Early GP Seeded Skater Predictions

With the off-season boredom officially underway, I thought it'd be fun for us to share our way-too-early predictions on how the upcoming season's Grand Prix seeds might look like. According to this post, the 2026-27 Grand Prix schedule will be:

• Skate America (USA)
• Skate Canada International (CAN)
• Cup of China (CHN)
• GP de France (FRA)
• Finlandia Trophy (FIN)
• NHK Trophy (JPN)

The gist of GP seeding is that the top 6 skaters at the most recent Worlds are divided into two groups (1-3 and 4-6), and cannot face anyone else in the same group. For more info please see the pinned guide here or last year's ISU announcement. If there is a vacancy in the top 6 then we simply go further down the Worlds placements. The following skaters are excluded due to their likelihood of retirement:

• Women #1: Kaori Sakamoto (JPN) - officially confirmed
• Ice Dance #2: Gilles/Poirier (CAN) - not official but very likely based on interviews throughout the season
• Ice Dance #7: Reed/Ambrulevicius (LTU) - speculated due to their age, reaction at Worlds, and Allison apparently hinting towards it, but no official announcement yet

Also just to clarify a common misconception! Yes, Seeded Skaters do get to pick which GPs they want, but this is only voicing their preference. The hosting feds also voice their preferences, and then the ISU lets them all negotiate. In other words, a skater's picks do not always guarantee that they will get those events. For example, even if Ilia wants NHK, his seed also includes Yuma and Shun, so JSF would likely want one of them instead.

With that, here are the Seeded Skaters:

Men #1-3: Ilia Malinin (USA), Yuma Kagiyama (JPN), Shun Sato (JPN)

Men #4-6: Stephen Gogolev (CAN), Adam Siao Him Fa (FRA), Aleksandr Selevko (EST)

Women #1-3: Mone Chiba (JPN), Nina Pinzarrone (BEL), Isabeau Levito (USA)

Women #4-6: Lara Naki Gutmann (ITA), Amber Glenn (USA), Niina Petrokina (EST)

Pairs #1-3: Hase/Volodin (GER), Metelkina/Berulava (GEO), Pereira/Michaud (CAN)

Pairs #4-6: Nagaoka/Moriguchi (JPN), Pavlova/Sviatchenko (HUN), Efimova/Mitrofanov (USA)

Ice Dance #1-3: Fournier Beaudry/Cizeron (FRA), Zingas/Kolesnik (USA), Fear/Gibson (GBR)

Ice Dance #4-6: Smart/Dieck (ESP), Lopareva/Brissaud (FRA), *Reed/Ambrulevicius (LTU) (if they retire, then *Carreira/Ponomarenko (USA))

Again maybe it's way too early to make these predictions, with all these unconfirmed retirements (and potential partner changes?!) but hey, I'm definitely not the only skating fan already bored this off-season...