The Boulder qualification began at the IFSC Climbing World Championships 2025 in Seoul, South Korea. For women, Japan’s Ito Futaba scoring a near perfect score with 149.9 points. Due to so many ties, there will be 25 climbers advancing to semis, instead of the usual 24. Of the 72 climbers that started, Ito leads the way into the semi-final sharing the top spot with Israel’s Tamar Cohen with the climbers split into two groups. Ito’s only blemish on her scorecard came on the very first boulder when she took two attempts to top, but form then on out it was flashes all the way to first position.

Five climbers topped all five boulders with Ito and Cohen sharing first and Slovenia’s Janja Garnbret, France’s Oriane Bertone and Great Britain’s Emma Edwards all sharing third. Team Japan takes the honours once more for the most climbers in the semi-final with Ito and Nonaka Miho in sixth position among five climbers. France were one behind with four climbers including Bertone.

For the men, 90 climbers starting, but only 24 advanced to the semis – see the full list below. With so many competitors the climbers were split into two groups, and it was Team Japan who led the way in both after five boulders were completed. No one in either group got more than three tops, and it was Anraku Sorato and Narasaki Meichi who posted that score for joint-first position.

The home crowd were in good spirits as home nation climber Lee Dohyun progressed in third spot alongside Olympic champion Toby Roberts. The British climber has spoken about mental resilience all season after that victory at Paris 2024, and he needed it again after missing out on the lead semi-finals yesterday: “It’s been up and down, basically the whole season really, but not making Lead semi-finals I am really disappointed with as I am more of a Lead climber, but to bounce back and make semi-finals in Boulder – I’m pretty psyched.”

Talking specifically about his round Roberts said: “It was quite a hard round; there weren’t so many tops. I was happy with slab and one of the only tops on that I think so that kind of got me into the semi-final.” Roberts was in fact the only climber to top the slab as the majority of climbers failed to even make the zone.

Needing his slab strength and mental resilience, Roberts aims for a better finish to his World Championships than how it started: “I need to reset and focus and try to get into the Boulder final. The Lead didn’t go how I wanted, but I can’t let that affect my Boulder competition.” Full results here.

Women Advancing to Semis:

Israel (ISR): 2 climbers (Tamar Cohen, Ayala Kerem)
Japan (JPN): 4 climbers (Futaba Ito, Miho Nonaka, Mao Nakamura, Mashiro Kuzuu)
France (FRA): 3 climbers (Oriane Bertone, Zélia Avezou, Agathe Calliet)
Great Britain (GBR): 3 climbers (Emma Edwards, Erin McNeice, Zoe Peetermans)
Slovenia (SLO): 2 climbers (Janja Garnbret, Jennifer Eucharia Buckley)
United States (USA): 2 climbers (Annie Sanders, Melina Costanza)
Italy (ITA): 1 climber (Camilla Moroni)
Austria (AUT): 1 climber (Flora Oblasser)
China (CHN): 1 climber (Yuetong Zhang)
Belgium (BEL): 1 climber (Chloe Caulier)
South Korea (KOR): 1 climber (Chaehyun Seo)
Germany (GER): 1 climber (Anna Maria Apel)
Australia (AUS): 1 climber (Oceania Mackenzie)

Men Advancing to Semis:

Japan (JPN): 4 (Sorato Anraku, Meichi Narasaki, Tomoa Narasaki, Yuji Fujiwaki)
Great Britain (GBR): 4 (Toby Roberts, Jack MacDougall, Hamish McArthur, Dayan Akhtar)
France (FRA): 3 (Sam Avezou, Samuel Richard, Mejdi Schalck)
United States (USA): 2 (Colin Duffy, Ben Hanna)
Belgium (BEL): 2 (Hannes Van Duysen, Nicolas Collin)
South Korea (KOR): 1 (Dohyun Lee)
Bulgaria (BUL): 1 (Nikolay Rusev)
China (CHN): 1 (Yufei Pan)
Austria (AUT): 1 (Jan-Luca Posch)
Israel (ISR): 1 (Tomer Yakobovitch)
Czech Republic (CZE): 1 (Lukas Mokrolusky)
Germany (GER): 1 (Thorben Perry Bloem)
Spain (ESP): 1 (Guillermo Peinado Franganillo)
Slovenia (SLO): 1 (Anze Peharc)