After Double Gold in Seoul and 10 World Championship Wins, Janja Garnbret Shares What's Next

Plus, the forthcoming film that will explore the mindset behind the Slovenian climber’s dominance

Share

Save

(Photo: Caleb Timmerman © Nakajima/Timmerman/IFSC)

Even from thousands of miles away, one thing was obvious: Janja Garnbret wasn’t there to compete. She was there to win.

In the Lead finals at the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC) World Championships in Seoul, South Korea on September 26, Garnbret strung the route together with rhythm, while rivals were bucked off early. The next day, in the Boulder finals, she solved problems that stalled others, moving with a composure that made the crowd feel incidental.

Two events, two golds, one week. This brings the Slovenian prodigy’s total IFSC World Championship gold count to 10, alongside her 47 IFSC World Cup gold medals, two Olympic gold medals, and many more victories.

“Winning one gold at the World Championships is a dream,” Garnbret told Climbing. “Winning my 10th with two in Seoul feels impossible—but here I am. It’s hard to put the emotions into words. I’m just grateful for everyone who believes in me and helps make this possible. It’s always a battle, and I’m proud I proved to myself I could do it again.”

Garnbret’s performance at the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC) World Championships in Seoul, South Korea last weekend wasn’t surprising—dominance has long been her signature. But this sweep felt less like another victory and more like a statement: the ceiling has moved. And as she recently told Magnus Midtbø, she believes she could compete against men—a remark that lands less like bravado and more like a total possibility.

“I was totally in awe of how amazing Janja is under pressure,” said adventure filmmaker Jon Glassberg of Louder Than Eleven productions, who was behind the camera in Seoul. “When she competes, she is there to win and it feels like second place would be ‘losing’ to her. The pressure she puts on herself is crazy, and the other competitors are always chasing her.”

A double gold at a World Championship is virtually unprecedented—no climber before Garnbret has won both Boulder and Lead golds at the same event. Though Garnbret herself pulled off the same feat at the World Championships in Bern, Switzerland in 2023, and in Japan in 2019. Adam Ondra earned golds in Lead and Boulder in two separate 2014 World Championship events (one in Spain, another a month later in Germany), but Garnbret remains the only one to snag double gold in a single World Championship event.

What really sets her victories apart, however, isn’t the medal count, but the assuredness of the performance: control, adaptation, and endurance across two disciplines, rarely mastered in tandem.

“Throughout the event, I was struck by her ability to perform at the highest level in Lead, winning both semifinals and finals,” Glassberg said, “and then the next day doing it all again in Bouldering despite the physical and mental drain of four rounds in 48 hours.”

Each style, Boulder and Lead, expose weakness and demand skill: one is problem-solving at speed, explosive power under the clock; the other, endurance, pacing, and analysis. Most athletes lean into one discipline and accept vulnerability in the other. That’s one reason why the decision to split up these disciplines at the 2028 Olympic Games was welcomed by many climbers. Yet Garnbret showed no weakness in one discipline over the other.

“Each victory has its own weight. People expect me to win now, and carrying that expectation feels heavier every year,” Garnbret reflected after the 2025 World Championships. “First and foremost, I want to prove to myself that I can do it. I know how much I put into training, and I want to show that work on stage. That’s why every win matters—and why I never take any of them for granted. The fans in Seoul and beyond were incredible, and their support meant everything.”

She switched between styles as if their demands were interchangeable. In Lead, she even recovered from a mid-clip slip on a slick right hold. After her composed save, she became the only finalist to top the route. In the Boulder final, the title hinged on the last bloc: Problem 4. She was the only competitor to top out, sealing the gold with a decisive, power-through finish.

What really struck Glassberg was how she dominated every stage of Lead, then came back less than a day later to deliver again in Boulder, pushing through the physical and mental fatigue of four rounds in two days. “It would break most people,” Glassberg said. “But not her.”

Garnbret also competed against a stacked field. The Seoul lineup included: Oriane Bertone, France’s Boulder prodigy, who placed second in Seoul; American Melina Costanza, who took bronze in Boulder; and Seo Chae-hyun, South Korea’s Lead specialist. That’s what made this double gold more than a medal count: It underscored the gap between a climber who can dominate in a lane and one who can finesse her skill across the sport’s stage.

For women’s competition climbing, Garnbret’s double gold is more than a personal triumph—it’s a marker of where the sport is heading. A decade ago, the idea of one athlete mastering both Boulder and Lead on the same stage was improbable. But after her performance in Seoul, this level of mastery feels like the new bar.

If that’s true, what does it mean? Can athletes still afford to specialize? Will training camps shift toward balance instead of bias? How much adaptability can a single season, or a single athlete, flex into?

What’s all but certain is the ripple effect. To younger climbers, Garnbret’s sweep is proof that all-around mastery is possible. To audiences outside the sport, it offers a glimpse of climbing’s complexity—part puzzle, part marathon—and why it deserves its place on the world stage.

As this comp season comes to a close, Garnbret’s calendar next year points toward more World Cups in the lead up to the 2028 Olympics. But she says she’s also excited to do some outdoor climbing: “I have plenty to look forward to, both in climbing and in life. I’ve started projects on rock that I want to finish in the coming months. Competition-wise, we’ll see how the calendar looks and decide how much to enter next season. Taking fewer comps this year was the right call—I needed to reset, focus on rock, and keep that sense of freedom and joy alive in competition, too.”

Currently, Garnbret is also shooting with Glassberg, who is capturing this chapter of her career with Red Bull Studios. The new feature film about Garnbret will show not just the wins, but the mindset behind them. “It should be a very real and vulnerable look into Janja’s life as a climbing superstar and the greatest to ever do the sport,” he said. The film will likely release sometime during the summer of 2028.

Of course, I’ll be watching, whether she turns up on a movie screen or on the Olympic wall. But what stands out to me is how she resonates with more than just climbing die-hards—non-climbers are rooting for her, too.

On Lead in Seoul, Garnbret’s last move told the whole story. She paused just before the crux, just long enough to breathe, shaking out, reading the wall. Then she launched for the dyno, stuck it, and hurried to clip. A flash of calculation followed by pure instinct. This is the balance that defines her climbing—calm when she can be, decisive when she has to be.