NCTA is pleased to announce that the 2026 National Collegiate and High School Taekwondo Championships will be held on Friday, April 24 through Sunday, April 26 at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at Woollen Gymnasium, hosted by the Carolina Taekwondo Club. This event is planned to be a 10.0 USATKD sanctioned event for the collegiate championship divisions, with those collegiate championship divisions also serving as a qualifier for the USATKD National Championships analogous to the USATKD State Championships.

The tournament will begin with all collegiate and high school poomsae, breaking and demo team competition on Friday, all collegiate and high school championship individual sparring on Saturday, and the 3 v. 3 format NCTA Cup event on Sunday. As in past years, collegiate taekwondo clubs will vie for the chance to become national champions in the Overall (Brown & UT Austin defending champions), Black Belt (MIT & UC Davis defending champions) and Color belt (UT Austin defending champions) divisions. Those participating on Sunday will be competing to win the newly minted traveling NCTA Cup (Northeastern University defending champions).

Said NCTA President Dan Chuang, “NCTA has been consistently setting records for attendance each year for the past several years at our national events, and I expect these championships to be no different. In particular, NCTA now sanctions well over 10 collegiate tournaments per year, so we expect that momentum to carry through to our national championships. I can’t wait to see all of the athletes competing with pride representing their colleges.”

As announced earlier, the 2026 NCTA Team Trials for the FISU America Games will be a separate event held on April 3 in conjunction with the CUTA California State Championships, and should not be confused with the 2026 National Collegiate and High School Championships.

Information will be posted as it becomes available on the NCTA Championships page.