Since 2021, a dancer can compete in both roles at the same WSDC event as long as the two roles are entered in different Skill Level divisions — points are counted separately for each role. Since 2025, the second role can be danced up to two levels below the primary (for example, if your primary role is Advanced, you can enter Novice as your second role). For WSDC this is more than a formality: more divisions available per dancer means more competitive dances per event and, consequently, stronger motivation for dancers to travel and compete.
Before 2021, around 1% of all Skill Level points came from the second role; today it's about 9%. In Novice Leader in 2025, one out of every five points was earned by dancers whose primary role is follower. The second role is no longer an exotic exception and it visibly reshapes the balance in the junior divisions.
The second-role rule changes have clearly reshaped modern WCS and the very idea of "traditional" roles in the dance. But who is using this opportunity more successfully, and what does it mean for the future of WCS? Let's look at the numbers in the WSDC Points Registry.
Primary role — the one in which a dancer holds more points in a higher division. Second role, correspondingly, is the one with fewer points.
How the rules about the second role have evolved
The ability to dance both roles has long existed, but until 2020 the Skill Level rules enforced a strict "one role, one event" principle. After 2020 the second-role rules evolved in three key waves. Understanding this context matters for reading the charts and numbers below.
The 2020–2021 pandemic didn't only accelerate the evolution of the second-role rules; it dramatically changed participation itself — event and dancer counts fell by several multiples. Readers should treat 2020–2021 in the charts below with caution: those years are anomalous across every metric. Recovery to pre-pandemic levels happened by 2023, and the second-role transformation overlaps with that recovery.
For a broader view of how WSDC rules have changed over time, see our dedicated article.
How the rules changed the distribution of points
Before 2021, the share of points earned in the second role never exceeded 1% of all Skill Level points (Newcomer, Novice, Intermediate, Advanced, All-Stars). After 2021 it spiked and by 2025 it reached about 9%. The second role moved from rarity to a meaningful share of the points system.
Key asymmetry: in 2025, dancers whose primary role is follower earned more than 14% of the points awarded in leader divisions, while primary-role leaders earned only 4% of the points awarded in follower divisions. Primary-role followers do notably better as leaders than primary-role leaders do as followers.
Below is an interactive chart showing the year-over-year change in the share of points earned as second role. You can also filter by division and switch between relative share and absolute counts.
The share of points earned as second role is highest in the junior divisions and in the leader competitions. In Newcomer Leader, a quarter of all 2025 points went to dancers whose primary role is follower. In Novice Leader and Intermediate Leader this figure is 20% and 11% respectively. In the follower competitions at the same division levels the second-role share is smaller, but has also grown to 4–8%. In Advanced and All-Stars the second role remains rare — those divisions are still entered mainly by primary-role dancers.
How the rules changed transitions between divisions
For this article, a "transition between divisions" means the moment when a dancer earns their first points in a given "division + role" pair. It's a debatable working definition, but it captures the actual inflow into each division.
The overall picture is similar: before 2021, the share of transitions happening as second role was 1–2%, but by 2022 it had already jumped to 13% and has stayed around that level through 2025 with minor fluctuations.
Below is an interactive chart showing the year-over-year change in the share of second-role transitions out of the total. You can also view the data by division and in absolute counts, for both the second and the primary role.
One might expect that more experienced followers joining leader divisions would "squeeze out" primary-role leader transitions. The data does not show that: the number of primary-role leader transitions has grown steadily after 2021 (from 634 in 2022 to 1600 in 2025). The second role is being added to the system, not replacing it.
What about the balance of primary-role transitions
As we've seen, the overall volume of transitions was not really affected by the second-role rules. A different question is the balance of primary roles relative to one another: how many new leaders transition for every hundred new followers, looking only at primary-role transitions. It's informative to track this metric year over year across Novice, Intermediate, Advanced and All-Stars.
Metric formula
primary-role follower transitions
A steady decline is visible here. In 2018–2019, across all divisions combined, there were about 90 leader transitions for every 100 follower transitions; after 2021 the ratio dropped by roughly 16% and has stayed around 75 leaders per 100 followers in recent years.
By division the picture is uneven. The sharpest decline is in Novice: from about 90 in 2018–2019 to below 70 after the rule change. Intermediate also dropped, though less abruptly. In the senior divisions (Advanced and All-Stars) the dynamic is different: transition volumes there are lower, and the same shift does not repeat as clearly as in the junior divisions — the picture looks more like stability or local fluctuation than a steady trend.
Attributing this shift directly and only to the second-role rules would be premature: the ratio is also influenced by the composition of newcomers, the event calendar and regional shifts.
Overall, this trend is tentatively explained by the fact that primary-role leaders find it harder to compete for finals against second-role leaders — the latter are already seasoned dancers who don't need to relearn the fundamentals of the dance.
Where could we be in 10 years
As we've seen, the largest impact of the second-role rule change has been on leaders in Novice and Intermediate, so it's worth asking where the current trend leads if it continues.
Below are forecast models through 2036 for the share of points in Novice Leader and Intermediate Leader that would be earned by dancers whose primary role is follower — assuming today's rules logic is preserved.
Forecast methodology
- Fact base: actual values for 2021–2026. The 2026 value is incomplete (the season is in progress), which increases upper-scenario uncertainty.
- Forecast scenarios:
- linear trend;
- inertial growth (compound annual growth rate, CAGR, on the actual values, capped at 15% per year);
- conservative scenario (50% of the linear trend).
- Presentation: each chart shows the linear trend and a forecast range defined by the minimum and maximum across the three scenarios (individual scenarios are not plotted). The upper bound of the range is the model ceiling at the maximum allowed pace, not a central estimate.
In the central (linear) scenario, by 2036 the share of points earned as second role reaches ~46% in Novice Leader and ~43% in Intermediate Leader. In the upper-bound scenario (inertial growth capped at 15% per year) it reaches ~79% and ~64% respectively; this is not a central estimate, it's a stress test of the current pace. In the conservative lower bound it's about 32% and 30%.
Even the central scenario — in which almost half of the points in the junior leader divisions come from primary-role followers — noticeably shifts the familiar patterns of dancing and teaching. This is not a prediction, it's a reminder: if the current pace holds, in ten years the junior leader divisions may no longer be what they were designed to be — an "entry point" for aspiring leaders.
Key takeaways
Second-role dancing is no longer an exotic exception. It is embedded into the system and is reshaping the leader/follower balance in the junior divisions — the very place where new dancers enter the scene.
- 1% → 9%. That's the share of Skill Level points now earned as second role (vs. about 1% before 2021).
- 14% vs. 4%. In 2025, primary-role followers earned 14% of all points awarded in leader divisions — they perform visibly better as leaders than primary-role leaders do as followers (4%).
- 90 → 75. Per 100 new followers in Novice–All-Stars, there were around 90 new leaders in 2018–2019 and about 75 today. The sharpest drop is in Novice: 91 → 72.
- Primary-role transitions haven't fallen. The second role adds to the system without replacing it: the number of new primary-role leaders has been growing after 2021.
- Ten-year horizon. In the central scenario, by 2036 the share of points earned as second role reaches ~46% in Novice Leader and ~43% in Intermediate Leader. Upper-bound scenarios go to 79% and 64% — not a "prediction", but a stress test of today's pace.
For a clearer view, we built the Secondary-Role Points Distribution by Year and Country dashboard, where you can explore how secondary-role points are distributed across countries and years for 2023-2026 (with 2026 shown as a live partial slice).
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