XENOM, the Decathlon of Fitness, Launches in London

XENOM, the Decathlon of Fitness, a 10-event, stadium-scale global fitness competition, will hold its first edition in London this weekend.

The competition, which standardizes and scores total human performance on a universal points-based index, is designed to create a first repeatable global benchmark for athletes. Open to everyone, it tests athletes’ endurance, gymnastic ability, weightlifting, and combined metabolic conditioning.

XENOM secured a $15 million investment from DreamWorks Co-Founder and former Walt Disney Studios Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg and former Dropbox Chief Financial Officer Sujay Jaswa. It launched at the Dallas Cowboys training facility in the United States in June.

XENOM says that it fills a gap in the market by offering gym-goers and athletes who train in gyms and garages across the world the opportunity to perform and compete against each other.

Around 2,000 amateur athletes are set to participate in London, including elite competitors such as Sam Briggs, a CrossFit champion who was once named the Fittest Woman on Earth, and Kelly Friel, who secured fourth place in the 2026 CrossFit Games.

Events

The 10 events that make up the Decathlon of Fitness — with five taking place on August 29 and the others on August 30 — are:

• Event 1: 1RM Snatch
• Event 2: Ascending Ladder – Wall Walk, Rope Climb (Amrap; stands for “as many reps as possible”)
• Event 3: 60 Seconds Max Cal Echo Bike
• Event 4: Barbell Cycling
• Event 5: 2k Echo Ski + 3k Run
• Event 6: T2B, DB Hang Snatch, MU
• Event 7: 5RM Rhino Pull
• Event 8: Amrap – Burpees, Echo Ski, Echo Bike
• Event 9: Heavy Clean Ladder
• Event 10: HSPU, C2B, DB Lunge

Meanwhile, a standalone 2k Echo Ski + 3k run race will take place on August 30 for non-competitors who still want to experience the floor.

Background

Keith Barlow, the founder and CEO of XENOM, is a longstanding member of the global CrossFit and hybrid fitness community, training and competing in the industry. He also previously supported the brand expansion of HYROX alongside Co-Founders Christian Toetzke and three-time Olympic field hockey medalist Moritz Fürste, scaling participant volume from 500 athletes to over 1.6 million participants globally.

Those experiences gave Barlow an insight into the rapid commercialization of the space and what investors are now looking for in the next wave of fitness competition properties.

“The functional fitness community in the UK and specifically London has exploded over the past decade, but there’s been no consistent way to benchmark progress or compare performance across different competitions,” said Barlow. “We’re providing that standard — a repeatable test that athletes can use to track improvement season after season.

“We see an incredible opportunity to build a global competition which reenergizes and meets the huge unmet demand from people training in gyms around the world. We will allow our competitors to compete on the world’s biggest stages and demonstrate the incredible physical capacity they have built in the gyms for their friends, family, and peers to see. XENOM will be the defining cultural platform for high performance and the pursuit of elite fitness.

“There is a really compelling case for investors looking at this space. When you look at the value placed on successful IP-led events business, you can see that a long-term vision and the ability to deploy capital smartly and tap into consumers who are deeply passionate about their sport are highly valued across the market. It’s sector agnostic and thematically consistent, great brands like IRONMAN, F1, or HYROX all represent the same thing, shared passion and great consumer product, we represent that same opportunity in our space.”

“There are very few global household name brands left to build,” said Jaswa. “Fitness has become a sport category with true mainstream reach, and we believe XENOM will be the benchmark for elite fitness. We are excited to bring our network and operating experience to scale the series to the world’s best athletes in every geography.”

2026 Schedule

The inaugural XENOM, the Decathlon of Fitness was held at the Ford Center at The Star (headquarters of the Dallas Cowboys) in Frisco, Texas, on June 27–28, 2026. The event featured over 400 competitors and a prize pool of $75,000.

After the event in London, the final XENOM competition in 2026 will be at the Miami Beach Convention Center in Miami Beach, Florida, on December 19–20, 2026.

XENOM expects to stage between eight and 10 events in 2027, as well as launch new sporting formats. Competitions are already scheduled in Malaga, Spain, and Paris, France, in Q1 next year, with the exact dates to be confirmed in due course.