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ATHX Games chose New York to throw down its challenge to HYROX, launching its Strong New York debut on ground where PUMA-backed HYROX has built a 1.3 million-participant hybrid fitness audience. Backed by adidas, ATHX is testing whether it can carve out space in a category HYROX still dominates
When ATHX Games steps onto the floor at The Glasshouse on September 26 as part of the Strong New York fitness festival, the story is less about a fitness festival adding another activation and more about adidas approaching a market where HYROX has already established a substantial competitive fitness audience and where PUMA has become the category’s most visible brand partner, and doing it through deep integration with an emerging competition property positioned as an alternative to HYROX
Strong New York, founded in 2015, will host the New York debut of ATHX, the UK-born functional fitness competition that signed a multi-year global partnership with adidas, as it began an international expansion drive. Attendees will get a 45-minute preview of the format through a FitScore activation, which scores participants out of 100 across strength, endurance and metabolic conditioning testing, ahead of broader US expansion plans that already include Houston and Los Angeles
The format, in a nutshell
ATHX runs as a continuous 2.5-hour competition across six zones (warm-up, strength, refuel, endurance, recovery and a “MetCon X” segment). It tests a fixed slate of movements including strict press, squat, deadlift, rowing and sandbag work
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By the numbers: ATHX growth vs. HYROX scale
ATHX said its first full season, running from January through a December championship final, drew close to 6,000 athletes across six competitions. The 2026 calendar, its first with adidas backing, comprises 18 events across the UK, Europe and the United States, including debuts staged in Miami Beach in March and further US stops in Houston and Los Angeles
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HYROX, the Hamburg-born race format that combines running with functional stations, is projected to draw 1.3 million participants across more than 100 events in its 2025/26 season after a 74-event, 650,000-participant season the year before, and PUMA, its global partner since 2023, extended its exclusivity through 2030. That figure remains a fraction of HYROX’s scale
Hybrid fitness is becoming a brand battleground
HYROX has already proven that hybrid fitness can scale globally, giving PUMA one of the most visible positions in the category. adidas is now helping shape an emerging one. The ATHX partnership extends beyond event branding into participant activations, apparel integration, product testing environments and, according to one industry account, an experiential “Hybrid Hotel” concept staged in Milan in April 2026, alongside an on-floor FitCheck activation that rewarded competitors who wore adidas gear.
Whether ATHX can challenge HYROX’s scale will need years to reveal, but the partnership shows that hybrid fitness is increasingly being treated as a strategic battleground by major sporting goods brands
Hybrid race formats are taking over fitness festivals
For Strong New York, the ATHX tie-in is another proof of how hybrid competition formats are colonizing general-audience fitness festivals: this year’s edition also introduces a seven-discipline “Test of Strength & Longevity” powered by Concept2, with results tracked through a live leaderboard
The festival expects more than 5,000 attendees, 50 speakers and trainers and 100-plus wellness brands across a single day, a scale that makes it a meaningful proving ground for a competition format still building recognition on this side of the Atlantic. ATHX Semi-finals will take place in Los Angeles on November 7, and the 2026 Finals will happen over three days in Lisbon from November 27 to 29
FitnessBrands, technology and the new formats of sport
From training sportswear and wearables to connected home equipment and hybrid race formats,SGI Europe covers fitness through the lens of brands, retailers, and the product strategies that define the categor
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