Types of archery competition: target, indoor, field and 3D

Archery competitions fall into two broad families. In the first, target archery, you shoot on flat ground at fixed targets set at a distance announced before the event: outdoors in summer, indoors in winter. In the second you walk a course, usually through woodland, and at every target the face, the slope and often the distance change: this is field archery, shot at paper faces, and 3D, shot at animal targets. On the fringes there are rarer disciplines such as flight, where all that counts is how far the arrow goes. How the ranking is decided depends on the federation: at World Archery and FITARCO events a qualification round is followed by head-to-head matches, scored in sets for recurve and barebow and on cumulative score for compound, while at IFAA and FIARC events the archer who finishes the course with the highest total wins.

The two Italian federations match these two worlds. FITARCO is the national federation recognised by the Italian Olympic Committee and follows the rules of World Archery, the international federation that runs archery at the Olympic Games: its calendar includes target, indoor, field and 3D. FIARC, the Italian field archery federation, is Italy's member of the IFAA, the International Field Archery Association: within Italy it runs woodland competitions shot at animal-shaped targets, in four formats of its own, and its archers can compete at IFAA championships, which are shot over field, hunter and animal rounds, 3D and two indoor rounds. Below I describe the competitions of both worlds with the figures from the official rulebooks, and the documents I read, with their dates, are listed at the end.

Outdoor target archery

This is the discipline you see at the Olympics. The field is flat, there is a single shooting line and every target stands at the same distance. The qualification round is 72 arrows in ends of six (the rules also allow ends of three), and the distance depends on the bow and the age class: under World Archery Book 2, recurve shoots at 70 m on the 122 cm face, compound at 50 m on the 80 cm face and barebow at 50 m on the 122 cm face. For compound at international events the 80 cm face is cut down to its six central rings, from 5 to 10; at other events the organiser decides. Some age classes shoot shorter distances: 60 m for Under 18 and 50+ recurve, 40 m for Under 15 recurve and compound, and 30 m for Under 15 barebow.

The face has five colours, from the centre outwards gold, red, blue, black and white, and each colour is split into two rings of equal width: ten scoring zones, from 10 in the centre to 1 at the edge, each 6.1 cm wide on the 122 cm face. Inside the ten there is a smaller ring, marked as an X on the scorecard: it is worth ten like the rest of the zone, but it is used to break ties in the ranking. An arrow touching the line between two zones scores the higher value.

Shooting is timed. The World Archery rules allow 40 seconds per arrow, cut to 30 at World Ranking Events and wherever the organiser announces it in the invitation. An end of six arrows therefore lasts four minutes, or three with the shorter time.

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Indoor archery

In winter competitions move into sports halls. At World Archery and FITARCO events the standard distance is 18 m for every division, on the 40 cm face or on the triple face, three small faces arranged one above the other or in a triangle, each carrying only the 6 to 10 zones. In compound only the small inner ring scores 10, and the rest of the gold scores 9. On a triple face the arrows can be shot in any order, but if two land in the same face only the lower-scoring one counts and the other is scored as a miss. The qualification round is 60 arrows.

The IFAA has indoor rounds of its own, and there are two. The Standard Indoor Round is shot at 20 yards, that is 18.3 m, in two units of six ends of five arrows, so 60 arrows, on a 40 cm blue face with a white centre: scores run from 5 in the centre to 1 at the edge, the X is used only to break ties and each end has four minutes. The tournament director can also allow the five-spot face, five small 16 cm faces scoring 5 and 4, with one arrow per spot. The Flint Indoor Round brings field archery into the hall: 56 arrows in ends of four, from 20 feet to 30 yards, roughly 6 to 27 m, on 20 and 35 cm field faces, with three minutes per end. In Italy FIARC has for some years also held open national events for indoor 3D.

For a beginner it is often the first competition: the distance is short, there is no wind and the day ends earlier. As for the shot itself, the only direct study in the registry, a 1990 investigation of eight skilled archers, finds a similar muscle activation pattern from 18 to 90 m, so the claim that technique is the same indoors and outdoors is reported, on limited evidence. The practical differences between the two seasons are covered in the article on indoor and outdoor archery.

Qualification, matches and ranking on total score

At World Archery and FITARCO events the qualification round produces the ranking, and the ranking decides where each archer sits in the match play bracket, following a fixed pattern set out in the rules that pairs the top qualifiers with those ranked lower in the early rounds. From then on it is knockout matches all the way to the final.

In recurve and barebow the individual match is played in sets, under World Archery Book 3. Each set is three arrows: the archer with the higher score in the set takes 2 set points, a tie gives 1 to each, and the first to 6 wins. There are at most five sets, and at 5-5 there is a single-arrow shoot-off: the higher score wins and, if the scores are level, the arrow closest to the centre. In compound the scores of five ends of three arrows are added up instead, and the higher total wins. Recurve and barebow teams follow the same logic: three archers, six arrows per set, two each, and victory at 5 set points; in mixed teams, one man and one woman, there are four arrows per set. Compound teams add up the scores of four ends.

The set system has some surprising consequences: you can outscore your opponent over the whole match and still lose, as I explain in I scored more and lost. It is often said to reward the more consistent archer, but nobody has tested that on real competition data: the claim that the set system rewards consistency is not studied, and the Lab's calculation for modelled archers suggests that, at the same average, the set system rewards steadiness less than cumulative scoring does. Qualification matters too: in two analyses of international results, by the same author, medals almost always go to archers who finish qualification in the top 20, a reported finding. As for tension, the only field study finds more reported anxiety before matches than before qualification, so the claim that head-to-head matches bring more pressure is reported; I discuss it in pressure in head-to-head matches.

At IFAA and FIARC events there are no head-to-head matches: the rules rank archers on their total score for the event, by age class and by style or bow category, and the two federations differ in how they break ties. In FIARC, under its Sports Regulation, a tie goes to the archer with more spots, then more super spots, then more scoring arrows, and if the scores are still level the archers share the place. At the IFAA World Field Archery Championships, by contrast, two archers tied for an award shoot off over three field targets at 50 yards, four arrows at each, on 65, 50 and 35 cm faces; if they are still level they carry on with a single arrow on the 35 cm face until one of them pulls ahead. The IFAA also divides adults, young adults and juniors into classes A, B and C according to their two highest field or hunter scores in the twelve months before the event, recorded on the Score Record/Classification Card, and at the field championships it gives awards to the best archers in classes B and C as well.

Field archery

In World Archery and FITARCO field archery you walk a course of 24 targets and shoot three arrows at each. Targets are set uphill, downhill and among the trees, and distances can be marked, unmarked or mixed: under the rules a round can be all marked, all unmarked, or one twelve-target unit of each. Archers shoot from pegs of different colours according to bow and class: red for recurve and compound, blue for barebow and Under 18 recurve and compound, yellow for Under 18 barebow. Traditional, from the blue peg, and longbow, from the yellow, shoot World Archery field rounds only as recreational rounds, since their official events are in 3D. From the red peg, on a marked course, distances run from 10 to 60 m.

The face differs from the target archery one: a yellow centre divided into two zones, worth 6 and 5, and four black or teal rings from 4 to 1, in four sizes from 20 to 80 cm. The small faces are set close and the large ones far away. In FITARCO, under Book 4 of the Technical Shooting Rules in force from 1 January 2026, the divisions are recurve, barebow, compound and longbow, plus the instinctive bow on a trial basis, which in Italian calendar events shoots from the yellow peg.

The IFAA has field rounds of its own, with distances in yards. The Field Round is 28 targets, in two units of 14, and four arrows are shot at each target, from a single peg or from four, which usually walk up towards it and sometimes all stand at the same distance: distances are marked and run from 20 feet, about 6 m, to 80 yards, about 73 m. The face has a black spot in the centre, a white ring and a black outer ring, in four sizes from 20 to 65 cm, and it scores 5 for the spot, 4 for the white ring and 3 for the outer ring, so the maximum is 560 from 112 arrows. The Hunter Round has the same structure, but the face is all black with a white spot and the distances run from 11 to 70 yards, roughly 10 to 64 m. Adult pegs are white on the field round and red on the hunter round; where juniors shoot closer their peg is blue, and the cubs' peg is black. The IFAA recognises nine styles: barebow, freestyle limited, freestyle unlimited, bowhunter, bowhunter limited, bowhunter unlimited, longbow, traditional recurve and historical bow.

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3D archery

3D is shot at animal targets, always at unmarked distances. At World Archery and FITARCO events the course has 24 targets and two arrows are shot at each target. Under World Archery Book 2, compound shoots from the red peg, between 5 and 45 m, while barebow, longbow and traditional shoot from the blue peg, between 5 and 30 m; Olympic-style recurve with a sight has no 3D division at World Archery level. Each target has four zones: 11 for the small central circle, 10 for the circle around it, 8 for the rest of the vital area and 5 for the rest of the body. An arrow in the horns or hooves that does not touch the body is a miss.

The IFAA has three rounds shot at animal targets, all of 28 targets in four size groups. In the Animal Round you may shoot up to three arrows at each target, but you stop at the first one that hits: the first scores 20 in the kill zone and 18 elsewhere on the animal, the second 16 or 14, the third 12 or 10. It is shot at marked distances, with the first peg for the largest targets between 60 and 40 yards, or at unmarked distances, on paper faces or 3D targets. The 3D Hunting Round is a single arrow per target, scoring 20 in the kill, the inner zone, 16 in the vital and 10 on the rest of the body; in the 3D Standard Round there are two arrows, from two pegs, both count and they score 10, 8 and 5. In both rounds the distances are unmarked and go up to 60 yards, about 55 m, on the largest targets and 20 yards on the smallest. An arrow in the horns or the base of the target does not score, one in the legs does. At the IFAA World Bowhunter Championships archers shoot two unmarked Animal Rounds and one round of each kind of 3D, while at the World Field Archery Championships distances are marked and the field, hunter and animal rounds are shot.

The extra difficulty is judging distance by eye, and the only study on the subject, carried out in South Africa on twenty-eight archers, finds that the estimation error grows with distance: a reported claim. The technical differences from target archery are covered in the article on 3D archery and target archery.

FIARC events: battuta, percorso, tracciato and 3D round

In Italy FIARC has competition rules of its own, set out in its Sports Regulation as updated on 2 December 2023. Its disciplines are shooting at fixed and moving animal targets and shooting at flying targets, to which the Technical Regulation adds bowfishing, and target shooting has four competition formats: the battuta, the percorso, the tracciato and the 3D round. The Italian Championship, held every year towards the end of August and qualified for through the regional championships, gives one day to each. All four are shot at animal targets, paper or three-dimensional, split into four groups by the size of the spot, and every shot is at an unmarked distance: the event and the target's group set only the maximum distance, with a tolerance of 5%. Each target has three scoring zones, the whole animal, the spot and, inside the spot, a smaller circle called the super spot, and where more than one arrow is shot at a station the first is worth more than the second, and the second more than the third.

The battuta is the most varied event. Of its 48 targets, 14 are single and 4 moving, 18 form six "herds" of three animals of the same species, shot from the nearest to the furthest, and 12 sit in four timed groups of three; in a herd the running score stops at the first animal missed. In the percorso and the tracciato you shoot from three different distances at every station, either from one peg at three targets or from three pegs at the same target, in which case always walking forward; in the percorso ten stations are timed. In the battuta, percorso and tracciato ten arrows must be shot kneeling. The 3D round, on the other hand, has no kneeling shots: it has eight timed stations, with a start peg from which you set off on the timekeeper's signal, and four stations with moving targets.

At timed stations every arrow in the series must be shot within 30 seconds, which the range officials can extend by up to 10 seconds if the weather or the ground calls for it; barebow, compound, stile libero, stile libero illimitato, freestyle and all cubs are exempt, and shoot those stations as they would any other. Elsewhere you have one minute for each arrow in the series, counted from the moment you pass the station board. Binoculars are allowed before and after your own series, never between arrows, and any device able to measure distance is banned. Archers shoot from the yellow peg, but cubs have a red peg, no further than half the group's maximum distance, and scouts a blue one on group 1 and 2 targets, except in the 3D round. There are four classes, cubs, scouts, cacciatori (adults) and seniors, and eight bow categories: historical bow, longbow, recurve, barebow, compound, stile libero, stile libero illimitato and freestyle. To move on to international outdoor events, the IFAA requires membership of an affiliated federation such as FIARC and at least two competition scores from field, hunter, 3D or similar rounds on the Score Record/Classification Card; FIARC's Sports Regulation refers to its federal rules for taking part.

Flight, clout and the minor disciplines

World Archery Book 6 gathers the rarer disciplines. In flight the aim is to shoot the arrow as far as possible, in ends of six, with bows grouped into their own divisions. In clout the target is marked out on the ground around a central flag and archers shoot 36 arrows from a long way off: 165 m for men's recurve, 125 m for women's recurve, 185 m for men's compound and 165 m for women's compound. The same book also covers run archery and ski archery, which combine shooting with running and skiing. To find out whether and where these events are held, check your federation's calendar.

Which competition to start with

To compete you need a competition licence through a club affiliated to the federation running the event: the club will tell you what it costs and what you need, and the federation's fees and calendar are on its website. In the FITARCO world I usually suggest an indoor event or a target archery event close to home for a first competition, because the rules are few, the timing is clear and you shoot alongside archers of every level; the woods come later, once your shot holds up on slopes and uneven ground. In the FIARC world, on the other hand, you start in the woods: a percorso or battuta in your own region, where no target stands further than 40 m, makes a good start, and there too beginners shoot alongside archers of every level, in groups of three to six. Before your first event it pays to read at least the parts of the rulebook on timing, scoring and safety: they are a few pages long and free on the official websites.

@misc{campagna2026_tipidigaratiroconarco,
  author = {Campagna, Matteo},
  title = {Types of archery competition: target, indoor, field and 3D},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {matteocampagna.com},
  url = {https://matteocampagna.com/en/articoli/types-of-archery-competition},
  note = {accessed 2026-10-16}
}