The 2026–27 ISU Junior Grand Prix series moves to Europe for the first time this season when the Riga Cup opens at the Volvo sporta centrs in Jurmala, Latvia, on Thursday 27 August. The event runs through Saturday 29 August and is the second of seven qualifier stops ahead of the Grand Prix Final in Chongqing in December.
Xi'an Sets the Template: AIN Sweeps Gold, China Takes Four Medals
The series opener in Xi'an, China (19–22 August) immediately established a pattern familiar from recent seasons. Individual Neutral Athletes (AIN) — skaters formerly representing Russia or Belarus who now compete under a neutral designation — collected all four discipline golds. Lev Lazarev won the men's singles title with a free-skate total of 163.45 points, edging New Zealand's Yanhao Li (147.30) by more than 16 points, while Japan's Daiya Ebihara claimed bronze with 146.47 after recovering from fourth place in the short programme. In women's singles, Sofiia Dzepka (AIN) led from start to finish for a combined total of 213.28 points; Chinese skaters Yuxuan Liu (189.57) and Shuxian Jin (188.80) took silver and bronze, with Jin climbing from eighth after the short programme to reach the podium.
AIN's Polina Shesheleva and Egor Karnaukhov won pairs with 191.84 points, ahead of two Chinese teams — Yuxuan Chen and Yinbo Dong (157.52), and Chen Ling Wang and Yong Zheng Chen (134.50). In ice dance, Mariia Fefelova and Artem Valov (AIN) posted 99.06 points for the free dance gold, narrowly ahead of Italy's Zoe Bianchi and Daniel Basile (96.29), with Summer Homick and Nicholas Buelow of Canada in third (87.74). China's four-medal tally — two silvers and two bronzes across pairs and women's singles — was its strongest result at a JGP opening event in several years.
Riga's Programme and What Changes
The Riga Cup features all four disciplines — men's singles, women's singles, pairs, and ice dance — a distinction that matters given the JGP system's structure. Rather than open entries, the ISU assigns athletes to specific events across the circuit, meaning the Riga field will introduce a largely fresh wave of competitors rather than a direct rematch of the Xi'an field. Each skater may enter a maximum of two events per season, and the top six finishers per discipline at each event accumulate qualification points toward the Chongqing Final.
The women's short programme begins on Thursday 27 August at 10:45 local time (East European Summer Time). Pairs short programme and the ice dance rhythm dance follow on Friday 28 August, with all free skates and final standings determined on Saturday 29 August. The venue, Volvo sporta centrs in Jurmala — a Baltic resort city roughly 25 kilometres west of central Riga — operates an ISU-certified ice sheet and has previously hosted junior-level international competitions.
Qualification Stakes and the Road to Chongqing
The ISU Junior Grand Prix Final takes place 10–13 December in Chongqing, China. Five further qualifier events follow Riga, including stops in Bangkok (2–5 September) and Ankara (16–19 September), with three additional locations through November. The Riga Cup is one of the few stops on the circuit that includes all four disciplines simultaneously, giving it particular weight in the ice dance and pairs qualification races where fewer total events are available.
The AIN quota system — which caps the number of neutral-flag athletes who can place in the top six per discipline per event — was a direct factor in shaping China's medal count at Xi'an and will remain a structural feature at every remaining stop through to Chongqing. How the quota plays out at Riga will significantly affect the composition of December's Final field. Live results for each session will be published through the ISU's official scoring service from Thursday morning.