France · cotation FFN
Three different things get called "points" in French swimming, and two of them get mixed up constantly. The grille de qualification is entry times. World Aquatics points (still called points FINA by almost everyone, including search engines) are the international scale. The cotation FFN is neither: it is France's own points table, built once in 2016, and it mostly is not about getting into a championship at all.
Three systems, one confusion
A grille de qualification is a table of entry times for a specific French championship. It answers one question: can my swimmer be entered? A cotation FFN is a national points table that scores how good a swim was, on a French scale. It answers a different question: how does this swim compare to the rest of the field? And World Aquatics points (still called points FINA in almost every French search) are an international scale built from world-benchmark base times, answering a third question: how does this swim compare to the fastest swims ever recorded, anywhere?
None of these three numbers convert into each other. A strong grille result doesn't imply a strong cotation. A high cotation doesn't get anyone into a championship on its own. And a cotation and a World Aquatics score for the exact same swim are built from completely different data, so they will never match.
If it's the entry-time system you're actually here for, the grille de qualification page covers that in full.
The mechanism
A cotation isn't calculated from an equation a parent could run at home. It's read off a printed table: one row for every point value from 1 to 1500, one column for every event and gender. Swim a time, find the column for that event, and the row it falls in is the score. The FFN calls it exactly what it is — la table de cotation fédérale.
The table has three fixed reference points. One point requires no time at all, only finishing the race under the rules — the table's own "1" row is printed with the time columns left blank. 1,430 points was set to the weighted world average of the ten best performers of all time in that event, as FINA's own world rankings had it when the table was built. 1,500 points is a ceiling, a mark the very best swimmers in the world have historically reached in a 25 m pool. Everything else on the table sits between those markers.
For events that aren't part of the core international programme, the points weren't independently benchmarked the same way — they were extrapolated from the events that were. Worth knowing if a cotation for a less common event ever looks like an outlier.
| Cotation | Women's 100m freestyle, 50 m pool | Men's 100m freestyle, 50 m pool |
|---|---|---|
| 1500 the ceiling | 49.59 | 43.53 |
| 1430 the 2016 world top-10 average | 51.34 | 45.35 |
| 2 the slowest time that scores | 2:01.60 | 1:58.55 |
| 1 no time required at all | Any time — just finish the race | Any time — just finish the race |
These numbers are ten years old at the benchmark end — see the next section.
Freshness
The current table's own title says it plainly: "Saison 2016/2017 & après" — the 2016/2017 season, and after. Its predecessor, built for the 2005-2008 Olympic cycle, stayed in use for twelve years despite being named for a four-year period. As far as we can tell, checking again in 2026, the current table is still the one in circulation: a regional league was still distributing the identical 2016/2017 document at the time of writing, and no newer edition turned up anywhere we looked.
That's a real, structural difference from World Aquatics points, which are recalculated every single year against the current world-class benchmark. A cotation of 1,430 today is still measured against where the world's best swimmers were in 2016. It's worth knowing that before treating a cotation score as freshly calibrated to today's swimming.
What it's for
The natural assumption, coming from the grille de qualification, is that a cotation must be another way in somewhere. Almost always, it isn't. A cotation feeds three systems, and all three are about teams.
Every performance in the federal database converts to a cotation. At season's end, each swimmer's best cotations (in whichever events scored highest) convert again, through a separate banding table, into club-ranking points, which sum up across every swimmer to produce the Classement National des Clubs. One good swim by one 13-year-old genuinely moves a club's national position.
Interclubs meets (team competitions run by age band, U11 through Toutes Catégories) are scored the same way: cumulative cotation points, individual and relay, relay points not doubled. And a club's aggregate cotation from one season can decide which division its team gets placed in the next season, when regional leagues set up their pools.
There's exactly one place a cotation genuinely decides who swims at a national championship: the Trophée du 4 nageur, for 12- and 13-year-olds. It's scored on cumulative cotation points across four events over the season, and the top finishers (8 at 12, 10 at 13) qualify directly, with a free choice of events once there. Outside this one trophy, cotation doesn't admit anyone to anything; that's what the grille de qualification is for.
Side by side
| What we compare | Cotation FFN | World Aquatics points (points FINA) |
|---|---|---|
| Basis | A table calibrated once, in 2016, against the All Time Ranking Mondiaux — the average of the world's all-time top ten per event, as FINA published it at the time. Static since. | A formula, P = 1000 × (B/T)³, run against a base time republished every year: the current world-class benchmark, not a historical average. |
| Scale | 1 to 1500. One point means finishing the race, nothing more. 1,430 is roughly the 2016 world top-10 average. 1,500 is a ceiling the best in the world have reached. | Centred on 1000: swim the base time exactly and you score 1000. No hard ceiling — a swim faster than the base time scores above it. |
| Who publishes it | Fédération Française de Natation, via extraNat. | World Aquatics, the sport's international governing body, formerly FINA. |
| Where you look it up | The table de cotation fédérale PDF, or a swimmer's meilleures performances and classements pages on extranat.fr, where a club's results are converted after every meet. | World Aquatics' published base times, or this site's own lookup and its World Aquatics points page. |
| What it's used for | Club and team scoring: the national club ranking, inter-club league meets and their division seeding, and, narrowly, direct qualification for one youth trophy. Not used to admit an individual swimmer to a normal national championship. | Cross-event, cross-age development benchmarking. No federation, anywhere, admits a swimmer to a championship on it. |
| How often it changes | Not on a published schedule. In force since the 2016/2017 season; its predecessor lasted twelve years. | Every year. Long-course base times run the calendar year, short-course September to August. |
Same word, "points," in two systems built from completely different data. Neither converts into the other.
It's easy to see a number like 1,430 next to a swim and read it as a grade. It isn't one — it's an input to a club's team total, calibrated a decade ago against swimmers your own swimmer may never race. A season where a 12-year-old's cotation barely moves while their own best times keep dropping is not a contradiction; it can simply mean the events that happen to be in the trophy or the club scoring aren't their strongest ones yet.
The cotation number belongs to the club's season. The swimmer's own clock belongs to the swimmer, and it's the better number to watch across a year.
Reading
Gap thinking measures your kid against the goal. Gain thinking measures them against where they started. The frame you speak becomes the voice in their head.
Placement measures who else showed up. The personal best measures your swimmer, and it's the number worth talking about on the drive home.
Questions
A national points table built by the Fédération Française de Natation. It converts a swim time into a score from 1 to 1500 using a fixed lookup table, mainly so clubs and teams can be compared against each other.
No, and the two shouldn't be compared. Points FINA (officially World Aquatics points) are recalculated every year against the current world-class benchmark time. The cotation FFN table was built once, in 2016, against where the world's best swimmers were then, and hasn't been reissued since as far as we've been able to confirm.
Mostly to score clubs, not swimmers. It feeds the national club ranking, inter-club team meets, and how leagues divide clubs into competitive tiers the following season. The one exception is the Trophée du 4 nageur for 12- and 13-year-olds, where cumulative cotation points across the season do decide who qualifies directly to the national championship.
Clubs see it on extraNat after each meet is processed — a swim gets converted against the federal table automatically. There's no separate calculator a parent needs to run; ask your club for the swimmer's classements page if you want to see it directly.
There's no official scale of levels the way there sometimes is for other systems. The clearest reference points are on the table itself: 2 points is the slowest time that scores at all, 1,430 was the 2016 world top-10 average for that event, and 1,500 is a ceiling the best in the world have historically reached. Most competitive age-group swimmers sit well below 1,430 — that number describes the very top of the sport.
The lookup
Our lookup calculates World Aquatics points and every federation's entry times, but not the cotation FFN, which isn't something we can score for you yet. If it's development context you're after, that's the number to look at.
Looking for entry times instead?
Source
This page draws on the FFN's own 2026 competition regulation and the federal cotation table itself, both official FFN documents, plus one independent club explainer used only to corroborate that the mechanism is understood the same way outside the federation. Full sources and retrieval dates below.
Natation Course 2026 — règlement sportif
Table de cotation fédérale — Saison 2016/2017 & après
Le classement des clubs : comment ça marche ?
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