This is an update of last year’s post. There are things I’d like to explore further but… what would YOU like to know? I hope you’ll weigh in!
“Trial” is as defined by the AKC, an individually-numbered events, so this does not equate to “Weekends” or “Days.” A steady increase continues.
As of January 20, 2026, 505 Clubs self-report on the AKC Directory that they are approved to offer Scent Work trials. 351 different clubs offered at least one trial in 2025, so about 70% of approved clubs offered a trial during the year. During 2025, 39 clubs offered a trial for the first time ever, but 113 clubs that had offered Scent Work before did not offer a trial. California has the most approved clubs with 78 followed by Florida with 27. Wyoming is the only state without an AKC club approved to hold Scent Work trials, although the Icelandic Sheepdog Association of America held trials in Gillette, WY, in 2024 and 2025 and the Bouvier des Flandres Club, Inc. held trials in Cheyenne, WY in 2025. Unsurprisingly, the most trials held by any one club was 12, which is the yearly limit set by the AKC, and several clubs met that maximum.
While the AKC does not record or track non-qualifying runs for a dog, they do report the number of Starters per class. They also report Number of Competitors and Number of Entrants per trial, which would seem to be straightforward — the Number of Competitors should equal the sum of all the Starters and the Number of Entrants should always be equal or greater than Number of Competitors — but those relationships don’t always hold true. So we just look at the total number of Starters.
In this graph, the yellow line shows the number of different dogs competing during each year. The blue values show the number of dogs that got their first ever qualifying score during that year, and the green values show the number of dogs that earned their most recent qualifying score during that year. This would seem to indicate that attrition trends similarly to the total number of competitors but that new entrants into the sport may be leveling off a bit — which seems counter-intuitive.
In 2025, 331 different judges were active in judging AKC Scent Work Trials.
The average number of trials per judge was almost exactly the same as for 2024, somewhere between 17 and 18 trials on average.
And the most trials judged by a single person during 2025 fell to just 94.
Largest Classes (All Years)
This year, all the biggest Master level classes definitely occurred at the AKC Scent Work Master National Championship, with 167 or 168 teams for the odor classes and 66 and 70 for the two Handler Discrimination classes.
Otherwise, the West Coast continues to dominate class size. The Odor Division largest classes have all been in California, and the Scent Work Club of the San Gabriel Foothills continues to break records. I think they’ve already done that for 2026 in some cases, too. BIG classes!
Largest Trial By Year
I was surprised! With the West Coast having so many huge classes, I thought they would, again, have the largest trial. But that honor went to… an Earthdog Club? Huge congrats to Greater Boston Area Earthdog Club! They had eight judges, four of whom were provisional, and it sounds like they had some environmental challenges (heat). Obviously, this doesn’t take the AKC Scent Work Master National Championship into consideration, but still a terrific accomplishment for a local Performance club!