most competition possible.”
The team with the most points after the three events will win the grand prize at the championship from July 24-26 in New Orleans.
Free agents, Bloom said, provide extra intrigue as they try to prove themselves to the teams that didn’t select them, hoping to earn a spot if an athlete is injured or when the league hopes to expand its team lineup in the coming years.
“I think there’s going to be some really cool history that happens here in Sacramento, where a free agent is going to win and look around like, ‘What’s wrong with these GMs?’” Bloom said. “There’s a chip on their shoulder.”
