2026 Leaderboard: Week 1

Week One of the 2026 Nomad Rally saw a spectacular showcase of decentralized strategy, with several crews dropping straight into major backcountry miles while others systematically pick off localized objectives. Last year’s winner, Team 117 Lucas masterfully threaded high-value Overland Stages and localized activities together into a single, seamless logistics loop, racking up over 1,000 points in the opening days to claim the top spot on the leaderboard for this week. But rookie teams picked up the the next two slots. Team 109 Smith successfully banked their first two major Overland Stages, locking down second place. Right on their heels in third is another standout freshman crew, Team 112 Venrick, who bypassed the long-distance transits this week to execute a high-yield, rapid-fire blitz through the PhotoQuest board. A wave of other teams also secured heavy point stacks by sweeping up the highly accessible, early-season Photo Quests. And we are only seven days into a massive 10-week matrix. The beauty of this format is that a low position on the board right now means absolutely nothing. Several teams are just getting started. Many have yet to begin their Overland Stages — they have ten weeks to do the Stages. A few teams are in the middle of travel and others are still in their planning phases patiently dialing in their routing strategies at home. We will see a lot more adventures over the coming weeks. We were incredibly proud of how well the teams that completed the first Weekly Challenge, Responsible Land Use, did. Every single team crushed the Tread Lightly! and responsible land usage protocols, proving that our competitors respect the dirt as much as they do the drive. Lock it in, because Weekly Challenge #2 is about to drop, and it’s going to test their raw, old-school Topographic Map Reading skills to the absolute limit.